So…back to the story. I come from an area of NY that has a pretty significant jewish population, so growing up, it was the norm for me. But then I went to my freshman orientation in upstate NY, and I was talking to a new classmate of mine about our high schools, and he said…”yeah, most of the kids in my school are really ‘jewish’”. I looked at him, not quite knowing what he meant, because he had already mentioned that he attended a private catholic school, asked him to clarify, and he said…”jewish, you know, cheap“.

Man, I lit into him like there was no tomorrow. And the thing is, as sheltered as his upbringing was, I honestly believe he had no idea that what he said was offensive (Dude became so left-wing by the time we graduated that he ended up running the international socialist organization on campus). But I guarantee he would have known better than to say something of the sort had he “known” that I was jewish.

I suppose in some ways it’s been a benefit to me that I can “pass”, not that I’ve ever tried to hide it, but it’s disturbing, as someone who is assumed to be part of the dominant culture, just how much people who think they’re among their own let down their own guard and exhibit such bigotry.

Eteraz brought up a post of his up for discussion in the comments thread on Mundane Stress. My post spent some time discussing invi [...]

Which always raises the question for me – in this kind of metaconversation about any other group, we’d comfortably use derogatory language *that we’re discussing*. We talk about the use of words like kike and chink and gook and so on – and the same in non-racial contexts. Yet, in that same kind of metaconversation, for whatever reason, we have to replace the word “nigger” with “The N-Word”. Why is that?

I try not to use those words, either, although I’ve quoted them as I do here. I feel perfectly comfortable using in ironic or mocking contexts slurs that do apply or have applied to me–freak, fag, etc, although I’ve become more cautious with those that apply to queer women. And, honestly, it’s never made me uncomfortable to see non-queer people using those words as clear ventriloquism; I know that Amanda, for example, is complaining about homophobia, not exhibiting it. To the extent that “the n-word” is a lone euphemism, it could well be for the reason that it is seen as worse than other racist slurs.

My question is about the first quarter of your post: is it racism if you don’t see any minority media professionals?

I ask b/c I wrote an anti-Huffington Post about it, but I’m not sure where I stand. In the end I excused her.

I’d like to hear your thoughts since you seem to understand the possibility of a ‘subtle’ racial alienation

My post is here.

if white people still used “The N-word.”

Which always raises the question for me – in this kind of metaconversation about any other group, we’d comfortably use derogatory language *that we’re discussing*. We talk about the use of words like kike and chink and gook and so on – and the same in non-racial contexts. Yet, in that same kind of metaconversation, for whatever reason, we have to replace the word “nigger” with “The N-Word”. Why is that?

It shamed me to have to tell him that. But I’m afraid it’s still true, even today.

None of these people would have ever said anything like that to the man’s face, of course. Ever.

In way, this is worse. The Powers That Be in the entertainment biz throw a few folks of color into the mix, pat themselves on the back for being so progressive, and then go right back to serving up huge helpings of the Patriarchy. Meanwhile, as piny linked to, real change takes a giant step backward.

Reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s commentary on the producers of the Earthsea miniseries – they were proud of themselves for having a “diverse” cast which included a few token dark-skinned people and a half-Asian character in the overwhelmingly white cast… while only a few characters in the original novel were white. And the book was written in the 1960s, whereas the movie was made in 2004.

I noticed that in my local bookstore, The Last time I Wore a Dress was flagged as an “employee’s choice” book. Judging from the comments on the employee’s choice card, what was so shocking about the book was not what happened to the author, but the fact that the author was “only” in there for gender-variance. It’s a great book, and it’s an important book, and I don’t want to diminish in any way the horrors of what goes on in those situations. I have a friend who was given a copy of it and won’t even read it because she was locked up for “maladjustment to the feminine role” as a teen, and it’s too close to home for her.

I hope I didn’t sound as though I was recommending or condoning institutionalization for “those people.” As you say, I wanted to make a point about describing injury in ways that don’t play into what people seem to see as acceptable–or what they cannot see at all.

I remember pretty much the same thing. There’s a sort of “What century are we in, anyway?” air to the reviews I’ve encountered, but the focus is on outdated attitudes towards gendervariance, period. I read TLTIWAD years and years ago, but I remember it being strikingly similar to accounts of institutionalization by people whose incarceration “made sense” and is still status quo. Loss of privacy? Isolation? Dehumanization? Senseless rules? Crushing tedium? Institutional squalor and paucity? “Wallet biopsies”? Overt warehousing as opposed to anything that might pass for treatment? You bet!

My husband used ot work with mentally disabled people, and he said that although he already knew that it was wrong to treat people like retards, he hadn’t realized until then that it was wrong to treat *retarded* people like retards. Not that he ever would have, because he is unfailingly polite. But he also discovered that many people, and not such old people either, had been put in the class of “retarded persons” because of some other disability, such as deafness or blindness.

An old article in Bitch magazine made the same point about the Richard Gere line in Pretty Woman: “I never treated you like a prostitute.” How sweet!