Cognitive dissonance

[Wilson Gray]

In the course of a cartoon flick that I was watching the other day,
the Northern-speaking barmaid says to an adult thalidomide baby that
consists only of a head with a torso:

"Well, aren't *you* a streamlined little _peckerwood_!"

Huh?!

In a discussion of the local dialect with another, *white*, East
Texan, he noted that _peckerwood_ is used WRT cuteness. I.e,. you
might painch a toddler's "jaw" and say something like,

"My land, aren't *you* just the cutest little _peckerwood_!"


How?! Say what?!

"Peckerwood" is normal Southern for "woodpecker," of course. But, in
ETX BE, "peckerwood" is considered to be an *insulting* term for a
white person! Far stronger than some phony, made-up, Yankee-Negro term
like "hunky"/"honky," because it "keeps it real." Didn't anybody sit
down and ask himself, "What would a good, insulting term for a white
person be?" and end up recycling an obsolete word invented *by* white
people for use against other *white* people!

Yet, the white people whom blacks are supposed to find the word
insulting not only trivially apply the word to themselves, but they
also even consider it to be rather sweet!

A brother just can't catch a break!

Well, youneverknow!

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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