"We ARE x !"

[Wilson Gray]

Penn State (unofficially) claims that the chant dates to the 1947
Sugar Bowl. State's team was supposed to meet with SMU's team to
discuss the status of State's black players. I.e. SMU didn't want play
against any coloreds. When this was explained to the team, a white PSU
player spoke up: "No [to any such meeting]! We [all] are Penn State!"

Or something like that.

The rest is history.

IAC, regardless of the truth and/or the date of this tale, I've
personally been aware of this cheer as a Penn State thing for the past
half-century or so, it being the case that story has to do with taking
a stand against racism when that sort of thing was simply not done, by
a "gentleman's agreement," to coin a phrase.

Naturally, this story would be told and re-told amongst the colored.

--
-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


On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "We ARE x !"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here is a corporate song on youtube:
> "We are G.E." is the main refrain.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcmsbSw8-xk
>
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "We ARE x !"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I've wondered about this very frame. It crystallized for me when I heard the "This American Life" episode on PSU (better known for introducing the rest of the US to "fracket", and also interesting to me for one interviewee's use of "ranch" to mean "ranch dressing" in a context that doesn't consist of a lust of dressings. But I digress.
>>
>> Here in Ohio, the group advocating against (if that makes sense) the anti-union bill called itself "We Are Ohio". Local high schools when rallying its sports fans will use the PSU-like "We are X." They'll also put it on bumper stickers, etc. to advocate for tax levies: "We are Raiders", etc. It's as if simply identifying yourself as some group or entity is supposed to induce the hearer to accommodate into the common ground that said group or entity is awesomely powerful.
>>
>> I've considered searching the usual corpora for this phrase template, but "we are" is so common anyway that I've never tried.
>>
>> Neal Whitman
>> Home: 614 501-1890
>> Cell: 614 260-1622
>>
>> On Nov 16, 2011, at 4:30 PM, Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
>>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "We ARE x !"
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Cf. also the 2006 movie "We Are Marshall," based on a similar rallying
>>> cry used by Marshall University's Thundering Herd.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>
>>>> News reports over the past several days have occasionally included
>>>> Penn State students both defending and deploring legendary coach Joe
>>>> Paterno as well as offering gestures of goodwill to the alleged
>>>> victims of Jerry Sandusky.
>>>>
>>>> The sudents can be heard chanting or emphatically asserting as
>>>> individuals, "We ARE Penn State!" Â I'm not sure what that's supposed
>>>> to mean beyond, "Harken to us!"
>>>>
>>>> A few years ago, "We ARE Virginia Tech!" was the refrain of an alleged
>>>> poem by Nikki Giovanni, written in the wake of an even worse
>>>> situation. It seemed to mean, "We of VT are strong enough to get
>>>> through absolutely anything unfazed."
>>>>
>>>> Both of these usages seemed familiar, but how?
>>>>
>>>> In another one of those epiphanous moments, I suddenly recalled that
>>>> 1976 film _Taxi Driver_ ("You talkin' to  me? You talkin' to *me*?
>>>> Well, you must be talkin' to me, 'cause I'm the only one here!")
>>>> featured a slick political candidate, target of the insane Travis
>>>> Bickel, who was running on the slogan "We ARE the People!" Â  (Cf. "We
>>>> ARE the 99%!" )
>>>>
>>>> The irony seemed to be that the slogan in the film was utterly vapid.
>>>> It reminded me of the equally inane, but seriously intended, "Nixon's
>>>> the One!" of 1968.
>>>>
>>>> Moral: yesterday's inanity, today's inspiration.
>>>>
>>>
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