Imus and Nappy-headed-ho's

[DanaC]

Then call them black Americans, or just call them Americans. Negro is an insulting term for you to use. The fact that they do not feel offended when a fellow black person uses that term ( though i suspect many are unhappy with that usage too) is based purely on the fact that it comes from an attempt by this generation and the last to declaw a word which had been used for several hundred years by their oppressors. Whether you agree with that or not, you must be aware that any time you use it around black people you are likely to cause offence. Are you happy to cause offence unnecessarily?

This is a subset of the American community which is still dealing with the scars of hundreds of years of abuse. Even the ones who are not descended from slaves will still feel that heritage, because it carried through across the whole of the white world. It also carried thyrough into Africa during the colonial and post colonial era. If they are still healing, and struggling to define themselves in the face of that heritage, who are we to deny them that right? To what purpose? In what way does it harm you ?

I have heard Irish people in England refer to themselves as paddies. Were I, as an English woman, to use that term with them that would offend them.