Reply #3: Help me out on this one [View All]

[Boomer]

I'm not being facetious when I wonder if this was meant to be descriptive rather than insulting.

Is it the use of the word "Jew"? Would "Jewish" have made it okay? Or was it the fact that they were tagged by their religion as opposed to something like hair color or clothing? Would "yuppie couple" or "mousy couple" have been better?

Putting myself in the same position, if I'd noticed that my bill had "gay couple" scrawled somewhere, I wouldn't see it as an insult. When I'm out with my partner, we're pretty obviously gay. If the bill had said "lesbian couple," same reaction. If it had said "queers", then I'd be pretty steamed.

So is the word "Jew" in and of itself a slur? It certainly can be used as an insult, but usually that interpretation is defined by context and by who uses it, with what intention. When I lived in New York, many people used "Jew" in a matter-of-fact way: I'm a Jew.

There is no context with a scrawled note from a waitress that's quickly ID'ing her tables. Maybe she did mean it as a slur, or maybe it just was a description. How much of this insult is real and how much is assumed?

Damned if I know.