To my non-American ears “negro” sounds far worse actually. Probably because of how rare it is in comparison.
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PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 4 months agoNegro is pretty gosh darn close, but I guess it’s just not quite as derogatory.
TheEntity@lemmy.world 4 months ago
BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 4 months ago
To my Hispanic ears, “n—o” sounds like an Anglophone saying “black”. Even when used derogatorily, my immediate first thought is that they pronounced it incorrectly, then the rest of the associated matters kick in and I realize what they are really saying.
Imagine if in the Hispanosphere , the word “black” was almost synonymous with the n-word.
But yeah, don’t use n—o in English to refer to or describe anyone.
lemonmelon@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Call up the UNCF and let them know immediately!
(Yes, I know they mostly brand themselves as the United Fund now.)
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 4 months ago
It was used in place of black for a longer period, and wasn’t necessarily considered a slur in and of itself. But of course if you say it with a sneer, even “black” can be used as an insult.
For example a lot of books (even written by people of color) used “negro” and “coloured” etc. interchangeably up to the mid-late 20th century. But in modern context very few people use it in a manner that isn’t derogatory.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 4 months ago
I still have trouble referring to a person as ‘black’. It feels like a slur, or at least an inappropriate racial caricature (they’re not really black!) and it still surprises me that it’s become the acceptable and inoffensive term.
The n word almost seemed more mild, being about the same thing (an inappropriate way to describe race from skin colour), but linguistically removed (I’m not a native Latin speaker*) so I can feel it’s just a word, no need to be intrinsically good or bad.
- Or Spanish, whatever
orphiebaby@lemm.ee 3 months ago
From my experience, black people want to be called black. I’m a white kid, but was raised in a foster family with three black siblings and other black family, including some that lived in a ghetto in another city. It was the 90s and early 2000s, so we watched some BET, we watched the Boondocks, we listened to thug rap, we watched shows with black characters such as All That and Cousin Skeeter. Because it was all a part of my brothers’ culture. In anything we participated in I’ve never heard a single African-American who didn’t call themselves “black” and be fine being called that.
I’ve also sometimes made the argument in defense of “black”, that “African-American” is mildly politically-incorrect itself— not that I have a problem with the term, just the hyper-vigilant enforcing of it . Because it’s not synonymous with skin color itself, it’s a statement about where they came from. We don’t call white people “European Americans”, and what do we call non-black African-Americans from, say, Egypt or South America? So… yeah.
MutilationWave@lemmy.world 4 months ago
How about when people they don’t think they’re racist whisper it? I hate and love that.
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I agree with you. But after studying Spanish I understand the origin of the word, so I’m somewhere in the middle on it.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It’s weird being told that a regular color in your native language could get you beat up to a pulp in another country.