racial epithets

[Wilson Gray]

On Jul 28, 2005, at 4:20 PM, Mullins, Bill wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      racial epithets
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> high yellow -- HDAS has 1923, OED has 1951
> "At the Theatres" | Nebraska | Lincoln | The Lincoln Daily Star |
> 1916-06-22 p. 3. col 3.
> "They present the typical minstrel nigger and high yaller octoroon."
>
> "Honey Boy" Minstrels Please Large Audience at Atlanta
> The Atlanta Constitution; Mar 12, 1915; pg. 12 col 3.
> "Eldon Durand is a classic in make-up in his part of the Miss
> Flooeyanna
> Wilkins, the "high yellow," for whose charms "Lasses" inevitably
> falls."
>
> blue gum -- not in OED nor HDAS, as near as I can tell
>
> THE MAGIC CHARM
> The Atlanta Constitution; Oct 18, 1891; pg. 11 col 3.
> "Their bite is as bad as a blue gum nigger."
>
> "BLUE GUM NEGROES"
> Ohio | Lima | The Times Democrat | 1897-07-23 p. 7 col 4.
> "Among the numerous superstitions of the old plantation days which
> still
> linger in the south none is more pronounced or more widely diffused
> than
> the belief in the fatal effecs of the "blue gum nigger's" bite." "
>
> [I had heard "blue gum" as an epithet for AA for years, usually taking
> it to mean "a black person whose skin is so dark their gums look blue
> in
> comparison".  But I've never heard this business about the bite of a
> blue gum.
>

If this term is in actual use an epithet, it must be used by only a
vanishingly-small portion of the white population, since even you are
unaware of the term's referent. I personally have never heard it spoken
by anyone anywhere. It's strictly a literary term that I'm familiar
with only as a consequence of having read the book, Mandingo, by Kyle
Onstott (1957 et paperbacks seq.), in which the term appears. According
to a white character in the novel, blue-gummed black people, such as
the Ibo, are inferior to pink-gummed black black people, such as the
Mandingo. It's not clear whether this is Onstott's own opinion or
merely that of his character. It's more likely only that of his
character. For his time, Onstott was way liberal. Anyway, if not for
this novel, your mention of it would have come as a surprise to me.

I've had a series of friendly discussions with one of my sisters-in-law
as to whether white Americans have any idea of what black people
actually look like. Your post supports my claim: that white people have
no real idea of what black people look like.

Allow me to run it down to you.

Some black people are non-distinct from white people WRT the color of
their gums. Other black people, among them your humble correspondent,
have gums that are a kind of mottled pink and blue(-ish) in color. This
mottling is what the term, "blue(-)gum," refers to. This phenomenon
does not correlate in any way with the bearer's skin tone - i.e. the
percentage of white ancestry that a black person has - or with any
other visible feature. Within a given nuclear family, some members may
be blue gums and other members may not be. A pink-gummed black couple
may have blue-gummed children and vice-versa. It appears to be one of
those random, benign mutations that has no application but doesn't die
out.

-Wilson Gray