Now please, don't misunderstand me. I know that there were some very valid and laudable reasons behind Equal Opportunity legislation and the hiring quotas such laws either enforced or inspired, but the fact of the matter remains - members of the Black community aren't the only people who have suffered as a result of systematic discrimination.
While I don't mean to take away from the seriousness of that situation for your family, I don't think this can be used as an abstract argument to claim that white people suffer systematized racism. Affirmative action may occasionally correct a balance that has shifted one way too far, but to pull it back towards a more equal balance is not to systematically discriminate. Now, I'm happy to offer a full disclaimer that this is not always the way it happens, and that occasionally a white family will not see a fully earned opportunity. The goal, however, is to prevent the opportunities from being awarded according to race or other non-meritorious considerations.
Back on my main point - I never tried to dictate a cultural identity to anyone. I simply pointed out that from my perspective, seeking to own the word is a mistake.
The bolded part was the language that I didn't see in your original post on the matter, which is what triggered my response. I'm not saying it was bad or wrong or bla bla bla, but that's why I took you to be offering a general principle and not a lived perspective. I think the demand that offended people "grow a sac" was the part that I found most indicative of a lack of openness to the legitimacy of other perspectives.
Trippyhippy said:
These guys can say it all they want without being considered racist. Kinda like when a homosexual calls himself a "faggot". It's almost used in a satirical fashion, as though to show disdain for the people that use it in a serious manor.
I bolded the above because I think it's interesting that the "serious" sense of the term is the offensive one. Just an interesting point about one identity for the word. Serious sense = offensive. Non-serious senses = joking, friendly, angry, internally used? I'm sure that the word choice above wasn't the result of a long linguistic search, but it is interesting.
More generally, I think that the "there's black people and there's ******s" argument that's been offered is bad for a number of reasons. One is that it leaves open an escape route for the truly racist: accused of a racist act, any racist can respond, "Oh, I thought he was one of the ******s, not a black person; my mistake." This isn't good enough, and it leaves open the problems Aaleel was mentioning about racial profiling, etc. Another problem is that it tries to solve social issues by simply saying, "Some people are bad." This isn't a solution, and it's almost always an incomplete description.
Poverty leads to domestic anxiety leads to domestic strife leads to kids with anger that can't express it. To say, "Kids X, Y, and Z are good and therefore can be called 'black people.' Kids A, B, and C are bad and therefore must be called ******s," is not a solution; it's a way to categorize and legitimize racism, and that's not good enough. Describing the problem in terms that place the blame as fully away from social conditions (which are, after all, the only thing society can tinker with to try to help the situation) as possible is not a way to deal with race problems.
On a slightly separate note, I just looked up the etymology of "Yankee" to compare.
The Oxford English Dictionary said:
The two earliest statements as to its origin were published in 1789: Thomas Anburey, a British officer who served under Burgoyne in the War of Independence, in his Travels II. 50 derives Yankee from Cherokee eankke slave, coward, which he says was applied to the inhabitants of New England by the Virginians for not assisiting them in a war with the Cherokees; William Gordon in Hist. Amer. War states that it was a favourite word with farmer Jonathan Hastings of Cambridge, Mass., c 1713, who used it in the sense of ‘excellent’. Appearing next in order of date (1822) is the statement which has been most widely accepted, viz. that the word has been evolved from North American Indian corruptions of the word English through Yengees to Yankees (Heckewelder, Indian Nations iii. ed. 1876, p. 77); cf. YENGEES.
Perhaps the most plausible conjecture is that it comes from Du. Janke, dim. of Jan John, applied as a derisive nickname by either Dutch or English in the New England states (J. N. A. Thierry, 1838, in Life of Ticknor, 1876, II. vii. 124). The existence of Yank(e)y, Yankee, as a surname or nickname (often with Dutch associations) is vouched for by the following references:
1683 Cal. St. Papers, Colon. Ser. (1898) 457 They [sc. pirates] sailed from Bonaco..; chief commanders, Vanhorn, Laurens, and Yankey Duch. 1684 Ibid. 733 A sloop..unlawfully seized by Captain Yankey. 1687 Ibid. (1899) 456 Captains John Williams (Yankey) and Jacob Everson (Jacob). 1687-8 MSS. Earl of Dartmouth in 11th Rep. Hist. MSS. Comm. App. v. 136 The pirates Yanky and Jacobs. 1697 DAMPIER Voy. I. iii. 38. 1725 Inventory of W. Marr of Carolina in N. & Q. 5th Ser. X. 467 Item one negroe man named Yankee to be sold.
Cf. also ‘Dutch yanky’ s.v. YANKY.]
If the term comes either from the cherokee word for slave/coward or from the corruption of the native Americans trying to say "English," then the use of it by the British was either a term of opprobrium calling the American colonists slave/cowards or it was a racial slur associating them with native Americans, who the British believed were inferior intellectually and culturally.
Any way you slice it, Yankee was a slur that got claimed by the American colonists and underwent a radical transformation. The fact that its etymological origins are rooted in slavery or racial slurs is a really interesting parallel. How would we react to a baseball team named the ******s?
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