Racist or not?...you make the call.

[DoomSlice]

Is saying "Nigga" racist if you're not trying to be offensive to the race, but are instead just using it in conversation?

[Rushmore]

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Warik, see LOL's post.

JWNED.

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I am not here to defend anyone's position or champion anyone's cause, but let's be honest--any objective person who reads LOL's post can plainly see that she is positing that the rules as determined by the group in question (i.e. Jews) are definitive in this dialogue, and they are not.

The notion of race is not to be determined by the Talmud, the Torah, the Koran, or Mad Magazine. It is defined by science, which is not to be found in the texts mentioned.

What an odd exchange.

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Race in the sense we have been discussing is a cultural concept, not a biological ('scientific') one. (There are other senses of 'race' which are scientific and are not relevant here.) For example, in the state of Louisiana where I spent most of my adult life, race is determined by law. Anyone who has just 1 of his/her 32 closest ancestors with genetic material deriving from a population originating in sub-Saharan Africa is, by law, black. Period. End of story. People who did not want to be classified as black have challenged this in court and lost--and that in recent years. It is not a thing of the distant past. From a biological point of view this is ridiculous. What does it mean to be black when only one of your 32 forebears is of African descent? It means that in Louisiana there are blonde, blue-eyed 'blacks' and red-haired, green-eyed, freckled 'blacks.' This is clearly a cultural, not a biological, concept.

Now, I would not call Jews a race. You totally missed the point. I was speaking of genetics in response to Warik who was deriding the possibility of a genetic component to Judaism. In fact, because for many millennia Jews have defined themselves as Jews by birth (without regard to whatever religion is eventually espoused) and have been endogamous, Jews form a distinct gene pool (breeding population) as evidenced by the appearance of certain genetic diseases, blood type patterns, and other commonalities of DNA. This would be more analogous to ethnicity, such as being Irish or Italian (which groups have both cultural and genetic ties), than to race. I am quite sure that when it comes to ticking off 'race' boxes all Ashkenazic Jews tick 'white' or Caucasian. I personally have the fairest skin imaginable, almost as fair as an albino, and very light eyes. What else would I check? (pace David Duke)

Jews have genetic ties, cultural ties, and religious ties. Christians and Muslims have only religious ties. Adherents of Christianity and Islam can be of any genetic and cultural background. Religion is their only shared feature.

To go back to the OP, "to jew down" is offensive because it applies a negative stereotype to a (minority) group. The terms 'race' and 'racist' are really irrelevant.

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Well stated.

I would, however, like to more directly state what I now realize was my point.

Words like "culture," "race," and "ethnicity," while all mercurial, are not so elusive as to have been reduced to symbols denoting merely what those with an agenda choose to make of them.

When issues of sovereignty, reparations, tax exemption, and demographic are raised, the minority in question cannot be the determining body, for obvious reasons.

[InchoateHand]

I agree, but if there is no consensus amongst the majority (of which there is none on this matter), what else besides self-identification can you turn to?

And in legal matters, in many states, self-identification is all that matters.

[LittleOldLady]

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When issues of sovereignty, reparations, tax exemption, and demographic are raised, the minority in question cannot be the determining body, for obvious reasons.

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Were we talking about issues of sovereignty, reparations, tax exemption, and demographic (whatever you mean by that)? If so, I missed it. I was talking about genetics in response to Warik. Ashkenazic Jews form a distinct gene pool for reasons which I mentioned, and Sephardic Jews form a separate but related gene pool. Yes, there are 'Jewish' genes (like the dreaded Tay-Sachs gene), but there are no Christian or Muslim genes. This is a scientific fact--it is not a matter of a minority self-defining or self-identifying. I looked up the prevalence of Tay-Sachs, and the numbers I found were 1 in 25/30 Ashkenazic Jews is a carrier as opposed to 1 in 280 for Sephardic Jews and non-Jews (the incidence is considerably higher in French Canadians and Cajuns). There are a number of other nasty genetic disorders that occur primarily in Ashkenaizc Jews, and one, familial dysautonomia, that occurs ONLY in Ashkenazic Jews. This is science, not self-definition, or reparations or tax exemptions or whatever. So, there are "Jewish genes"--or at least one might put it that way. There are, of course, no Christian or Muslim genes in any sense. The reason that there are 'Jewish genes' is that the vast majority of Jews are born of Jewish mothers, and with a long history of endogamy, Jews have come to form a separate breeding population with outside genetic material introduced only relatively rarely, at least only rarely until the last couple of generations.

[ripdog]

I don't know if it's racist--are Jews a race? It's definitely an ugly thing to say. I only say things like that when I want to shock my wife--always makes her jaw drop. Gotta pronounce it Joo though.

[bad beetz]

My barber said it and then hesitated to make sure I wasn't Jewish, which I appear to be (I even infiltrated a Jewish Fraternity and remained there for four years).....

My barber is [censored] old school.. It didn't mean anything to him, no more than saying, "I tried to get it for a lesser price." It's amazing how different his and my generation are in what they are taught.

[BigBaitsim (milo)]

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I voted not racist because "Jew" is not a race!!!

Wow... it's a shame so many seemingly intelligent people have trouble using a dictionary.

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This is certainly nitpickery. Many Jews share a genetic heritage, as well as a religious one. While I would hesitate to call Jews a "race," I think Chesspain's intent was to aske whether people would find this sort of comment offensive, inappropriate, or indicative of prejudice.

[Bulbarainey]

i just think it has become such a regular part of our language... even some jews I know use it in that way. Racist or not, you say someone "tried to jew me" and they know exactly what you mean in a sentence instead of a paragraph.

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i just think it has become such a regular part of our language... even some jews I know use it in that way. Racist or not, you say someone "tried to jew me" and they know exactly what you mean in a sentence instead of a paragraph.

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Horrible insight…

[Bulbarainey]

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i just think it has become such a regular part of our language... even some jews I know use it in that way. Racist or not, you say someone "tried to jew me" and they know exactly what you mean in a sentence instead of a paragraph.

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Horrible insight…

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yes... yes it is...