Ragtime and coded slurs in the Chicago Tribune

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:43 AM -0400 6/30/08, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 11:08 AM, Barbara Need <bhneed at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  And there was an article on today's front page about "coded slurs".
>>  i..e., ways of being offensive without (!?) being obvious. The
>>  article referenced _reggin" (read it backwards), the reference by Fox
>>  to Michelle Obama as Barack's "baby mama" (discussed here) and a
>>  situation in which an Indian was attacked by a co-worker with
>>  learning disabilities because the latter believed the former was
>>  Osama bin Laden's brother! (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/
>>  nationworld/chi-race-codewordsjun30,0,7093296.story)
>
>What, nothing about "Canadians"?
>
"Canadian" is included in that exhaustive (or at least exhausting)
racial slur database (http://www.rsdb.org), along with other goodies.
For example, I didn't know about Joe Kennedy and "Canadian goose"
before; it's all very educational (if even more depressing).

LH

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