The Spoils of War

I don’t particularly expect to be understood  re why I don’t really feel the need for epithets- but here goes:

   Use of language to convey emotions + or – 

A word itself is not necessary  to convey contempt. Tone or how one phrases responses can tell much more than a word can. I have seen  people “racially offend” each other without ever touching race verbally- they were just so uncomfortable with – uhh each other’s “style”, so to speak. Usually Whites are worse at handling this, because there is no accpetable way to turn it into a joke, whereas Whites are constantly made the butt of “racial nervous jokes” by others and portrayed as doofuses, computer nerds, wimps, couch potatoes, caricatures of guys with pick up trucks, mud flaps with the chick on them, stereotypes of the ahole Evil Corporate Guy, but never anything heroic or smart AND manly or worthy to be chosen or celebrated  over the “English learner” who hopped the border and started his own construction business. Now that is a real success story!  I digress.. anyway, this was the thread that inspired all this- http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showpost.php?p=4832360&postcount=15 

OK next point- How one was brought up~

2)a. I was raised that I should make every effort to avoid the “sound of contempt” while speaking of certain groups, no one had to be told not to use those words, because

1) no one else spoke like that and

2) there wasn’t anyone around who remotely fit the description..When one or two finally got to the grade school where I went,  I think we looked on them as at once something frightening and yet also like there was something terribly wrong with them. It isn’t nice to say  things like “Why does that lady’s baby look funny?” or “How come that man is so fat (or is wearing an eye patch , or has one leg, etc..)”  It was a given that the minorities would be in the “special class” and have all kinds of problems. Behavior, learning, family, money, etc etc…b. Pointing out differences was not nice. Asking about differences was not nice, and certainly making fun or being mean about differences was  just not done. Only mean, cruel people did that.

                  Being ‘nice’ mean being ‘accepting’** , pretending stuff doesn’t exist.  Kind of like one doesn’t speak ill of the dead, the blind, the aged,  or those who get on even shorter buses than oneself. In this particular case, it was that they were “underprivileged” or just somehow worse off in every way than myself,  (though I have seen lots of them driving nicer cars than mine). That said, , I was taught to do this with Whites (and others) as well. However, one would have to not be “too nice” or else it came across as charitable pity, or worse than that,  construed as a gesture of friendship. There always had to be “distance”. c.   Epithets are not “ladylike” (or fill in the blank- cultured, educated, embarrassing, etc) “those kind of words” were akin to cursing, and only (fill in the blank kind of White people, especially women)  speak like that………whether that is true or not is not important, it is just chronicling a measure of  stuff many of us were either overtly or subconsciously brought up with.  

 Parents  don’t have to have “free Mumia” parties to get the message across that “we don’t speak like that”. The child need only see a family member shake their head or make some pronouncement about the person and it gets set like stale jello.

3) It is just not necessary . If you “act White” *, or even turn that up a notch,act…’more White” shall we say-  not excessively, say just a tad more ‘uptight’ , ‘polite’  than usual then the others automatically feel what you are talking about, you need not use any special words, etc. Those who are not “part of the ‘club’ feel it. White people even do this to each other all the time, especially when we feel slighted in some way. When we do it with others not like ourselves , it  is a more complicated game.  Let me explain. Pretending you aren’t doing something, while you’re doing it- while you’re pretending you’re not doing it. Get it? None of this is  about being “correct”.*(“acting White”  has a bunch of alternative meanings as applied to Whites acting White as opposed to blacks being accused of “acting White” when acting umm civilized..)..**And this nice= accepting=tolerant= responsible for wiping the rest of the world’s butt for all eternity…. well,  you see how it grew worse and worse.