Tim Minchin - Prejudice

This is from the Ready for this? album and it's an AMAZING song!!!!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Tim Minchin
• Prejudice
• Ready for this
• Satire

[unclebreezybum]

I can just imagine him sitting down one day and suddenly realising that ginger is an anagram of the other one, and jumping up going, OH MY GOD THERES A SONG IN THIS!

[stevenlickbleach]

@mizzfuntime nah, ginger aint a race. just a totaly different species.

[ClashLoudly]

@GrahamChapman My mistake. I meant "simple", as in straightforward, not "easy". I agree with you, it's as you say: the best solution is to educate and teach, show that a word cannot be a racist insult and a way to say "friend" at the same time. It must either remain an insult, or, better yet, simply come to mean "black man", while still retaining its use as "friend" within the black community.

[GrahamChapman]

@ClashLoudly I honestly don't think it'd be easier to do away with the word, as opposed to changing its significance. (In Sweden we have the word "flicka", which these days simply means "little girl", but originally was synonymous to "prostitute".) But there is, of course, the problem about stubborn-ness; will the parts of humanity that have grown to respect the word accept that its significance is changed?

(This is very much like the sauwastika/iron cross problem...)

[ClashLoudly]

@GrahamChapman I suppose that doing away with the word altogether might the easiest and most direct solution. In the collective mind of society, "nigger" will always be seen as either a derisive, offensive, belittling term, or as a black-only word, or both. However, there really is no way to simply eliminate a word, so people should be educated to see that such double standards are unacceptable. Tough, with people being as stubborn as they are, but one can hope.

[GrahamChapman]

@ClashLoudly Yea... Then how do we solve the problem? I just cannot believe that maintaining and respecting a double standard is the right way to go... Somehow there has to be a way to make the word mean "a black person" without giving it any space to hurt or offend someone...right?

[ClashLoudly]

@GrahamChapman So true about the dehumanizing aspect of the word. Using the word offensively means they're no longer a "a black man" (emphasis on MAN) but rather "a nigger".

[GrahamChapman]

@ClashLoudly You know that really COULD be true. Though, then again, it could also be true that "nigger" evolved into a dehumanizing word, from a simple "s/he is black" into a "it is black". We need someone knowledgable on the subject...

Regardless, I cannot help but feel that the double standard is counter productive/defeats the purpose of them having reappropriated the word, since it, through the double standard, keeps its offensive/aggressive meaning and significance.

[ClashLoudly]

@GrahamChapman I'm not an American, so I can't be too sure, but I think nigger was coined during the slavery era, and used as a derisive. It wasn't so much nigger as opposed to white, but rather nigger as opposed to human, and it's been used to derisively describe black folk ever since then. Now they've reappropriated it in an effort to be rid of its bad connotations, but they (we? I mean we as a species) have created the silly double standard you mention.

[GrahamChapman]

@boywiththeblackveil Me, I personally find his question justifiable... When I say "nigger" people take offense, but when the nigger down the stairs say "nigger", his maties just say "word". To me, that is a silly double-standard, which I personally think this song draws attention to in a very good way... Hmm... Though I WOULD like to rephrace the question into "Why is 'nigger' considered a contextually bad word?"

[jgalt7]

word up, son...power to the gingers....

[KingForADay17]

This song is good, but the song 'context' is his best.