As an amateur lexicographer I can tell you something definitive. These two words, and over a thousand others, have been the focus of a campaign for about 40 years to cause all major dictionary publishers to change their entire strategy. You know that the earliest dictionaries just didn't publish any offensive words; then in the 20th century they started admitting they intend to describe the entire language and not just prescribe it, so all offensive words were included. In the late 20th, though, they began falling over each other to add "usage notes" to make everyone afraid to use these hundreds of words labeled pejorative, hostile, and highly offensive. This is a coordinated attack on language and is about causing all major dictionary publishers to listen to the arbitrary offenses of whomever is on the complaining end. I can tell you my records show the ADL has been writing to dictionary makers for over 30 years to protest successfully the categorization of words and senses deemed offensive. Plus, in South Africa simple use of the word "kafir" can be punished as a hate crime. Later implementations of the same strategy are what has led to the industry spinning on a dime when powers demand that the word "vaccine" be redefined despite the new usage being misleading, contradictory, and unused in actual language. Now instead of describing language they are inventing it afresh in their own image.
The issue of which groups use which slurs against which others is largely irrelevant. The complainers claim to want to remove everybody's slurs equally. Naturally, this has an asymmetrical benefit that favors those groups that get the most slurs against them. Even slurs used by a group against members of the same group are hunted down by these central controllers, even if the slurs come from the same group as the controllers. History encapsulated in language can be wiped out with a single cancellation campaign. However, degradation of language by instant adoption of whatever the anons post at Urban Dictionary and whatever Big Pharma invents overnight is ongoing at increasing pace.
When I first heard about "PC" on college campuses I knew it was trouble but I didn't think it would really affect anyone else. But the complainers discovered the Marx-Alinsky power of complaining on behalf of allegedly helpless, nameless, faceless people who have no power to complain for themselves (and thus whose benefit can be completely reinvented by the complainer). Just one complainer claiming to represent a small number of unidentified people is sufficient to cause the entire industry to bend the knee and change centuries of history, and to affect everyone via their reliance on the "unbiased" authorities in lockstep with each other. People may still think they use words as they always have, but there is an insidious Orwellian-Fabian march year by year to change all the authorities people thought they relied on to cause them to doubt, gaslit, whether they were right or wrong all along.
Every slur is a historical marker of some rift between people-groups that requires healing. Healing does not occur by rewriting history and ignoring the wound, but by agreeing on the history and coming together to find unities. Ultimately, this is only done by shared moral foundations, which eventually all resolve in the life of Jesus Christ; but hiding one's sins works in the opposite direction.
The physical books say otherwise. And, grandparents everywhere have them on their religion.
As an amateur lexicographer I can tell you something definitive. These two words, and over a thousand others, have been the focus of a campaign for about 40 years to cause all major dictionary publishers to change their entire strategy. You know that the earliest dictionaries just didn't publish any offensive words; then in the 20th century they started admitting they intend to describe the entire language and not just prescribe it, so all offensive words were included. In the late 20th, though, they began falling over each other to add "usage notes" to make everyone afraid to use these hundreds of words labeled pejorative, hostile, and highly offensive. This is a coordinated attack on language and is about causing all major dictionary publishers to listen to the arbitrary offenses of whomever is on the complaining end. I can tell you my records show the ADL has been writing to dictionary makers for over 30 years to protest successfully the categorization of words and senses deemed offensive. Plus, in South Africa simple use of the word "kafir" can be punished as a hate crime. Later implementations of the same strategy are what has led to the industry spinning on a dime when powers demand that the word "vaccine" be redefined despite the new usage being misleading, contradictory, and unused in actual language. Now instead of describing language they are inventing it afresh in their own image.
The issue of which groups use which slurs against which others is largely irrelevant. The complainers claim to want to remove everybody's slurs equally. Naturally, this has an asymmetrical benefit that favors those groups that get the most slurs against them. Even slurs used by a group against members of the same group are hunted down by these central controllers, even if the slurs come from the same group as the controllers. History encapsulated in language can be wiped out with a single cancellation campaign. However, degradation of language by instant adoption of whatever the anons post at Urban Dictionary and whatever Big Pharma invents overnight is ongoing at increasing pace.
When I first heard about "PC" on college campuses I knew it was trouble but I didn't think it would really affect anyone else. But the complainers discovered the Marx-Alinsky power of complaining on behalf of allegedly helpless, nameless, faceless people who have no power to complain for themselves (and thus whose benefit can be completely reinvented by the complainer). Just one complainer claiming to represent a small number of unidentified people is sufficient to cause the entire industry to bend the knee and change centuries of history, and to affect everyone via their reliance on the "unbiased" authorities in lockstep with each other. People may still think they use words as they always have, but there is an insidious Orwellian-Fabian march year by year to change all the authorities people thought they relied on to cause them to doubt, gaslit, whether they were right or wrong all along.
Every slur is a historical marker of some rift between people-groups that requires healing. Healing does not occur by rewriting history and ignoring the wound, but by agreeing on the history and coming together to find unities. Ultimately, this is only done by shared moral foundations, which eventually all resolve in the life of Jesus Christ; but hiding one's sins works in the opposite direction.