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First of all, "nigger" and "black" are not redundant.
Maybe, but for people like him, the words are interchangeable, and that's what's important in this situation. I often use people's own terms of reference against their arguments, so that they understand their error. For instance, I am not a believer in the God mythology and its dogma, but I do think marijuana should be legalized. How are these two things related, you ask? Well, a lot of people who are devout believers are also the same people who think pot is immoral. For them, all my other, more reasonable reasons for legalizing it fall on deaf ears, so I say that way back in Genesis, God said "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you." It reveals God's will for all seed-bearing plants. Marijuana is a seed-bearing plant. This is so important that God stuck it in the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible, and so NOT to use pot is blasphemy. You wouldn't believe how that shuts 'em up.
What does being Canadian have to do with anything? And who cares who's "more Canadian"?
Nothing. He was the one who brought it up. I just wanted to show him that if he was going to be like that, and use his Canadianness as an excuse for bigotry, then I had to trump his Canadian card lest he dismiss my criticism as unimportant on the grounds that I'm not much of a Canadian in his eyes. That loophole had to be blocked.
How does one justifiably use the word "nigger" in "self defense"?
Here's an example. One time, a black man called me "faggot", so I slapped him back with "Don't call me faggot, nigger."
"What did you say?!"
I replied, "I said, 'Don't call me faggot'," and here I pronounced it very carefully, "nigger."
"How the fuck dare you use that word to me?"
"Well, how the fuck dare you use that other word to me?"
"It's not the same thing, bitch!"
"It's exactly the same thing. You're not a 'nigger' just as much as I'm not a 'faggot'. I'm gay, and you're black."
"That's different."
"Well, how?"
"Because you chose to be gay. I didn't choose to be black."
"Of course you did," I said, which was of course patently absurd, but that was the point. I expect some solidarity for my oppressed social group, from people who belong to other oppressed social groups. We're in this struggle for human rights together. I told him this, and he actually smiled. "Brother!" he said. "Brother!" I said. And that was that. No, we didn't have a beer together after that, but we had something much more important: an understanding.
If you were a "large black man" does that mean the term would be more offensive so you would have to become violent? What if you were a small black man? You raised the specter of the big, bad, scary black man to try to explain racism to him?
I was trying to communicate with him on his own level. He obviously assumed he was safe in saying the word to me because I'm one of his "white brothers", which made him a coward in my books. I had to disabuse him of that notion in my own non-violent but aggressive way, by saying that this particular white guy found his rant objectionable, and I also was warning him that if he were to say the wrong thing to the WRONG person, he would suffer some well-deserved physical consequences. His two brain cells would probably have informed him that it's probably unwise to call a black man a nigger to his face, and that it would be particularly perilous for someone of his stature. When you're little, it's not a good idea to pick on people bigger than yourself or you'll get your clock cleaned, and I'm sure this coward knew that all too well. Now, coward that he is, he probably uses the word all the time when he's out of black persons' earshot, never to their face. But somehow it's OK to say it to me because I'm not black and I'll just stand idly by and let him get away with it? Nuh-uh! Now realistically, of course, I cannot possibly have the same vested interest in the word that a black person does; I'd fully expect that a black person would react even more passionately than I did because I haven't experienced a long history of oppression on account of my skin colour. Also I believe physical violence causes more problems than it solves, or else, yes, I might have beaten the shit out of him. Well, I guess I did beat him up, but only verbally.
Do you really think that by calling him a midget and a gnome, you're not engaging in the same kind of behavior that he was?
Nope, just beating him with his own stick -- one of my favourite tactics -- because he's probably also been picked on all his life for being short, and he'd understand that feeling. And I only referred to him as a gnome in my previous post here. To his face I called him a leprechaun, which was a double whammy.
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