Recently I began hearing my middle-schooler call her close friend a “blonde.” The manner in which she used the word implied that it was a short form of “dumb blonde.” My kid would come home from school and say things like, “Mom, you know what my blonde said today?” This kind of bothered me. Not just because I happen to be a blonde, but because I have a really hard time hearing anyone defined and entitled by skin or hair color. You’ll hear me point out someone by the color of their clothes long before I mention skin color.
So, I talked to her about it. I told her that movies like “White Chicks” and “Legally Blonde” may make it seem that girls with blonde hair are the last group that are culture allows us to make fun of, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. Then she stunned me with this retort. “Mom, we are best friends. We’re joking. It’s how she knows I love her. And she calls me her maid.”
“Maid?” I asked
“Yah, she said if we were born a long time ago, I would be a slave so she calls me her maid.” Then my daughter peeled into giggles of laughter at the thought. I should tell you here, if you haven’t figured it out already, that my daughter is bi-racial, of Irish and African ethnicity.
This whole expanded definition of the “blonde and maid” friendship didn’t soothe me a whole lot. But it did get me thinking about how terms of endearment are sometimes slurs that spoken in the privacy of an intimacy imply, “This is our special word. Our joke. This separates us from the world and bonds us together,”
A perfect example would be the fact that many African-Americans use the “N” word within their racial circle as a term of affection. Oprah would prefer to erase even that use of the word. Chris Rock thinks it’s powerful. Within the context that it is used, it is a word of acceptance and brotherhood or sisterhood. But damn the person with white skin who accidently thinks they are in the club and uses the word. For many Americans of color, that word, even spoken in love and affection by a white person, represents yet another thing they are robbed of. Call it culture, identity, or simply a group cohesion. When a white person uses the “N” word they are often met with a glare that says, “You will not take that away from us! We remember the historical use of that word.” Curiously, I should also tell you that I have been referred to by the “N” word. It happened often in a loving, intimate way with an old boyfriend who felt proud to call me his, “N.” And I accepted it with love.
But back to maids and blondes. Have our historical trappings become loosened? Are we so far past the tragedies and injustices of the past that this new generation can make light of it? Maybe it’s no different from the “witches” costumes that we wear at halloween, a tragic symbol of hundreds of thousands of women who were mercilessly tortured and murdered for the crime of thinking “out of the box.” Are these middle school maids and blondes doing the same thing? What do you think?
Tags: Race, racial slurs
I think it’s still a very dangerous game. Kids, especially, will let everyone believe that something is OK with them in order to continue to fit in with the group, avoid teasing, being singled out, etc, even if it’s something that deep down really does make them uncomfortable, even REALLY painful things.
Kids seem to have a constant need to feel better than the kid next to them, even a good friend, and these “terms of endearment” put another kid down to make oneself feel just a little bit bigger. It’s not a great way to go through life…..attempting to gain self-esteem through putting others down, even “just joking.”
This is actually something we’re working on at our house among the siblings.
Part of me thinks its perfectly fine. Its like the challenge of having a conversation solely with the word “Dude”. Provided with facial movement, jestures, emphasis, intonation, it is practial to have a conversation (albeit short) solely with the word “Dude”.
Words are just words for the most part. It is the intent, context, emphasis, intonation which gives them real meaning. So I understand that people in face to face situations can call each other words which outsiders might find offensive. In person it is perfectly acceptable because it is accompanied by all of the postitive signs of affection. Its like being asked “Do you love me” and getting the answer with a smirk and huge smile “Nope, not one little bit”. Perfectly acceptable IN PERSON but can be very dangerous when in writing or when not accompanied by the resulting hug or physical reassurance.
The other part of me agrees with Ann, that it might set up a thought process which can lead to disasterous need to put down others to maintain self esteem.
In either case, I don’t really believe that it would ever be acceptable to reduce such comments to writing because they aren’t accompanied by the physical reinforcement of positive.
A slippery road to travel and never conducive to love. Ann you said it well