The black girl being called a variant of a nigger right to her face by a white blonde mean girl was quite surprising. She was an out cast because she was black too. So in the 1990's that type of thing happened? or is just the movie.
shareIn LA? Probably not.
shareYou mean LA, where four white police officers proceeded to kick and beat-up Rodney King, a few years before this film was released?
Back in the 90s, LA was not the paragon of racial harmony and progressivism you may all believe it to be today. And California had until recently still been a predominantly Republican/conservative state.
the rodney king incident has since been proven to be a false flag using crisis actors.
sharethank you for calling out that lying OP
share'Proven'? Where? And please don't refer me to some far-right conspiracy theory page.
Is it that hard to get your head around the reality that many cops have a racist attitude towards Black people, and, as a result, use extremely over-zealous tactics when dealing with them? I suppose the many, MANY instances of police brutality against POC are *all* 'false flags' using so-called 'crisis actors'...
Yeah, the COPS who were charged and went to trial (before, unfortunately, being acquitted at first) were all 'crisis actors'... *sigh*
What planet are you people on? Or is this meant to be some sort of 'subtle' parody?
People use whatever insult will have the most effect when they want to hurt someone. If she wasn't black but was Jewish, they would have called her Hebe. If she was ugly, they would have called her Bowser. If she was Italian or German they would have called her a Wop or Kraut. If she was poor, they would have called her Trailer Park Trash.
It had little to do with racism although it certainly exists.
Yes, unfortunately. And props to the film from not shying away from depicting the spoiled rich blonde girl's overt racism, and thankfully, from what I've seen online, a large number of Black people have praised this aspect of the film rather than expressing discomfort at this element (and I do appreciate that hearing certain offensive words and phrases can often disrupt one's enjoyment of a genre movie).
shareNever witnessed anything like that in the 90's.
shareNegro, or Negroid, I can’t remember the exact term the movie used. Is not a variant of the N-word. In the 90s it was still an acceptable term for black people. So the line “I don’t like Negroids” is no different than “I don’t like black people” It’s still racist, but it’s not as bad as a slur.
Racism in the 90s was similar to today in that it was subtle, and often just ignorant. It was rare and a bit shocking to hear someone just come out and admit it. Overall though there was much less racism in the 90s. Social media and the internet have brought the worst out of everyone.
You're right that the film didn't go as far as to us *that* particular N-word, but saying "I don't like Negroids' still pretty much has the same effect as the other N-word. In fact, it was smart of the film not to use the more egregiously racist word, because Laura Lizzie was the embodiment of white country club racism, rather than the type of trashy and more openly violent white supremacists you see marching in the Deep South. The N-word would be considered too crass for a relatively privileged and more 'subtle' racist like Lizzie and her stuck-up friends. Laura thought she was being 'clever' and 'more classy' for avoiding the more overtly racist term.
shareIn this context it doesn’t change the message, because she was in fact being racist. But the word itself is not inherently racist. It was the PC term of its time. To modernize it, it would be like if she said I don’t like African Americans. It’s racist, but it’s not the same as calling her the n-word to her face, which is what the topic creator was claiming.
shareWell, hopefully no-one would use the word 'Negroid' today, but I agree, in the context of 1996, that word was not, itself, 'racist. It was Laura's use of the word, to dismiss and marginalise Rochelle, that was racist. Still, she probably thought she was being clever in using a more legitimate (at the time) word that sounded awfully close to the proverbial N-word, for the same effect.
shareNo, racism wasn't that overt in the 1990s, not in more prosperous parts of California anyway. That's where I've spent most of my life, and I haven't heard anyone use the N-word since I was a kid in the 1970s, and even then it was a hick from the sticks that said it. I was shocked at the time, NOBODY talked like that!
So I say that overt racism is both out of place in the setting, and out of character for a high school queen-bee mean girl. High school mean girls want to use insults that make their victims feel inferior and self-loathing, not insults that provoke righteous anger.
You know you're absolutely right. I responded to someone else on this thread about using racial slurs when wanting to hurt someone but in thinking about it, in the 90's in High School, that probably wouldn't have been done.
I also grew up in the 70's, although in NYC, and NO ONE used the n word. It just wasn't in anyone's vocabulary of anyone that I ever knew, anyway. It wasn't until the early 2000's, when Blacks started throwing it around all over the place, that I heard it, and only from them.
I have to agree with you that in the 90's, it would have been out of place in High School, especially for a girl, to have used it. Possibly in some small, backward, rural areas, but not in any major city.
When George H.W. Bush was running for President against Michael Dukakis, in a debate he brought up his Hispanic grandchildren from Jeb and referred to them as something like the "little skidmarks" or "the little shitstains."
share