Right, dude. Whatever.
Last May, I posted a piece titled “Don’t let ANYONE EVER tell you racism isn’t alive and well in the USA” that showed a bumpersticker and t-shirt saying “Don’t renig in 2012”. The t-shirt actually showed the Obama campaign logo on it making it clear what it was about. From my post:
That bumpersticker says “Don’t RENIG in 2012”. “RENIG” is not a misspelling of the word “renege”, it’s saying “don’t relelect a nigger in 2012”.
This particular photo was snapped in Arizona but someone in the comments section said they’ve seen it in the Detroit area, too. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see it in Livingston County, Michigan where I work. Not one bit.
Oh, and the windshield sticker says “Talk shit, get shot”.
Mouth-breathing troglodytes. And there are still a LOT of them around.
Over the past week, the piece has gone viral again, mainly from Google searches spurred by more reports of these hideous bumperstickers. We’ve gotten well over 10,000 hits on it in the past three days.
This past weekend, Forbes ran an exclusive piece quoting a purveyor of the offensively racist bumperstickers:
Exclusive: Paula Smith of Hinesville, Georgia has a company called Stickatude.com. And they’re selling their own version of an anti-Obama bumper sticker that reads “Don’t Re-Nig 2012.” Ms. Smith told me in a telephone conversation on Saturday afternoon that the bumper sticker has been in their inventory since June 2010, but just in the last few days it’s started selling. The price is $3. Ms. Smith insisted that the bumper sticker is not racist. I asked her about the “N” word, for which “nig” is the shortened version. “According to the dictionary [the N word] does not mean black. It means a low down, lazy, sorry, low down person. That’s what the N word means.” […]Ms. Smith — who has an affable disposition and a hearty laugh–said she thought the website was “dead” and up until recently none of her bumper stickers was selling at all. Another site, called Stumpy’s Stickers, was originally credited with selling the Obama sticker. Ms. Smith says however she doesn’t own that site and didn’t know anything about it. She said Stumpy’s Stickers could have linked to their site, but she didn’t sell them any that they could have re-sold. Where did Ms. Smith find the sticker in the first place? “We just found it on the internet, and thought it was cute. It’s been up there since he’s been president.”
How did I find Stickatude.com? Clicking on Stumpysstickers.com from a story posted to Yahoo! caused a redirect to Stickatude. Ms. Smith is the official registered owner of the internet address, www.stickatude.com.
Looks to me like not only is Ms. Smith a racist, she’s also a liar.
She might also want to consult the Miriam-Webster dictionary site:
- usually offensive; see usage paragraph below: a black person
- usually offensive; see usage paragraph below: a member of any dark-skinned race
- a member of a socially disadvantaged class of persons “It’s time for somebody to lead all of America’s niggers … all the people who feel left out of the political process — Ron Dellums“
Nigger in senses 1 and 2 can be found in the works of such writers of the past as Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens, but it now ranks as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English. Its use by and among blacks is not always intended or taken as offensive, but, except in sense 3, it is otherwise a word expressive of racial hatred and bigotry.
Or Wikipedia:
Nigger is a noun in the English language, most notable for its usage in a pejorative context to refer to black people
Or Dictionary.com:
The term nigger is now probably the most offensive word in English. Its degree of offensiveness has increased markedly in recent years, although it has been used in a derogatory manner since at least the Revolutionary War. Definitions 1a, 1b, and 2 represent meanings that are deeply disparaging and are used when the speaker deliberately wishes to cause great offense…
- Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive.
a. a black person.
b. a member of any dark-skinned people.- Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a person of any race or origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc.
- a victim of prejudice similar to that suffered by blacks; a person who is economically, politically, or socially disenfranchised.
Mouth-breathing troglodytes. And there are, indeed, still a LOT of them around.
[H/T Wavingcrosser via Twitter.]
