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I know this is an attempt at a troll, having cross-posted to all of these unrelated groups, but I'll
post this article I found anyway:

http://www.the-scientist.com/yr1991/...in_911125.html

The Scientist 5[23]:0, Nov. 25, 1991


I think that article is best summarized by its last sentence:
"One can only imagine the damage that already has been done in this regard."

The operative word being "imagine."

Best regards,
Bob

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!

On Sun, 4 Apr 2004 18:21:23 -0400, "Ricky" wrote:

I saw a _explitive_deleted_ thing this morning. A _explitive_deleted_ was sitting on a _explitive_deleted_. I asked him,
"How come you are sitting on your _explitive_deleted_ lookin' like _explitive_deleted_ Jagger?" He told me
that a big rock fell out of the sky and hit the water right in front of him
it made a sound like "_explitive_deleted_" and threw him up on the _explitive_deleted_. Then along came a
_explitive_deleted_ and a _explitive_deleted_ and he was so scared he decided to spend the day until all
the big animals went away.

Cleaned up so as to not offend thin-skinned morons.

Probably few people outside kaffirdom know who kaffirs are--or were.
zemedelec

In article , Delta Nine
wrote:

Darren Garrison wrote:

On 3 Apr 2004 22:16:02 -0800,
(theoneflasehaddock) wrote:


Yes there is a lot of political correctness gone mad.I believe that you
still talk about "Black berries", Here some of the Politically correct
brigade insist that they be referred to now as "Bramble fruit".
Short people are "Vertically challenged"
People with a disability are not disabled they are "Differently able."
And it goes on and on


The funny part is, most people who are part of the PC-protected groups have
no interest in their PC names. Most black people I know want to be called
black, not "African American" as that implies that they're not American
born. Most deaf people I know are deaf, not hearing impared (hearing
impaired implies difficulty hearing, not total lack of hearing ie deafness)
The African American one brings to mind the white South African born kid
who got in trouble for applying for some sort of "outstanding African
American student" award because he wasn't black. Even though he had better
claim to the title "African American" than any American born black kid. I
mean, shit, he was ****ing *born in Africa*

Political correctness was just as much of an attack on free speech as the
people who believe that saying bad things about Bush is tantamount to
treason. More so, actually, it's been building up for a longer time and
has had much more sway than the recent war on terror trend.

Remember the financial advisor in DC who had to resign for using the word
"niggardly" just because it sounds similar to "******" Nevermind the fact
that niggardly shares no origins with ******, and has a perfectly
acceptable use given the context. It means "stingy" or "miserly" and is
completely acceptable to use when talking about finances.

See, that's what political correctness is about: It doesn't matter if
you're right or not, it only matters if people are offended. Well guess
what? There's nothing in our laws that imply you have a right not to be
offended. In fact, with freedom of speech you're pretty much guaranteed to
be offended at some point in your life. People just need to get a thicker
skin about it, and not try to coerce others into not offending them.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: People are stupid.

A lyric, not by Woody Guthrie:

"Let your voice be heard, even though you're stupid
You can have a word, like any other fool
You've got as big a right
As anyone who's bright
So let your voice be heard."

People who have the "people are stupid" philosophy of life tend to leave
out the most significant stupid person when tallying who are these people,
which of course would start with the individual with that philosophy. As
long as you're not REALLY saying "Everyone is stupid except me" then I
will agree with you, because the rant above is one of the stupidest I've
seen on UseNet this week, & that's really going some. Even though I
actually do embrace the philosophy that people are stupid, I wouldn't
exclude many people at all, certainly not you or myself. Cuz even on the
rare occasion when I'm the smartest person in a given gathering, that
still needn't be exactly smart.

You've mistaken politeness for political correctness, & you've ranted on
irrationally. If you approach all of life like this, I hope no one ever
gives you a bucket of phlegm, because you'll be mistaking it for
Budweiser. Now to me politeness is a personal choice, one I frequently do
not choose, but people who do choose it I'm not going to mistake for
******s who wish they could impose their differing standard on me.

That said, underlying your loony-tunes rant against your own straw dog
called "political correctness," it is at least true that it's a stupid
idea to insist a Kaffir Lily can't be called a Kaffir Lily because on a
completely different continent Kaffir is a hate-word spewed primarily from
the trashy mouths of a bunch of butt-ugly honky-eqivalent Afrikaaners. One
might avoid the word if one seriously desires to be excessively polite
even in contexts when only a putz would get offended, that's fine, but
that does make it laughable that Ceroid of all people should pretend it
mattered to him, since he's not one to suffer our fellow fools gently.
Frankly if I went into a nursery & asked if they had any Berg Lilies, they
wouldn't have a clue what the **** I was after, & when they figured out
what I really meant & corrected that to Kaffir, that'd just be a pushy
set-up to talk about what the word means on a different continent to a
specific class of racist whites -- whites so low in the class structure
that no self-respecting Bantu would condescend to reply to such physical &
mental dwarfs.

If not for the World Wide Web, to anyone who'd never been to South Africa,
Kaffir means "a pretty flower from somewhere in Africa," nothing more or
less.

The Arabic word actually means "rejector of Truth" or "believer in lies,"
i.e., unconverted to Islam, a believer in some other faith, or an Infidel.
So the biggest dumbest Kaffirs in Africa are those ugly-ass honky
Calvinists. Among Islamic peoples it is still used to mean a Christian, a
Hindu, an atheist, anyone who has had the opportunity to convert to the
"Truth" but has refused, & it has no racial meaning at all. In medieval
East Africa after long contact with Muslims, even tribal peoples borrowed
the word to mean "all tribal peoples," as there'd been no universal
trade-word for aboriginal peoples collectively.

The word was in use for CENTURIES before white south african racists began
to use it like the equivalent of American white trashoids' use of the word
******. Curiously, when modern fundamentalist Islamic nutcakes use the
word "Kaffir," they even today do NOT mean black folks, let alone African
aboriginal peoples; it still means "Infidel" & 99 times out of a 100 when
they use the word, it is to describe someone who is a white christian or a
non-Moslem in India. In India there used to be Kaffir clubs for white
Europeans living in India, the word being unknown as a racial epithet but
well known as a synonym for Heathen -- to be a member of the Suicide Club,
the Philistine Club, or a Kaffir Club was to be a person of bohemian
disposition out for a good time.

If Ice T says "******," when Lenny Bruce said "******," if Mark Mathabane
calls himself a "Kaffir boy," if I fill this paragraph with the words
"******" & "kaffir," that's totally different from someone waving a
Confederate flag, putting on a white hood, & saying let's go kill some
******s, or climbing out of their pig stye covered in pigshit & calling
for a new Fuzzy Wuzzy War to reinstate Apartheid.

So too a gardener who loves their kaffir lily is not the same as some
Dutch ****** descended from filth & filth to this day looking REAL hard
for an excuse to look down on ANYone lest they have to face their own
actual social reality.

Out of mere politeness & self-preservation, on any journey to South
Africa, one should not be asking about the Kaffir Lilies, but might want
to call them Berg Lilies or River Lilies or get all fancy-ass & call them
by their Bantu name khahlana, as it really would otherwise & indeed be
like saying ****** Toes while walking over to visit President Clinton in
his Harlem offices. But since the word neither inherently in its origin or
in its continuous multiple meanings has the racist context it has for the
most ugly-ass Calvinists in South Africa, the word is not necessarily
tainted for use elsewhere in other contexts.

If a Muslim calls me a Kaffir, I know he's a fool who hates Jews &
Christians & Hindus en masse; if a Dutch South African calls native
peoples Kaffirs, I know he's a fool who projects a justified self-hatred
on his betters; but if a gardener speaks of their Kaffirs, I assume they
love flowers. Really, to assume some South African visiting in North
America would be offended by the name Kaffir Lily is to make the horrible
& perhaps racist assumption that such people are so fabulously low-IQ as
to be unable to see there is no longer any context whatsoever for the word
to mean anything but a flower. The day may come when Kaffir Corn, Kaffir
Plum, & Kaffir Lily are no longer used names, but it must first become
common knowledge that the word can be hurtful in some distant place when
used by the sorts of white people most of us would not want in our houses
-- & how much better to rob the word of its power to hurt, instead of
spreading that power around the globe by "educating" people to its power.

I'm reminded that among some local Northwest tribal peoples, the word
"Ahu!" is a shout of praise, shouted from the audience to a speaker on
important topics. I attended a peace rally & as the Native American
medicine man spoke, friends in the audience shouted "Ahu!" periodically, &
afterword a Japanese Buddhist monk in his flowing robes & shaved head got
up to speak, but he was so tickled he couldn't speak for thirty seconds, &
then explained in his heavy accent that in his country, "Ahu!" means
"Stupid!"

So anyone who wishes to clean the word "Kaffir Lily" out of their personal
vocabulary because, hey, this is the world wide web, & it really is like
hanging out at least partly in South Africa -- then for that choice I say
"Ahu!", hooray!, how polite you are. But if someone just thinks it's a
vulgar word in every context & nobody should use it anywhere ever who
isn't a racist, then to them I also say "Ahu!", stupid!

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

zhanataya wrote:

....How about Wop, Dike, Queer, Kike, Frog, Coon Ass, Mick?

It's not "dike", it's "dyke". I oughta know.

The message
from "David Hill" contains these
words:

Yes there is a lot of political correctness gone mad.I believe that you
still talk about "Black berries", Here some of the Politically correct
brigade insist that they be referred to now as "Bramble fruit".

To help you avoid being offensive due to ignorance; the term kaffir
equates to "******", not "black".

Janet

In article , zhanataya
wrote:

On Sun, 04 Apr 2004 16:49:33 -0400, Darren Garrison
wrote:

I, personally, neither have the time or the interest to make sure that
every word that I use is NOT,
in some language and in some country, offensive to some individual or group.

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?

I know it is the parents responsibility to stop such hatred.
Unfortunately it isn't happening.

zhan

Dyke is a pretty word, a good word, a useful word; I used to stop around
Seattle in a leather jacket that said DYKE on the back, & it upset nobody.
My current jacket hasn't been decorated as I'm a bit old to ever again
feel like being fashionable. But I still wear my Sex Pistols, Neurosis, &
Dead Kennedys t-shirts, & they get more comments than ever did the Dyke
jacket.

Fact is, any word can be said with affection, you dear old kike you.
Anyone who can't figure that out has AT LEAST as much of a problem as
people who actually like the words, & very likely a bigger problem.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

In article , "Ricky"
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?

I saw a queer thing this morning. A frog was sitting on a dike. I asked him,
"How come you are sitting on your ass lookin' like Mick Jagger?" He told me
that a big rock fell out of the sky and hit the water right in front of him
it made a sound like "wop" and threw him up on the dike. Then along came a
possum and a coon and he was so scared he decided to spend the day until all
the big animals went away.

Words are just words until someone let's them get under their skin. Use 'em
right or use 'em wrong, but they're just words.

Right. The irony of any free speech argument being about what CANNOT be
said....well, yes, words are powerful, that's why people use them. Most
arguments for why not to express oneself in this manner is in reality an
argument to do so. Any one who can't tell the difference between "This is
my main ******" & "let's lynch some ******s" just isn't going to have any
ideas worthy of their right to free speech, but I uphold their sacred
right to be shallow & boring & call that "politeness" while impolitely
telling other people they're not shallow & boring enough. There is nver
anyone so far distant from polite who demands of others. In fact, now that
I think of it, of the words Cocksuck & Polite, Politis the dirtier word --
if one judges the context of the speakers demandin milquetoast behaviors &
anti-free-speech pseudo-politeness of others.There is only one good
argument for cleaning up one's image: "you're addressing children, so stop
being such a dirty ****." Adults telling adults how they have to speak is
totally lame.

"If President Kennedy got on television and said:'I'm considering
appointing two or three of the top ******s in the country to my
cabinet'-if it was nothing but ******, ******, ****** - in six months
****** wouldn't mean any more than good night, god bless you. when that
beautiful day comes, you'll never see another ****** kid come home from
school crying because some mother****er called him a ******." -Lenny Bruce

"I'm a ******," Lubel said fervently. "I'm a ******!" Confused, the three
teens looked at one another. One declared: "That ******'s crazy!"

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

The message
from (paghat) contains these words:

it is at least true that it's a stupid
idea to insist a Kaffir Lily can't be called a Kaffir Lily because on a
completely different continent Kaffir is a hate-word spewed primarily from
the trashy mouths of a bunch of butt-ugly honky-eqivalent Afrikaaners.(snip)

If not for the World Wide Web, to anyone who'd never been to South Africa,
Kaffir means "a pretty flower from somewhere in Africa," nothing more or
less.

(snip)

That may be true in America, where only a small proportion of the
population ever leaves its own continent; it certainly isn't in Britain
(or any of the continents we occupied more recently).

"Kaffir" as a derogatory term, was seeded over half the world by British
Colonials and the British Army. There are still enough white Brits using
it that way to ensure that all black Brits are well aware of the insult.

Janet.

Judy wrote in :



zhanataya wrote:

....How about Wop, Dike, Queer, Kike, Frog, Coon Ass, Mick?

It's not "dike", it's "dyke". I oughta know.


no sense in using the wrong spelling to offend the lebanese folk

I think this says it all..........

During the 1990's a former UK officer serving with the Bermuda constabulary
for a number of years was accused of calling a black officer a 'kaffer'.

The allegation was treated seriously and instead of dealing with the issue
by way of discipline, the officer found himself summonsed to appear at
Magistrate's court in Hamilton, Bermuda for an offence of 'insulting words
and / or behaviour'.

One questions whether the UK officer could have been treated fairly; the
matter was investigated and considered by the prosecution service. No one,
when handling what was a career destroying allegation against the former UK
officer, could find in his favour, the matter progressed to Court. What
could the prosecution team do, call the black officer a liar?

As is the way in Court proceedings, the prosecution put their case at the
Magistrates Court. The evidence against the officer was the word of the
person he allegedly called 'kaffer'; a fellow serving officer. The evidence
was given and apart from refute the allegation and stress that the words
were never uttered, what could the officer, or his defence counsel, do?

Before the black officer, making the allegation, was released (allowed to
leave the witness box) the Judge put a question to him:

"officer, what do you understand the term 'kaffir' to mean"

The reply from the black officer:

"I don't know what it means"

Case dismissed.

If you do not know what something means then they cannot cause you offence,
the offence is not complete


--
David Hill
Abacus nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk

David Hill wrote:
...Before the black officer, making the allegation, was released
(allowed to leave the witness box) the Judge put a question to him:

"officer, what do you understand the term 'kaffir' to mean"

The reply from the black officer:

"I don't know what it means"

Case dismissed.

If you do not know what something means then they cannot cause you
offence, the offence is not complete




The solution is so obvious. We should *educate* people about all the words
in common usage that they should be offended by. The more arcane the word
is, the better -- that way we get to show off how educated and clever (and
therefore superior) we are.

Best regards,
Bob

"......."Kaffir" as a derogatory term, was seeded over half the world by
British Colonials and the British Army. There are still enough white Brits
using it that way to ensure that all black Brits are well aware of the
insult.
Janet.

To help you avoid being offensive due to ignorance; the term kaffir equates
to "******", not "black".

Janet ........"

Thank you so much Janet for pointing out the error of my ways, though as far
as I know no one grows either kaffir berries or ****** berries.....just
Black berries.
Just a pity that your views are so bigoted and seem to relate to a different
country to the one I live in.......
I was at a training course once on the subject of political correctness
where the lecturer was Female, in a wheelchair and with both a hearing and a
sight loss.......she insisted that all people who were not Caucasian should
be referred to as "Black" which she seemed to think wouldn't offend Asians
or Chinese and Japanese.....
Her attitude was "That is what I say , and that is what it is.......I am the
expert."
It is just as easy to be offensive in the way that you say something as it
is by what you say.
David Hill
Abacus nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk

http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/xft/

--
David Hill
Abacus nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk