Board Thread:Help!/@comment-43874324-20200702151414/@comment-25472716-20200901191337

CzechOut wrote: It seems to me, having read this thread, that most people are in favour of either deleting or merging the page about n*gger. So I've simply deleted it.

I've also deleted Negro. It's a complicated word with a complicated history, and there's not enough in the DWU to give it full context. The DWU simply doesn't get you to the American journey of the word, from over a dozen uses in MLK's "I Have a Dream" to Barack Obama's 2016 removal of it from US Census code.

I'm a little less certain about Tangerineduel's suggestion to get rid of Paki, because it's not an insult in wide use in all parts of the English-speaking word. I think it serves some utility in pointing out to readers that it's not merely a shortening of the word "Pakistani", but actually a slur. But it's not a hill on which I'm prepared to die; it's merely not something I'm initially prepared to delete today.

Glad to hear this change :)

Re. the other pages in the category, I have no concerns (for instance, gay and queer - they have been used in a 'reclaimed' manner so I have no issue. Terrorism has significant valid usage of the term in its page and said page is already of a obviously sensitive matter as it is, so I would imagine anyone who comes to that page via others or Random Page would swiftly move on if troubled by the main content. There is the discussion of possible content warnings but that's of course separate from this one...)

On the matter of Paki, I understand - and previously acknowledged, I think - that it's a much more complicated matter... so I understand the wish to not immediately delete that one. Perhaps though, regardless of whether or not that Paki stays as a page, its contents should be copied into the Racism page to be illustrated in a more appropriate context?

The instance of Yaz mentioning it in Rosa is already there... but I'd imagine the three instances involving Manisha would fit around the detailing from Ghost Light of Ace relating how her house was firebombed. The Wages of Sin remarks that Jo had heard could also fit inbetween Remembrance and Ghost Light/Manisha, as further period evidence. (As it makes the point of detailing the existence of the mentality in the 1970's as well as the 1960's and 1980's)

The Nightshade one... I'll be honest, it's been sometime since I read that bit with Vijay but IIRC he's replying to Hawthrone in a mocking manner? So that could be copied (Regardless of decision on the Paki page itself) to Racism and added in the appropriate chronological spot? (And if my recollections about the tone of Vijay saying it are right, I think we might be best served by rewording the statement to make it more clear that it is being used by a Pakistani man to mock the mentality of racism?)

As we've said already, racism is a good spot of contextualising these matters, and it makes it not-too-bluntly-or-potentially-offensively/upsettingly what the subject matter will be from the page name and lead, so I think it would be worthy to do so.