the mellow tigger's musings

1) 'nigger' is the same as 'faggot'

Besides the same consonant-vowel pattern, these two words share a common problem. At a gay male social event several years ago, someone showed up and said, "Hey, faggots, how's it going?" That greeting flew like a lead brick, as you'd expect. There may be situations in which 'faggot' can be used deftly to illustrate a clever point, but it's useful that way only because it still holds its negative connotation, verbally held at bay through some artful linguistic construction. There is no automatic "free pass" to use the word just because the speaker is gay. It requires interpretation to find a positive use of it in any context.

Culture is now telling us that 'nigger' has exactly that bizarre distinction. Some people can use it safely, and some people never can, or so we're told. I think it's a big lie. I claim here that both words work in exactly the same fashion within human brains. These two words are always negative, and only creative use can find a clever positive point to make with them. While it's impossible to provide evidence for my assertion as myself, a white American, it is possible for someone who is black in America to provide that evidence. What we need are brain scans of black Americans listening to audio recordings of different people speaking this word of power. Some recordings should have racial clues within the voice pattern, and some should not. Some recordings should be of unknown (to the listener) speakers, and some should be familiar and trusted voices. Maybe even throw in some AI constructed voices and some actual song recordings. I expect a "danger!" signal to arise in the listener's brain scan every single time that word is presented. Perhaps that signal is short-lived after a subjective evaluation is made as to the intent of the speaker, but that delayed amelioration is a separate issue here. Some claim that 'nigger' is NOT dangerous when black people say it, but I say it is, because it works exactly the same way in our receiving brains as 'faggot'. Gatekeeping of words is a process that never did, and never will, reclaim that word's power. Or so I declare prior to brain scans as proof.

Brain scans would reveal the truth of the matter. Either way the results trend, we learn something very important. Either there IS a neural network in the brain that determines linguistic content solely via speaker context (which is something new that I haven't heard proposed before), or the word IS harmful in any context and is subconsciously damaging black listeners who hear the word frequently, particularly in music lyrics. We will benefit by learning more. We need universities somewhere to perform these tests.

2) 'blacklist' and 'whitelist' have nothing to do with skin color

All physical surfaces radiate a color of light when illuminated. It's very unfortunate that any color has achieved social relevance. For humans, those colors primarily are black and white, these being associated (inaccurately) with skin colors. Should we reclaim or eliminate words that use these colors?

This black-versus-white symbolism can be traced backwards in 4 obvious phases.

1. Overt racism is still here, using skin color as a proxy for social bad-versus-good. It remains powerful symbolism today, because the USA civil war never ended, not completely. We still carry that same cultural baggage.
2. Black and white hat symbolism in old television shows was widespread. It was partially a visual shortcut, allowing easy identification of people in distant views using a monochrome medium that lacked detailed resolution. It fell out of style because modern images can provide identification without those color-coded cues. I argue, however, that this metaphor was just a shortcut to convey an older truth.
3. Black and white magic are an older version of this principle. The dark forces should be feared, while the bright forces should be welcomed. Bad versus good. I argue again, however, that this metaphor is just a shortcut to convey an even older truth.
4. Darkness versus light. This is the core of the matter. No amount of linguistic manipulation will make humans (as a whole) stop being afraid of the dark. This is our truth. While our ancient mammal ancestors might have been crepuscular or even nocturnal, it doesn't negate the worry of hidden predators threatening us from the shadows. We welcome the light of knowledge as it dispels the threat in the darkness.

I think that blacklisting and whitelisting harkens back to this oldest and most meaningful metaphor. Some interactions are bad and should be discouraged (blacklisted), while others are good and should be encouraged (whitelisted). I think that universally forbidding use of words of color that might have reference to human skin tones (black, white, yellow, brown, red) would be disastrous for human psychology in the long term. I recommend reclaiming these words for their old powers, when they are rooted in human experience and the natural environment, not in superficial similarities to stupid human social conflicts which are hopefully temporary.