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Re: Big Brother
If Emily has black friends who use the word amongst themselves and she uses it to them in the same context and they do not take offence but take it from her as they would from each other and even throw it back at her then it's understandable that Emily would not consider it offensive to use that word to Charlie in the same way she uses it to her friends.
If she had come out with a statement which was designed to insult and offend then that would be different. The problem with this word is that it does get used a lot and Emily appears to have been using it in that same sort of context, which Charlie then picked up on and turned against her, which to me seems on the surface to have been the more racist and offensive act.
One of my daughters has a friend who uses the p word in her MSN ID - well it rhymes with Accy and sounds good. When my daughter uses it to identify her friend is she then being racist?
Sometimes I think we need to step back and look at the intent behind the use of a word which can either be offensive or not and to stop allowing ourselves to be so intimidated we end up being afraid to refer to common everyday items like blackboards for fear of offending someone. From Lolly's transcript it simply looks as if Emily was encouraging Charlie to dance and picked upon a word that she had heard Charlie herself using. It makes me uneasy when we have rules for one race of people which do not apply to others. Surely it is distinctions like this which are racist. If a half Indian girl can use the word without being reprimanded why should anyone else be condemned for doing so? Half Indian is not the same race as African or of African descent or Afro-Caribbean (which I'm not even sure we're allowed to say nowadays.)
Yes by all means stamp out racism but lets get a grip on what racism actually is.
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