When Tori Vitanza, a sophomore at the University of Vermont, read the comment from her friend Chris Heres on her Facebook wall, she remembers laughing. The comment read, “Don’t comment using the ‘n word’ on statuses that my black friends have liked…”
“I guess I’m insensitive, but I wasn’t trying to be offensive,” Vitanza said about her reaction. “I don’t give a shit,” she wrote back. “Also it’s a song. And I didn’t put the ‘er’ so it’s friendly.”
But is this word actually perceived as friendly by others? And even if it is, does that make it acceptable to post in a public forum? According to a recent Associated Press-MTV poll, 54 percent of young people ages 14-24 say it is acceptable for their friends to use discriminatory language because “I know we don’t mean it.’’ And when it comes to using the “N word” online or in text messages, only 44 percent said they would be offended, while 35 percent said it wouldn’t bother them much, and 26 percent would not be offended at all. However, when the N-word question was posed to African-American youth, 60 percent said they would be offended by seeing it used against other people.
Erin Gathers, an African American student at Boston University, dislikes seeing the N-word used on Facebook, no matter the spelling. “I think that changing the spelling of the [N] word does little to negate its fundamental definition,” Gathers said. Although Gathers does acknowledge when people use certain language with friends, she believes that the use of discriminatory language is never necessary and people should find other words to use.
“I feel like words shouldn’t be off limits,” Vitanza said. “Black people call white people cracker all the time and if you say, ‘Excuse me’ they get all uppity. In our society now its more acceptable [to use the N-word] because there isn’t that tension behind it like there was before. It has become a term of endearment.”
This sentiment of apathy or indifference toward using potentially offensive slurs online as well as the saturation of popular culture with digital communication has spurred MTV to create their A Thin Line campaign in order to, “empower you to identify, respond to, and stop the spread of digital abuse in your life and amongst your peers,” according to the campaign’s website. The campaign believes that this generation faces new challenges using social media such as Facebook and texting that requires society to draw boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable comments.
Their poll also found that 57 percent of teens and twenty year-olds say “trying to be funny’’ is a big reason people use discriminatory language online.
“I think that a lot of people freely use offensive or discriminatory language to be ironic or funny, but in my opinion, if you have to rely on those kinds of words to make other people laugh you're probably not that great of a comedian,” Gathers said.
“It’s different if you’re trying to make somebody feel uncomfortable, or if you’re making a joke,” Vitanza said. “People say, ‘That shit is gay’ all the time. That doesn’t make it right for them to say it though.”
And when it comes to the question of using the term “gay” or “fag” in a jocular way, 39 percent of those who are gay or know someone who is gay are seriously offended while only 23 percent, who don’t know someone who is gay, are offended by their use.
“It’s degrading because and only because it’s used instead of and as a replacement for words like ‘stupid’ or ‘psycho,’” said Danny Tehrani, a sophomore at Emerson University. “It’s okay to use both words instead of ‘homosexual’ but to use it as a derogatory term, to have ‘gay’ be interchangeable with ‘bad’ in our lexicon, is absolutely awful and tells of how deep-rooted homophobia is in America.
Works Cited
“Poll: Young People See Online Slurs as Just Joking - Page 3 - Boston.com.” Featured Articles From Boston.com. 20 Sept. 2011. Web. 21 Sept. 2011.
“About a Thin Line.” Web. 21 Sept. 2011.
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