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Comment by paulv | Hacker News Reader

> The euphemism treadmill is a running joke, from negro, to black, to African American, to Black, to person of color.

You missed a couple at the beginning of your list. A really significant one in particular.

Including it would distract from the main point (though IIRC there was no point at which it wasn't a slur; replacing non-slurs with novel non-slurs is a different category).

That said, I think it supports my point. How effective has tabooing that slur been at eliminating racism in the USA?

I'm the furthest thing from N-word apologist, but it's pronounced the same as the Latin word meaning "black" (modulo vowel pronunciation shifts), and spelled nearly the same. It's clearly derived from a word which did not originally have any meaning as a slur, and I bet you could find early usages in English which were merely descriptive.

There's no reason to use it now, but understanding the fact that was originally a descriptive word is useful for the history of it.

There have been a few kerfuffles in soccer where a Spanish speaking person used the Spanish word for black person in an English speaking country…and were charged with making a racial slur.

Moreno is the most common word I've heard in the US by black Spanish speakers describing themselves. Is negro more common in Spain?

Why does a taboo have to "eliminate racism" to be considered useful or effective instead of just "reduce the amount of times people have to put up with hearing others call them that"?

Do you have an estimate for how much tabooing that word decreased the racial wealth gap or increased the number of black children with access to healthcare?

Well it's american site and people get itchy when you mention it, because apparently having voldemort words that are simultaneously used by people supposedely offended by it in their culture is "good" thing to do

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