this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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... You think it wasn't a slur in the 1700's? The height of the Transatlantic slave trade?
Antiquated terms can and frequently do become more offensive when they refer to a characteristic people consider undesirable. This is true of >!negro!<, >!retard!<, >!cripple(d)!<, as well as several other terms.
You see the term ">!negro!<" used a lot in abolitionist literature, because it was a polite way to refer to a black person at the time. As we all know, that is very much not the case anymore.
Just... Shut the fuck up.
it was the era of racial chattel slavery and your dumbass is pretending it wasn't a slur, that every interaction between the slavers and black people wasn't an attack.
It literally was not a slur. You are trying to burnish your progressive bonafides way too hard. Word meanings change over time.
As you mentioned, there was actual slavery happening at the time. Being called a "negro" was the last thing a slave would worry about. They wouldn't even identify as that, because they would consider themselves Ashanti or Igbo or some other West African ethnic group. It'd be like calling you "North American" (I assume).
MLK junior literally refers to himself and other black people as "The Negro" repeatedly in his "I have a dream" speech, if you still want to imagine that it was a slur then you're simply deluded.
Lol