Im at the store (no, not another whiny retail complaint post) and a customer comes in and purchases something. The store has a vast database of repeat clients (Mac users, go figure) and I ask if we already have his information in our computer. He gives me his name (Id say it here but apparently we as a species are not allowed to repeat personal information ever again according to a new law that came into effect Jan 01) and I cant find it. So I ask if its under a business name and he says “Oh right. Try Spearchucker Music<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

Yeah you guessed it. He was Black. Or African Canadian, depending on your level of PCness.<\/p>\n

And my face started to dance. Really. Eyebrows knitted and unknitted, corners of my mouth went up then down and up again, squinty eyes, no squinty eyes… Was I to acknowledge the name? Was I to comment? Was I just suppose to feel guilty for the years of oppression? Was I to laugh with him\/at him\/for him?<\/p>\n

It makes me wonder about re-appropriating words, like when homosexuals demystified (or re-mystified) “queer” back during the early start of AIDS. I had a friend who tried to use the word “cunt” as much as possible because he thought “fuck” had become watery and we needed a new hard swear word. Personally I would like to reclaim “jigaboo”. Hate me for saying that but its really a funny word. Strip it of its racist meaning and it stands before you like a elf doing a dance. Like “hobgoblin” or “wumpus”. I dont mean to offend but sometimes words just make me laugh. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Im at the store (no, not another whiny retail complaint post) and a customer comes in and purchases something. The store has a vast database of repeat clients (Mac users, go figure) and I ask if we already have his information in our computer. He gives me his name (Id say it here but apparently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WjY-3a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}