I didn't think twice when I read it. I read it as a creative writing piece, a sort of intimate rant, journal entry. On the street, in your homes, people use much worse terms. Do I agree with them as words to be used? No. But I can understand or see where some people come from and why some people choose to use the words they do = context.

Wesley Willis (RIP) had a song called "Kill Whitey" and how many times have you heard that term used in academia or the like? In spoken word shows? Poetry? Jokes?

In the end it's all about context and delivery. Here, the context doesn't offend me.

When I read Mayo's piece, I thought of how well it represents city life: stark, drastic and reactive. How odd that this narrative style smacks of these exact elements. This writer has succeed in acheiving the true gift of literature: to spark thought.
This piece also reminds me of Henry Rollins' wonderful narratives, raw with life and grit. Exploring not only the immediate world, but also the words used to describe it.
Oddly enough, I have ridden through this city off and on for the past 12 years on a variety of bikes and have yet to smell like tar and soot. Might I suggest you avoid repaving sites? :D

Bravo, Mayo, bravo.

Do we have a new Travis at hand?!?!

err, yeah. in a hurry to stem the rush of ignorant critics, i forgot to mention one thing.

this was really good, mayo. thanks for sharing. really.

too late.

Maybe one day I will be so jaded and post-modern as to think that words have no meaning apart from their context and that pleading irony blunts the force of emotionally loaded words. I hope not.

Believe it or not, irony is not lost on me. Nor did I miss Mayonnaise's point about regentrification. But, I know too well that some words do have an emotional charge and should not be used carelessly.

I pointed out that the word "darky" is derogatory. It is steeped in the foul history of slavery in America. It smacks of the cork-black comedy of the minstrel show. It belittles African-Americans. You may dismiss this as P.C.B.S. if you wish. I hold it to be a simple fact.

I suggested that brother Mayo reconsider the use of this word. I didn't call for him to recant. I did not report him to the mods. I did not complain. I only ask if a writer with Mayonnaise's apparent talent cannot find a way to express the same thought forcefully (and with irony intact) without the unnecessary use of Ku Klux Klanguage?

That absntr "didn't think twice" about the use of this word is an example of why I find it troubling. Everytime we come across a racial slur, we should think twice. And three times. My first post to this thread was intended to raise exactly that issue. Don't let racial epithets go by easily. Don't let racial and ethnic prejudices go unchallenged.

Words are powerful. Use them carefully.

RG-
I believe that is understood (gulp-at least I hope so...I am not a fan of the Klan) in the writing. Yes, it revives a variety of negative images and shakes the past for some of us. But at the same time, it shows the anger and hatred that Contractors pave over in the name of fiscal gain (face it-gentrification is not about making sure the people displaced are comfortable everytime they are moved). I have been to Yojimbo's too many times to remember, as I lived about a mile west on near Damen/Division. That section of Chicago has lost its flare, and is in the process of being used...most likely to be tossed to the side once it has become 'boring' for all the fashion lemmings that are currently poisoning it. I moved to Rogers Park so I could get the mixed, world cultures (there are roughly 70+ different Nationalities in this area of Chicago alone) that I enjoy. I know from going to Cabrini to visit Marcus and get my bike from James (when he worked there), that there is so much tension from all the new River Whatever condo concstruction that is going on there right now.
When I read it, I read it as a mockery at how some people think others are completely disposable. Come to Chicago and we can ride around the Loop. We can listen to what people say about one another. It sure the Hell ain't Dixon (been there on my way to the Palisades).
Scary a town that small is armed like that...

Challenging popular opinion and taboos is the responsiblity of an artist. Well, maybe not the only responsibility. In my mind, the only true responsibility of an artist is to speak the truth from their perspective. Artists who cannot see clearly enough to challenge both our stereotypes and our feeble attempts to cast aside said stereotypes... well, those artists aren't worth a whole lot.

Another line of argument would suggest that the only reason to use such emotionally charged language would be to bring said emotions to the fore. By using such language, the author forces us to think about the context in which he uses them... such words stand out on the page like a bus in a bike lane. This context clearly implies irony, which should then settle the instinct to take such emotional language literally.

Neither let your fight against prejudice allow you to challenge every single piece of art that tackles (even obscurely) the complex issues of race, no matter what the obvious intention of the author.

I can't speak for absntr, but the reason I "didn't think twice" about the use of the word is because it was absolutely clear on my first reading that it's being used ironically. It is not necessary to think twice or a third time in this case. In my opinion, it should be obvious to anyone paying attention to the text they are reading.

I prefer authors who use them joyfully, reverently and thoughtfully. Carefully, to me, implies caution, stagnation and fear of conflict.

I must admit I'm interested to hear Mayo drop back in on this thread. :)

YIKES! i've been to dixon, i think, or at least through it.

i grew up in good old freeport, illinois...a town very much like dixon. *shudder*

When I lived in the city almost 20 years ago, Cabrini Green was a monument to failed paternalism and a crime ridden warehouse of poverty. I'm sorry to hear that it has lost that flair.

That was ironic. I understand the issues of gentrification.


Don't imagine that you know a place for having passed through it. Come ride around the greater Dixon metropolitan area with me. We can listen to what people here say about one another, too. It might surprise you.

Eh. The local constabulary only break out the riot gear when they know Chicagoans will be in town. ;)

By this reasoning, spray painting racial epithets on the gravestones of a Jewish cemetery could be excused as art.

But now you have thought twice, and I've done the job I set out to do. If you want to use the argument from art, then one of the functions of art is to make you think about things that are uncomfortable. If you don't think twice, and more than twice, the artist has failed. I don't think we should ever let racial epithets go by without taking pause and giving thought.

Ah, but care is not only caution. Care is also love, craft and respect.


Go pretzels! Why do you shudder? Freeport is a lot like Berkeley. There is good and bad in it.

Okay-
I spelled 'flair' wrong...and am embarrassed.
What I meant by 'flair' (it was late, too tired for proper word choice)
I prefer sections of Chicago that still have some life in them, that are not infested with Starbucks or other such places. I remember riding to Yojimbos and seeing the Starbucks going up on Division and Clyborn. Just want the Green needs: Skim Lattes and Mocha Frapps. I was wishing, deep down inside, that it would be burned to the ground. I know it provides the opportunity for employment, but so did the Third Reich (a bit extreme, but it gets the point across). It appears that Chicago is ready to send off the CHA residents to DeKalb or Rockford or Schaumburg and make their old homes into new overpriced yuppie ****holes. I would prefer to ride down a street being called "Whitebread" than listen to some Trixie or Chad blab on their cell phone.
Want to stab at the heart of diversity? Want to cripple the creativity of an urban area?
Make it all the same.
What ever happened to balance?

"I know it provides the opportunity for employment, but so did the Third Reich (a bit extreme, but it gets the point across)."

Forced labor camps and a chain of 'flairless' corner coffee shops in your neighborhood... yea, just a bit extreme

My company does a few products for Star*ucks and I think the Third Riech analogy is pretty close!!!!

Where's Mayo in all this? I'd like to here his comments. As usual, the BF bleading hearts run out to cry fowl.. yet I bet that they've been hiding in their shelters way to long.

As would I. Thought the piece was excellent, very evocative. Can see why some have reacted to the language however.

:Godwin's Law: /prov./ [Usenet] “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups...


sorry, but i'm done with this one.

I wasn't talking about the Camps. The analogy was pointing to those actively participating in the Reich in pushing its toxic spread across Europe. I was not directing sympathy to the Baristas in green as your interpretation suggests. I have nothing else to comment on this as I do NOT wish to discuss the atrocities of Nazi Germany in this forum.
Thanks for your understanding Bombusben
(FYI- HUGE sb fan here!)

i've noticed the similarities. oh yes. i've noticed. one of the reasons why i hate it here.

the only difference that i can see between freeport and berkeley (aside from the obvious geographical one) is that freeport is a dying, burnt out cinder of what was once a really nice community. the local businesses are being squashed by multi-national corporations and in the name of progress and cheaper socks. while berkeley retains some of it's community feel, it is also the land of broken souls and dreams. people come here because it's California (note the capitalzation), and it's the land of dreams and the "New Frontier." i look around here and all i see is a once beautiful countryside ruined by urban sprawl. the hillsides are blocked out by cookie cutter $250,000 houses (not homes) and the only way in or out of some of the most beautiful places is via the freeway. the differences are subtle, but they're there. it all feels the same to me anyway: boring and without purpose or soul.

Berkely isn't what it used to be, that's for sure. I remember back in the day, sitting on shattuck.. going to Rasputins.. late at night.. I hear that Starbucks has taken over berkely..

Gee, spelling is the one thing that no one has been criticized for in this thread.

It isn't just ethnic urban neighborhoods that are disappearing, by the way. OneTinSloth mentions the blight that has befallen Freeport. All across America, communities are succumbing to a uniformity imposed by television culture, mall marketing and multinational megacorps. Diversity, the watchword of our age, is dying.

I'm sorry you're done with this one, too. I was debating your post-modern aesthetic principle, a principle which I find widely used. I used a reductio ad absurdumto make the point that subjective truth and shock value are not the same as art. I did not resort to any mention of Nazis or Hitler. I was referring to domestic hate crimes.

Actually, the first reference to the Third Reich comes in the post following mine.

This is a good discussion. RegularGuy, I see your point and I agree with you. I see where you're coming from.

I've lived in Chicago for five years, and for the same amount have been in the US for as long.

This is not a defense at all but sort of why I didn't think twice about it. I grew up in London and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and the word Darky also has similar but not the same meanings in both countries and cities. In Malaysia the word doesn't carry the same sort of history or derogatory term, it's almost brotherly in a way. It implies the same thing on a surface level but no harm is meant by it. In London however it's similar and holds the same sort of implication and meaning as it does here.

That said, which again, is not a defense or an excuse, I do understand the "heaviness" of the words and understand that despite apparent intentions or meanings, it may not be right to use them (I wouldn't) as they may offend people.

Anyway, this is a good discussion and while it's strayed away from our love for bikes, I think it's great to see thinking and discussing going on, I've been appreciating everyone's thoughts.

My grandmother came from Greenock, Scotland. Among my treasured possessions I have an enameled pin of a golliwog, the mascot of the Golden Shred marmalade company, playing cricket. My grandma got this as a premium for saving marmalade jar lids and gave it to me when I was a very young child. I understand that the golliwog character was still used in advertising by Golden Shred until very recently. It may still be in use.

The golliwog is a caricature of a black African, with big white eyes and red mouth. Similar characters used in American advertising were either withdrawn from the marketplace or updated decades ago. Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima no longer look like slaves.

In the British Isles, which did not have the same history of slavery and racial oppression as the United States, the golliwog is considered cute. In America, it is offensive.



Edit: I hope no one has missed the point that I liked Mayonnaise's post.

I think the litmus test for whether a conventionally derogative term could be used without racist implications for the writer would be whether the intent of the piece would be to demean the referred to ( in this case) people. I went right over that first paragraph and the image left in my mind was of snub-nosed SUV's piloted by white people bumping out coloured people from the place where they grew up. To me the derogatory impression was reserved for "whitey." I also find the term "whitey" to be as offending as "darky", but I like the usage here, and I do understand that the price paid is not equitable.

I think we have to allow a little bit of shock value to be in the writing; to remove the varnish off of how we look at things-to make ourselves feel comfortable and advanced, so that we say to ourselves: "You mean it's all that all over again, we are the same."

Leonard Cohen's line:

"Old Black Joe's still picking cotton
For your ribbons and bows
Everbody knows."

And so are Malboro signs outside of schools in China, our new ghetto, since we prohibit them here.

comes to mind.
But thaks Regular Guy for the conterpoint.

Barnaby:

Mark Twain, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, makes 215 seperate uses of the arch-ethnophaulism, the "N-word." Because of this, there have been attempts to ban the book, one of the greatest works of American English literature, from libraries and school reading lists. I contend that the book should not be censored, banned or sanitized in any way. But, every reader of the book should be aware of the word's meaning, its history and its emotional force. Then they can understand the power of Twain's use and his ironic intent.

In my first post to this thread, I pointed out that the word "darky" is a derogatory term with ugly roots. I didn't call for censorship. I did not express moral outrage. I just pointed out the word's meaning and history. For this, I believe, I was accused of "PC bullsh*t", branded one of the "ignorant critics" and called a "bleading heart" who cried "fowl." I don't think that I called anyone a chicken or a turkey. In fact, I don't think I've called anyone names at all. It's interesting that those who have tried to defend Mayonnaise's use of the word "darky" are also the ones who have resorted to name-calling.

(I think I've also been dismissed as something of a hick from the sticks. That's a shame. The natives and citizens of small towns are not backwards, unsophisticated hayseeds. Their points of view are valid and deserving of voice. Myself, though I live in the boyhood hometown of President Ronald Reagan, am not a native here. I was born in a large city and grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood during a turbulent era. Some years ago, I also lived in Chicago, and regularly went through the neighborhood Mayonnaise describes, often travelling by shoe leather.)

Is the use of the word "darky" indefensible? Of course not. Mayonnaise was using forceful words to make a point forcefully and economically. His irony was evident. But, if I were a publisher and I received Mayonnaise's essay as a manuscript, I would request that that sentence be rewritten in a way that did not include the derogatory words. If I were a creative writing teacher, and I received Mayonnaise's essay as a class assignment, I would make the same request and try to use the opportunity presented as a teaching moment.

Why would I prefer that Mayonnaise not use racial slurs, even ironically? Because the words themselves have a great power to offend regardless of their context. A glance at the reactions to another of his posts should show this clearly. The title of the thread comes from a song. Even knowing this when I first read the post, I thought it was poorly considered. I think another problem with that particular post was that it didn't convey a sense of time passing very clearly. Mayonnaise's statement "I am afraid of black people" cast that sentiment in the present tense. It was not clear, or perhaps not clear enough, that he has overcome that old fear and now sees it as irrational and ridiculous.

I really hope that every time readers come across a racial epithet, whether in the enduring works of Mark Twain or the transitory postings of an internet forum, they will be struck by it like a slap in the face. Those words are a slap in the face to the people who are stereotyped by them. I'm not saying that the words should be banned, only that they should never be used lightly or dismissed easily.

Is it Mayonnaise's intent to offend his readers? If so, his choice of words is perfect. If no, then other words might serve him better. Using words so loaded with emotional charge can actually derail the point that he is trying to make.

Anyway, the discussion has been good, and I love Leonard Cohen, and the song "Everybody Knows" and especially Don Henley's cover of it.

I liked this a lot. Has a street poet riff to it. Do I hear a sax in the background?