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BAH! Sorry dougeetx, but anyone darker than my cracker ass is just another spear chucker to me. *ducking* and very much kidding!
LOL, I've often wondered the same thing as you asked in your thread starting post. I understand there are many underlying issues but I really feel that many of those issues are caused by either mis-information or dis-information that has been propagated over time. Without launching into a lengthy debate on the facts of history, et. al. I'll just say that much of the information being spewed by many is pure bullshit.
Bottom line: Words are only as powerful as they that hear/read them and allow them said power.
While it is a disparaging term derived from Negro, it's origins are very questionable and most likely not from anything that happened in the United States of America. If memory serves, and many times it doesn't, it came from the misinterpretation of what African slave traders were saying to the European traders that landed on their shores buying people for use in the slave trade.
The USA gets beat up on a daily basis for being the originators of slave trade. Guess what, we've only been a country for um... 383 years (and that's only if you count the landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620). Slavery was well in force long before this time.
The trade is well documented dating back to the ancient Egyptians that made it a practice of enslaving their very own people. The African people have a Huge history of slave trade on one level or another for at least one thousand years and it continues today. The Asian people have a penchant for selling their women into slavery, as do the russians and anyone else that has participated in "indentured servitude". The USA merely got slammed the hardest because our open media format and free speach rules of government allowed it to be talked about on an open forum.
I know I kind of drifted from topic here by talking about the actual issues of the usage of a single word, but at the same time I have to ask folks this: Do Italian born or Irish born or Asian born people make it a complete and utter grandstand display of disdain when someone says the terms "wopp", "mic" or "slope"? These people are also major victims of slavery (or have you not noticed the trains spanning this continent and the rest of Europe?) They may take it harshly, but they also know that that is merely part of life. People are idiots, so to speak. People of African heritage seem to feel singled out here, and in some ways yes, their hardships were very ugly - I give them that bit of credit.
But, people of African heritage also tend to slander their own credibility by calling each other, in jest or not, terms like "nigga" (which IMHO is nothing more than a cop-out way of calling a friend a ******). "Nigga" or "Niggah", to my knowledge, has no base in any language other than English slang; it wouldn't seem to have come from any African language, according to the OED or any other comprehensive dictionary on languages.
dougeetx, while I think these terms are what keeps our races verbally segregated, you can call me honkey and cracker any time you want. It's a commeraderie thing, and in this case a show of friendship. :D
Peace out, you <insert racial slang for fun here>'s.
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