Use of 'nigger' by white man to black man ruled not abusive by UK court

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Dec 6 07:25:03 UTC 2012


On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 5:34 AM, Damien Hall <damien.hall at newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
> the customary _rule_ in the US whereby a black person _may_ address another as 'nigger' / 'nigga'

"Customary"? "Rule"? "May"? Surely, that is not what you intend to say!

In this case, I think that the British court made a serious error in
accepting that incredibly-fanciful defense. defense.judges erred
seriously, from the American point of view. A black person in any
country anywhere would not address a random black stranger come upon
in the public way as "nigger" any more than a member of that court
would address a random white stranger as, e.g. "cocksucker," in that
circumstance.

What I see is a white man subjecting a black man to a drive-by
niggering and then bullshitting his way out of the legal
repercussions.

BTW, why did the court not simply ask the plaintiff whether what the
defendant claimed was the truth? Why did the black man not object?
After all, the "some-of-my-best-friends-are-niggers" defense is a
further offense, to say the least.

It reminds me of Dave Chappelle telling of his astonishment that white
people had the gall to complain to him that his TV show was insulting
to black people. He parodied this in a skit titled, "I Know Black
People," wherein _know_ includes both "am intimately acquainted with"
and "understand the psychology of."
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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