On Sun, 04 Apr 2004 17:08:31 -0500, zhanataya wrote:

Interesting. To busy for common courtesy or respect. Any word
perceived as a hate word should be eliminated from common usage. Such
as, ******, Kaffir or Kafir (I used to think there was a difference).
How about Wop, Dike, Queer, Kike, Frog, Coon Ass, Mick? Has our
educational system slipped so far that the graduates from elementary
school are unable to express themselves without the use of such words?

"Hate" is an emotion, not a word (okay, so "hate" IS a word, but you know what I mean). Just by
writing a word that somebody, somewhere conciders offensive does NOT mean that I hate anyone. And
my point is, the word "kaffir" has ABSOLUTELY NO MEANING to me, and I would be willing to bet that
it has no meaning to 99.99% of all people that I have ever met in my life (I did know one white
exchange student from Zimbabwae that may or may not have heard the word before).

To answer your question, NO, I am NOT going to stop using a word that I have used all of my life
just because it turns out that it has some impolite meaning in some distant country or at some time
in the distant past. (And, BTW, out of the list you gave above, the only one I use is "Frog" to
describe the French-- and it is because I WANT to insult the French). Ribbit!