[Lexicog] Meaning of "cotton-picking"

[Rudolph C Troike]

I'm only a marginal Southerner, having grown up in South Texas, but with
ancestors who owned plantations in East Texas. I have consulted two
colleagues with deep Southern roots, one in Alabama and one in Georgia.
Neither regards the term as racist, one noting that share-croppers in
Alabama were white as well as black, and both had hands roughened from
picking cotton. Both agreed with my intuition that the term was just a
flowery mild expletive, perhaps a euphemism for something stronger. But
given the social-status, rather than racial, implications of the epithet,
it is imaginable that someone might have misinterpreted its application.
My Alabama consultant suggests that this is part of a deliberate Northern
plot, or sheer ignorance, as in the stereotypical assumption that
"you-all" is used to refer to one person. Obviously more research is
needed before banning the expression.

	Rudy Troike
	University of Arizona
	Tucson, AZ





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