One night a few years ago, my wife and I were playing Scrabble with her grandparents when her grandfather put down his letters and formed a word my wife and I had never heard. When we questioned him, he told us that it was a slang word for some ethnicity or another. We were amused and told him we'd never heard the word.
What followed was five minutes of ethnic profanity. The sort of profanity I would not have wanted my four-year-old daughter to hear. My wife's charming grandfather proceeded, with a delighted look on his face, to tell us every single euro-ethnic slur he'd ever known for Italians, Irish, Jews, Germans, etc.
These were words that I blush just thinking, but my wife's grandfather grew up in New York City, the son of immigrants, in a rough-and-tumble world where these words were apparently bandied about almost like a sport.
If someone I worked with had used one of those words to describe a co-worker, I would be outraged. Coming from my wife's grandfather, I just chalked it up to a guy who grew up in a different country from the one I live in today.
I was reminded of this incident with ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by Asher B. Chancey
Jesse Jackson and LeBron James: Let’s Say He’s Wrong and Skip Being Outraged.
July 13th, 2010 by Asher B. Chancey Leave a reply »
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