Clerks 2 wrote:
Randal Graves: Since when did porch monkey suddenly become a racial slur?
Dante Hicks: When ignorant racists started saying it a hundred years ago!
Randal Graves: Oh, bullshit! My grandmother used to call me a porch monkey all the time when I was a kid because I'd sit on the porch and stare at my neighbors!
Dante Hicks: Despite the fact that your grandmother might've used it as a term of endearment for you, it's still a racial slur! It'd be like your grandmother calling you a little kike!
Randal Graves: Oh, it is not. Plus, my grandmother had nothing but the utmost respect for the Jewish community. When I was a kid she told me to always treat the Jewish kids with the utmost respect, or they'd put the sheni curse on me.
Dante Hicks: What the ****, man?
Randal Graves: What?
Dante Hicks: Sheni's a racial slur, too!
Randal Graves: Oh, it is not.
Dante Hicks: Yes, it is!
Randal Graves: She never called any Jews 'sheni', she just used to say sheni curse a lot. It was cute!
Dante Hicks: It wasn't cute! It was racist!
Randal Graves: I disagree, man, she was just an old timer, that's the way people talked back then! Didn't mean they were racist... Although my grandmother did refer to a broken beer bottle once as a nigger knife... You know, come to think of it, my grandmother was kind of a racist.
Dante Hicks: You think?
Randal Graves: Well,I still don't think porch monkey should be considered a racial term. I mean, I've always used it to describe lazy people, not lazy black people! I think if we really tried, we could re-claim it, and save it.
Dante Hicks: It can't be saved, Randal! The sole purpose for its creation, the only reason it exists in the first place, is to disparage an entire race! And even if it could be saved, you can't save it because you're not black!
Randal Graves: Well listen to you! Telling me I can't do something because of the color of my skin! You're the racist! I'm taking it back, you watch!
[customers enter]
Randal Graves: Hey, what can I get for you, you little porch monkey?
[beat]
Randal Graves: Its cool, I'm taking it back.