Ben Burd's Racial Slur

I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised when I read so-called progressive blogger, Ben Burd; “But if I am the poor slob that got gypped on my stat holiday pay …”

Mr Burd is highly sensitive about offending ‘the other.’ Here is an example of his sensitivity;
“When UN workers are slaughtered by Muslems offended by a video that shows a redneck preacher in the USA burning a Koran who do we blame? The preacher – Terry Jones – has said the deaths are not his fault, blithely skimming over the fact that if he hadn't burnt the book nobody would have died, has not even faced the suggestion that he committed a crime – inciting murder."

I presume that Mr Burd, a man of progressive sensitivity, would have the social justice consciousness not to make a comment such as, “… if I am the poor slob that got jewed on my stat holiday pay …” Most of us would recognize that as a racial slur, stereotyping a people with a malevolent characteristic, suggesting that Jews are money cheats. It’s a common slur found in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and other anti-semitic writings.

So what would possess Mr Burd to make a similar racial slur against the Romany, Sinti, Kale, Cigany, Gitan or as they are called derogatorily, “gypsies”. Gypped. The About.com/Race Relations explains it well enough:

“If you’re still debating whether or not to use the verb “gypped,” consider that Philip Durkin, principal etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary told the Telegraph that there’s “scholarly consensus” that the word originated as a “racial slur.”

During the late 80’s I worked with several Romani leaders in Canada and Eastern Europe. They consider ‘gypsy’ to be pejorative in most instances. I’d like to introduce Mr Burd, to an acquaintance of mine, Ronald Lee, co-founder of Toronto’s Roma Community Centre and former lecturer on Roma studies at the University of Toronto. I’d love to see Mr Burd explain his use of “gypped” to members of this community.

Of course Mr Burd can get away with it, because he operates his blog in the boonies, where small town insularity can breed ignorance. Meanwhile, outside the Lido Motel in Scarboro, a group of neo-nazi racists and skinheads tormented the ‘gyp’ refugees that were temporarily residing there. These were the same ‘gyps’ that had been fleeing Eastern Europe because of the ongoing violence by neo-nazi skinheads and the apartheid conditions in which they live.

In North America, our culture has romanticized the culture of Gypsies, as a fancy-free group of people known for their violin playing, fortune telling, and their anti-establishment life-style, eschewing the Abbott Blvd picket fence snoburbia, for the open road. Hippies were the leading proselytizers of this romanticism.

Hippies were savvy enough to know that it was a slur against a people to suggest that they had been jewed down in a deal, or got jewed, i.e. ripped-off. Their naivety failed to sniff out the racial slur when getting ‘gypped’ was an acceptable method instead of saying the word ‘cheating’. Mr Burd should have clearly stated it thus; “… but if I am the poor slob that got cheated on my stat holiday pay …” THAT would be progressive, rather than the regressive racial slur that Mr Burd seems to be at ease flinging around in a multicultural society.

I waited a day out of curiosity to see if any of regular ‘progressives’ of the Burd Report picked up on the racial slur in Mr Burd’s comment. None. And this is the same group of progressives who rail against the perceived racism implicit in the whitebread folks who decry the spoilage of Victoria Park by The Visitors.

This is the same group of progressives who swarmed Gordon Gilchrist three years back because of his perceived racist remarks. The same group of people renown for admonishing others for the slightest manifestation of racism or racial slurs, have a blind eye against racial slurs that perpetuate the perceived criminality of the Romany as a racial characteristic.

Mr Burd is a publisher of a blog and is extremely sensitive about the words used by others on his blog. He has exercised censorship many times. The bitter irony is that he declines to censor his own racial slurs. If Mr Burd does not want to accept my admonishment, he should read this wonderful essay which sensitively addresses the specific issue of jewed down or gypped as racial slurs:

“Every now and then, something seems evident to me, and I am reminded that it is not evident to everyone around me. Case in point; two slang terms commonly used to refer to being cheated in a transaction. Whether you’re being ‘gypped’ or ‘Jewed,’ both terms are racist, and they are astonishingly widespread. Really, people, it’s not that hard to just say ‘cheated,’ if that’s what you are going for.”