Re Wypipo and Divisiveness

[wonkwest]

66. I'll take a crack at this

1. It divides black commentators from white allies who desire to listen and learn. Speaking only for me, if I see wypipo in an article's title, I am no longer receptive to what that person has to say. It speaks to their character, and if a person needs a juvenile racial pejorative to net eyeballs, I don't imagine anything else they have to say is particularly useful. It tells me they don't want to engage. They want back pats and snickers from people who already agree with them. And if it comes at the cost of other people's discomfort, so be it. A person who behaves in that way is not someone I'm paying any heed.

2. I enjoy engaging in racial discussions, listening, and learning. I am in a mixed race relationship and have dated nonwhite people for many, many years now. I always like listening, learning, debating, trying to see things from different angles and perspectives. What the word has done is put white allies on the defensive unnecessarily.

I've heard a lot of, "You're uncomfortable? Good!" But there is good discomfort and bad discomfort. Facing uncomfortable truths, seeing and recognizing one's own behavior and complicity in discrimination and privilege, realizing you could have and should have done a lot more. That is good discomfort. Having someone mock, poke fun, and deride an ethnicity? Bad discomfort. That people cannot parse the difference between the two is a big problem in social justice activism these days. Discomfort in and of itself is thought of as an absolute good.

It is not. It can be corrosive, dismissive, and turn people off from what you're trying to explain to them.

3. Me personally? No. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. Racial pejoratives are wrong, by the way. Just because it's anti-privilege or only after a "certain kind of white person" doesn't ameliorate the practical effects the word has on people. "I can mock your ethnicity, and you just have to take it! Because oppression and privilege!" No one older than nineteen should be thinking this way.

4. Non-applicable.

But I'll add my own.

5. Wypipo is wrong in the way other racial pejoratives are. Warning, I'm going to write out some slurs in the following. Note, these pejoratives aren't only uttered by white people. Any person of any ethnicity can and has said these things about the targeted ethnicity.

- "Oh, he's a nice black/colored fella. He's not one of those n---ers."

- "Oh, she's the nicest oriental girl. She isn't a chink, ya know?"

- "Yeah, he's queer, but he isn't a faggot."

- "Sure, they're a Jew, ya know, but not like a kike or anything."

- "She's a hard-ass bitch, but she's not really a cunt."

(I just cannot spell out the n-word. Part of my programming. I feel deeply uncomfortable at the thought of it).

In all of the above, people think they can use slurs and yet still somehow compliment people. The target is supposed to be flattered! "You're one of the good ones. That word doesn't apply to you."

No, that's really bad. None of it is ok.

Wypipo isn't ok, no matter how many white people give permission. A lot of my gay friends use faggot in various ways to various purposes. They have zero problem with it. Some of my gay friends are deeply uncomfortable around that word, no matter the intent behind it. Once they make that known, we don't use it around that person. We respect their feelings, because we value them as a person. We want them to feel comfortable and included.

So why this abject resistance to respecting the feelings of white people here who don't like it? And there has been a lot of use of that word as little mocking jabs meant to rub people's noses in it. Let's not deny that. It's beneath us.

Why so married to it? Why this ardent, prolific defense of it? White people have said it makes them bad uncomfortable. That alone should be enough to discourage its use. Yet, on a liberal board, here we are.

And let's go with 6. here.

6. This gives amazing amounts of ammunition to the Right. "See? Told ya they hate white people." Let's just get an actual video of Michelle Obama calling someone whitey. Might as well. Because that's pretty much the effect this cutesy little internet speak is going to have if it ever gets out into the white mainstream.

7. Bonus round. This super cool word is being propagated by a guy who told people not to vote for Clinton in the general.

I don't get it. Why be an asshole to allies and potential allies? What's the point? That people find it amusing or worth constantly subjecting people to it speaks to their maturity level. And it doesn't say anything amazingly good.

I'm not offended. I'm irritated. Because the kind of damage this shit does to social justice should be screamingly obvious. That it's not, that it's defended in a liberal space means a lot of people took a very wrong turn somewhere in the evolution of their thinking.