What are some reasons why racial slurs are bad?

They’re offensive and usually have very poor grammar.

Racial slurs can be really offensive. Feelings get hurt. Derogatory language towards a person based on things that the person has NO control over can be extremely hurtful. It can make a person self conscience or feel badly about themselves. Self esteem can be instantly crushed. I don’t really care what somebody’s opinion of another race is, but I do care if they express that opinion in a hurtful and insulting way because these comments can break a person.

Not only are they harmful mentally/psychologically, that kind of hate towards an entire race can escalate easily to physical harm. Take a look at history…

They’re offensive because it dehumanizes them on account for their skin tone. It was used as a reason by slave owners as justification for their ownership of them. It’s really sick and twisted to conceive this as a thought but that’s really how it works.

The words themselves are meaningless to some extent but they do have historical significance but it’s always the senseless person using them that you should be worried about.

Cade, you wrote something in your profile that’s a good start to answering your question: “Everyone is equal and no one should be judged.” Others here (especially Chanelglit and Miguel) have answered similarly why racial slurs are harmful to the people against whom they are used. I think they are also harmful to the one(s) who uses them. They tend to lock that person into a position of polarization, hostility, judgment, and contempt. They prevent him (or her) from entering into an honest encounter with his own reality, because they tempt him to substitute a false identification with a merely symbolic racial collective in place of his own experience. They obstruct his ability to recognize the kindred humanity of his individual fellow being and of a whole large group with which he associates that individual. This leaves the one who would wield the slur in an escalating vicious cycle of feeling ever more disconnected, isolated, inauthentic, threatened by the world, and filled with unquenchable and misdirected rage.