Race/racism and the late Prof. Frederic G. Cassidy

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 11/2/06, Charles Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
> Wilson's mention of Shug Otis reminds me of how, last year while
> teaching _The Color Purple_, I had such a struggle discouraging the
> students from pronouncing the character Shug's name so as to rhyme
> it with "hug."  But then, there really isn't a good way to represent the
> nickname or common (Southern?) epithet clipped from "sugar"
> orthographically.

Mr. Otis has more commonly been known as "Shuggie", actually. For the
benefit of anyone who didn't know how to pronounce the name there's a
song on his 1970 debut album with the rhyming title "Shuggie's
Boogie".

--Ben Zimmer

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