India Willoughby has called the police and reported JK Rowling for an alleged hate crime

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[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I think it's more racist to assume that you'd call a Chinses person "Paki"... Which is just short for Pakistani and really no more insulting than "Aussie".

[–]bife_de_lomo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Linguistically it is identical to any other shortening, such as Aussie or Brit, but much like other racial slang the power of the word comes from its cultural use in Britain as a derogatory word for anyone from South Asia, including Indians, Banglsdeshis and other darker-skinned Asians regardless of whether they were from Pakistan.

By itself, the word Paki is just a Persian word meaning 'pure' or 'clean'.

[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That last distinction is meaningless though. Almost all words can be used a positive or negative light. You can all someone a dog and mean they are loyal, they are dirty, they are brave, they are cowardly, they are sly and cunning or they are drooling and idiotic.

Plus, saying "Calling an Asian person the P word." makes it sound like this word fits all Asian people. Sure, racist people can be stupid like anyone else, but I can't see them looking at a Chinese person and saying: "Another dirty Paki!"... I get it, China constantly nudges the borders of India and Pakistan, but they are pretty distinct in appearance.

[–]bife_de_lomo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

all words can be used a positive or negative light

No, the distinction here is that there can be different words for the same thing that through custom and use take on different connotations.

For example intercourse, screw, bone, lay and fuck all refer to sex but are not interchangeable and each of them can only be appropriately used in certain contexts.

The same for racial slurs. While all distasteful, the words spook, coon, sambo, wog, jigaboo and nigger are on a sliding scale of offensiveness with one in particular taking on particular cultural power as a result of its use.

Paki is the same.

You can take the postmodernist approach and suggest that anything can mean anything, but youbare ignoring the fact that these words do have different implications in the real world.

[–]NastyWetSmear 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well, that clearly isn't true, because even your example is false: they are all interchangeable. They might hit the ear differently under very specific circumstances, like you wouldn't replace 'Intercourse' with 'bone' in a clinical setting and expect it to hit the ear right, but you would still be understood, but if you said:

"I'm hoping to bone this chick tonight."
"I'm hoping to lay this chick tonight."
"I'm hoping to screw this chick tonight."
Or
"I'm hoping to fuck this chick tonight."

They would all work perfectly well.

The offense to anything is in the context, exactly like dog.

"You sly dog!"
"You filthy dog!"
"What a good dog."

All the same word, all different context, totally different interpretations. It's not up to anyone else to decide if I'm using the short version of a whole word or some offensive slang that's particular to one region. I get to choose what my words mean, they can only correctly or incorrectly interpret it, and in this specific case, as I've pointed out, the term doesn't fit the usage ("Asian people" is too broad to be specific to "Paki"), the term itself isn't a creation specifically to insult a group of people, it's just a shortening of their place of origin, which is common the world over, and the person declaring it offensive is obviously mentally not fit to do so, given they seem to feel it's perfectly reasonable to want to have someone arrested for hurting their feelings.

This effort people make to declare things offensive is pointless and circular. I think the term normally used is "Euphuism Treadmill"? Where a term isn't offensive until people start using it more commonly and casually, at which stage people start getting offended at being called it, so it becomes offensive and a new term is created, until that one gets used more casually and commonly, so people get offended, so a new one is made, so on, so forth. Participation in that nonsense is voluntary.