from Amazon
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The inner demon behind racist words is not necessarily racism
Of all the Kramer posts I’ve seen, I like this one the most.
You may have had that impulse during some confrontation in your life—with a stranger, a neighbor or even a family member. And instead of throwing a punch, you reached deep into the dark, sticky bag of hurtful words that you know, picked the ones you felt would inflict the most damage, and threw those.
Words you’d never use in a calm conversation. Dehumanizing insults. Cutting remarks. Epithets that carry ugly historical and cultural baggage. Words you’d never even think, day in and day out. Words you don’t mean literally any more than you mean our most common curse words literally when you toss them around.
But still. You used them. You lost your stuff. It was unwise, at best. Probably indefensible. Often unforgivable.