Talk:Kaffir

message: ??? *a bit beffudlled* - why is there "kafir" and "kaphir" when there should be only one, they mean the same thing --don't they?Dwarf Kirlston 01:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: kaphir should be merged here (please feel free to do it!), kaffir should stay independent, as it deals with the specialized South African meaning. dab (ᛏ) 08:16, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: join with kaphir

message: I have split the old "Kafir"/"Kaffir" pages into kafir (Islam) for the religious meaning, kaffir (ethnic slur) for the insult as used in South Africa and Jamaica, South Africa Kaffir people for its neutral (sort of) use in historical contexts, e.g. the "Kaffir Wars".  See kaffir (disambiguation).  The old discussion is mostly in Talk:Kafir (Islam), except for some sections on general senses, that were kept here.Jorge Stolfi 22:14, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup of Kaffir/Kafir and related articles

message: The sense "blanket term for southern African natives" had been indented under the "ethnic slur" sense. I moved it up one level. The reason is that it is not clear that the "blanket" sense qualifies as an "ethnic slur".
The "blanket" sense apparently dates from the beginning of slave trade in the 16th century, and is therefore older than than the colonization of South Africa. Sure, the prejudice (and worse) existed at that time, but that doesn't seem to be enough to turn an ethnic name into an ethnic slur. (For instance, the English despised and hated the Germans during WWII, yet that did not make "German" an ethnic slur. Ditto for the English settlers in Australia and the word "Aborigine".  Also, "negro" was probably synonymous with "black man" at some point, but somehow one became an ethnic slur, while the other didn't.)
:: Well, they had surrogates like "Nazi", "Kraut" etc. for that. It should be added that there was virtually no hatred against the English in Germany, despite the many war crimes commited against Germans. Then of course the term Kaffir was not understood as an "ethnic slur" in the beginning. It became only one, when "liberal Whites" started to "educate" them i.e. stirring them up against the Boers.
Methinks that a a word qualifies as a slur only if it has other negative associations besides just the name of a discriminated group, so that using it to name those peoples implicitly conveys the speaker's contempt for them; or if the speaker knows that the group dislikes that name, so that its use becomes an intentional insult.  Both are certainly true of "kaffir" today, but I can't see how that could be the case in the early 19th century, say.
Also, according to this source the term had a more restricted sense in at a certain place and time (Eastern Cape frontier, the 19th century), which argues against it being just an ethnic slur at that time.
Indeed, if we should go by etymology, methinks that the slur should be subordinate to the blanket sense, rather than the other way around. But can we leave the two at the same level, as a compromise?
(Phew! Sorry to waste so many bytes on a miserly "*"...) All the best, Jorge Stolfi 23:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Indentation of disamb page

message: None of these terms can be used in a modern sense without being insulting to black South Africans, and none are in common usage today (apart from as intensional racial slurs). Also, none of these links have articles as yet. If someone wants to put them back, maybe they can track down and find historical references, and mention that the use is depracated. -Kieran 13:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Kaffir beer, piano and pot

message: Why is Kaffiristan under the subheading Middle East when Afghanistan is in the South Asian continent? -Klep 20:31, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Kaffiristan is not in the Middle East