To be fair, just as how “kike” means “circle,” “nigger” really just means “black,” “gook,” “chink,” and “ching chong” are essentially the racial slur equivalent of doing a bad imitation of someone’s accent, and “jap” is literally just a shortening of “Japanese,” but if I say any of those, you can assume I’m expressing a bit more contempt than the literal translation implies. Ironically, the (false, I think?) etymology of “cracker” as “person cracking a whip” would actually make it the worst racial slur under this standard, because it’s the only one I know that is based on misplaced blame.
Reacting to insults towards one’s identity and in-group with anger is probably a healthy self-defense thing, frankly. If whites did that sort of thing more, they’d probably be better off.
Edit: important to note, though, that the institutional power of that anger should probably be limited to personal choice—“he called me a nigger, so I’m not going to be friends with him.” If your righteous anger about being called a mean name results in a person being debanked and fired, or in you beating him to death and getting a relatively light sentence because you were “provoked,” maybe the guy using the racial slur had a point.
To be fair, just as how “kike” means “circle,” “nigger” really just means “black,” “gook,” “chink,” and “ching chong” are essentially the racial slur equivalent of doing a bad imitation of someone’s accent, and “jap” is literally just a shortening of “Japanese,” but if I say any of those, you can assume I’m expressing a bit more contempt than the literal translation implies. Ironically, the (false, I think?) etymology of “cracker” as “person cracking a whip” would actually make it the worst racial slur under this standard, because it’s the only one I know that is based on misplaced blame.
Reacting to insults towards one’s identity and in-group with anger is probably a healthy self-defense thing, frankly. If whites did that sort of thing more, they’d probably be better off.
Edit: important to note, though, that the institutional power of that anger should probably be limited to personal choice—“he called me a nigger, so I’m not going to be friends with him.” If your righteous anger about being called a mean name results in a person being debanked and fired, or in you beating him to death and getting a relatively light sentence because you were “provoked,” maybe the guy using the racial slur had a point.
To be fair, just as how “kike” means “circle,” “nigger” really just means “black,” “gook,” “chink,” and “ching chong” are essentially the racial slur equivalent of doing a bad imitation of someone’s accent, and “jap” is literally just a shortening of “Japanese,” but if I say any of those, you can assume I’m expressing a bit more contempt than the literal translation implies. Ironically, the (false, I think?) etymology of “cracker” as “person cracking a whip” would actually make it the worst racial slur under this standard, because it’s the only one I know that is based on misplaced blame.
Reacting to insults towards one’s identity and in-group with anger is probably a healthy self-defense thing, frankly. If whites did that sort of thing more, they’d probably be better off.