Incendiary Topic Warning!
Before I ask my question, let’s lay out that I haven’t seen any of my friends do this, and this is an earnest cultural question – it might look snarky, but I mean it.
Is the word “bro”, in context, the new “n*****”?
I first noticed it in a decidedly racist “Offensive Driving book” written by the Bubble Boy dad. There, it’s in the context of “dark skinned towelheads” and “orientals”, referred to as “jam’in bros in cadillacs”. Seems to be clear there.
However, in the midst of an unrelated online discussion the other day, someone I don’t know said (referring to the Starbucks shooter), “One less piece of crap on the streets. And from the looks of it, a couple of his Bros will get some quality time on the taxpayers dime.”
Perhaps he’s not conflating the piece of crap on the street with black people in general (I just checked a photo, and the shooter is black), but I’m more interested in the general concept than in pinning down this one comment.
Is “bros” a new derogatory word? Is it used, you think, like a Fox and Friends host might say, “His ‘homeboys'” (IE denigrating more along class lines), or is it a straight-out, more politically correct racist cover for worse words?
Please don’t use this post to either reinforce or deny the justice of shooting the shooter – different issue entirely.
EDIT: Hmm, I entirely forgot about the “bros” as frat boys reference, which is clearly different.
I don’t think so. I think like any other word it could have positive or negative connotations, and if used in the “wrong” way by the “wrong” people, it could be a racist term. But the word itself doesn’t mostly lend itself to racist use (unlike, say, n****r or j*****o)
“Friend” is a positive word. But if I come at you all threatening and say “and where do you think you’re going, my friend?” it’s been changed. Same with bro.
Thanks, that’s a good point. I can certainly think of circumstances in which I’d use it and mean nothing by it more than “friend”.
When I hear “bro,” I think of Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother.
I did not just wiki that. I swear.
“Think of me like Yoda, but instead of being little and green I wear suits and I’m awesome. I’m your bro—I’m Broda!”
I have nothing to add except that I once made a “HoS before bros” joke in guild chat to great effect and that I hope that doesn’t make me racist.
I am here to help. The nice thing about my job, is that I see new trents, memes and general stupid shit all the time from teens/young adults.
No, bro has nothing to do with a racially derrogatory term. Here’s some links:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bro
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brah
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cool-story-bro
http://surfing.about.com/od/wordortheday/g/dude051705.htm
I think “bro” is politically correct for any situation. Unless you’re going to use it in the context of “bros before hos” in which case, prepare to get punched and/or kicked by the nearest female person in the room. But that goes without saying.
I more commonly hear “brother” used as a replacement for other denigrating racial terms. Fer instance, when a co-worker heard about a black person being fatally shot in Detroit, he said “Another brother off the streets” in that way that just screams “If I weren’t at work, ‘brother’ would have been replaced with something else entirely.”
As a side note, my response to this is pretty uniformly “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were related…” which often starts the fun “what did you mean by brother, then?” discussion.
*laughs*
My response to “brother” being used as such tends toward…
*semi-shocked look* “He’s a Mormon?!?”
Words have no meaning outside of what we give them. Everyone knows that “Bro” has its origins in Black American culture, so it could be used in a situation where a speaker wants the listener to specifically know that they are referring to a Black person. This is especially true when the word is used by a person who contextually would never use it in casual conversation. (ie. on Fox News) In that situation the person *probably* is racist in sentiment. The word (as with any word) is not.
I use “bro” all the time when refering to my friends, though usually in a context meant to be somewhat ironic (I won’t bother to elaborate thats a seperate topic). The point is that it never refers to a person’s race in that context just the fact that I have a close relationship with the person.
*Side note: The fastest way to charge a word with racial or other unfavorable meaning, is to treat it like its radioactive. No white person would ever conversationally use the word nigger and rightfully so. It’s meaning has become so politically and racially charged in the last few decades that it is impossible to use it without either causing offense or conveying a very specific and negative meaning.
A strange side effect of this is that Huckleberry Finn (one of the best American novels ever written) is essentially unreadable in American Highschools because of the radioactive quality of one specific word.
hi, please forgive me for jumping in with this nitpick, but it’s a pet peeve of mine: “Words have no meaning outside of what we give them” is true, but utterly meaningless, since no words exist in a vacuum. The phrase is often (not by you) used to push away responsibility for how words are used (as if subjectivity makes everyone else who’s ever used the word as responsible for what it means as someone who just used it here, right now, with a specific intent) — and of course, logically that argument deserves to be thrown off a cliff.
Sorry for the off-topic rant; thank you for tolerating it!
I think you’ve nailed it with the derogatory “homeboys” comparison, though — used by an outsider, it’s a class and race slur, probably a bit more class than race in most situations. And sexist as well I suppose, since it specifically singles out poor-er, usually darker-skinned men. Maybe it’s the other side of the coin from “hos”, which derides poorer, often darker, women?
http://www.streetgangs.com/race/wont-you-please-be-my-nigga-double/