"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you", goes one playground rhyme. As children, many of us are taught to just put up with the "potty-mouths", but we all know that words can really hurt a person. Although we can learn from them, words that breathe hate are no good. When obscene words are directed at us, they can cause just as much pain, if not more, than a hit. When people start to use obscenities with ethnic or racial slurs, it can push some sensitive buttons in all of us. From my experiences, the combination of obscenities and racial slurs cause the most extreme negative reactions from people.
             As a child of Filipino and Mexican ancestry, growing up in a nearly all-white, upper-middle class neighborhood in La Mirada was not always fun. Though I did play with the other neighborhood children, whenever some became mad, they would say some words that would really hurt me. They would sometimes cuss at me or call me "brown boy", "ching-chong", or "dirty yellow". Although the cursing started a few scuffles here and there, it was not really too much of a problem to me because it did not make me too angry or sad. What did hurt me were the racial slurs that they used on me. Before moving to this neighborhood from Cerritos, I had never heard bad words from other children directed towards me, nor had I even had a concept of what race was. Hearing things that degrade someone who is "different" can make a profound impact on their well being. It made me hate myself inside for what I looked like on the outside, yet at the same time, made me hate them for what they were. I le!
             arned at an early age that words of hate can bring us down to feelings of sadness, hatred, and disgust, and that this was much worse than the mere shouting of obscenities.
             Obscene language by itself can often spark a negative reaction; sometimes turning violent and can elevate a situation into something we may regret. If someon...