what’s in a slur?

The editors of the Chicago Tribune aren’t saying that she did this, but what if Michelle Obama had been caught on tape taunting “whitey”? You got a problem with that, you overprivileged Caucasian?

Are there really white people out there so ignorant of history, so unaware of the nuances of language and so threatened by minority grievances that they take genuine umbrage at the term “whitey”?

More a taunt than a threat, the word has no ugly history and hints at no particular stereotypes. It may have been hurled in a menacing fashion in ugly personal confrontations from time to time, but it’s never been used to keep a people down, to put them in their place, to rank them as subhuman.

I hate the concept of “hate speech” for just this reason: one man’s hate speech is another’s righteous grievance. But riddle me this: who’s to judge?

Freedom of speech, for all—that’s the ticket.