I was playing Words with Friends recently and, since I didn’t have many letters available, decided to make a play with a very basic word: Jew. To my great surprise, I was informed by the program that Jew was not a valid word.
What?
First of all, Jew is not a derogatory term. “The Jews and the Christians feuded over land around 1000 b.c.” I don’t know how else to phrase that.
I will say that it can sound bad. I one time made myself feel a bit uncomfortable, while driving along Beverly Blvd in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood, my friend asked me:
“How come there are so many crosswalks on this street?”
My response: “It’s because of the Jews.”
Didn’t feel right coming out of my mouth. But why not? There are a bunch of crosswalks on Beverly because the Jews there can’t drive cars because they’re occult weirdos who make their women wear wigs and prefer to play dress-up instead of contributing to society. And they’re very active in local politics so they get their cross walks and inconvenience people going to work. Point being, there are crosswalks there because of the Jews. There isn’t a negative or positive connotation to this – its just a fact.
Jew isn’t a racial slur. Quickly – does anyone find it retarded that we call racial epithets slurs? I’m pretty sure anyone prone to using the word nigger doesn’t slur it. If anything they make a point to annunciate it, you know, to maximize the effect. Either that or they mumble it under their breath, but I don’t think people are at all more prone to slurring racial epithets than other words. Although people saying nigger are probably more prone to slurring in general.
Point being – why wasn’t I allowed to play the word Jew? Let’s agree, for sake of a really stupid argument, that it is indeed offensive. I don’t possibly understand how it could be – how else am I supposed to describe the people on Beverly wearing top hats? Why are we dancing around the subject? Are the people who find the word offensive making an assumption that its a bad thing to be Jewish? Not mentionable for some reason? Very interesting.
But lets just say that the word Jew is deeply offensive. Remind me again why this would matter?
Its still a word. It doesn’t matter if the creators of Words with Friends like the word or not. They might not like zucchini, but you can still play it. I can think of a lot of horrid things that I don’t like but are still playable words: rape, genocide, Republicans, etc.
You see this on CNN all the time: “Some guy went into a grocery store, pulled a knife out, and yelled out a racial slur before police arrived.”
Okay, what were these things he was yelling? Because I’m pretty sure, if you’re reporting a story, you know – factually – that you need to report all of the details. Like the fact that the guy cannibalized a baby later. Oh, we’re allowed to know that, just not what word he was yelling out? Seems kind of like thought control, no?
It is this very mentality, the decision by some in a position of authority to “protect” the fragile ears of the masses, that leads to atrocities on massive and broad levels on a regular basis. If you don’t know that the guy who went into a grocery store was yelling the word nigger, it somehow makes his actions just slightly less troubling doesn’t it?
We can ignore the word Jew, and so ignore the reason that it may be offensive to some people, because its so much easier to ignore an issue than to discuss it – ironically the exact mentality that leads to bigotry in the first place.
Our media – be it an iPhone app or a mainstream news source, and as a reflection, our society in general, is currently swallowing itself like ouroboros. We’re faced with so much guilt and confusion that we can’t face the facts. But when we ignore them, we cheat ourselves.