*Thoughts*

[silverthorne]

If you want, you can change and/or hide:

Your weight.

Your hair color and eye color.

How dark or light your skin is (but not the actual tone, unless you're a mutant and over-processed like Micheal Jackson).

Your maritial status.

Your financial status (although this is one of the harder things to change)

Your religion.

Your beliefs.

Your alliances.

Your political stance.

What you can't change or hide?

Your race. Or at least your apparent race.

People get picked on, ignored, beat up, abused, discounted, blocked, jailed, killed for all of the above. But in most cases, simply keeping your mouth shut, moving, or altering the outward appearance is enough to escape repercussions (not counting countries where people get hunted down for such things as a matter of course).

Chances are, most people on LJ fall into the 'I can hide this if I want' catagory in regards to where they live and are phsycially seen every day by other people. And yes, I'm generalizing, which means someone will want to set me straight. Overwhelingly, though, I suspect whatever it is can be hid, denied, or changed.

You can't do that with your skin color and race.

Which is why discounting it as 'you're beating a dead horse/over-reacting/focusing on the wrong issue/grow a thicker skin' is problematic at best.

If it were your personal problem, it would bug the hell out of you at best, piss you off at worst.

It's easy to ignore when you don't get nailed for it except for the occasional bad joke, which again, is where a lot of people are.

Not so easy when it still happens to you every day.

Even if you don't see it, don't discount it when someone else points it out. It might not be you...but it's someone. Yeah, sure, chances are your own race got it in the past...but that was the past. The people yelling right now? Still in it. It's the difference between generations of 'healing' and just now getting medical help, if that makes sense.

For example, I'd probably be pissed as hell if someone I didn't know walked up and called me a 'goddamned mick'. Actually, I'd be shocked first, despite being half Irish, since I'm in America. But I'd mostly be pissed off and would probably remove important parts of anatomy. That word? It was still dirty up until a short time ago. Chances are, the stranger using it knows this (or if they don't, they should).

By contrast, I have no clue what the Scottish equivilent is--it's been out of use long enough that it doesn't immediately trigger the 'oh hey wait, this is an insult' reaction. Not so much with Pollock, Spic, Wetback, etc. Those can still get you hurt (and really they should).

The recent HP wank? That word? Same status. People still know what it was originally intended for. Those same people are still subjected to all the other negative words as well as all the negative stereotypes for their races on a daily basis

To me, a 'mick', it's no big deal. But then, I don't have people calling me 'mick' all the time, and likewise assuming if I dress nice, I'm a whore, or that my messed up New Jersey-Arizona with a sprinkling of Texas accent automatically makes me sound dumb (and therefor I am dumb), and so forth. Chances are, if someone calls me a 'mick'--they just happen to be a good friend teasing me.

These other folks? Not so much.

And that's why the use of that word was important, and why it was such a big deal. Even used with good intent, even though people didn't realize...it still brought up a lot of real life, real experience hurt for some of the fans. The kind that won't go away by going on a diet, or coloring your hair and eyes, keeping silent on your beliefs, seeing a councillor, or changing your relationship status.

I think that's reason enough not to use it.