... woodpile

[Beverly Flanigan]

I had a similarly unsettling experience this summer when I was visiting my
son in Sarajevo.  His boss, from New Zealand, said something at dinner
about "the blacks" and the "silly" debate over Ebonics--and he said it as
if he assumed I would agree, with considerable surprise that I didn't.  I
wonder if (a lot of) people in other countries assume all Americans think
alike, and negatively, about such matters and so go through this wink-wink
nudge-nudge if-you-know-what-I-mean kind of circumlocution with us.

At 07:46 AM 9/22/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Derrick Chapman wrote:
>
> >   I don't know if the Brit lady was
> > attempting to "speak Southern" to me, assuming (wrongly) that I wouldn't be
> > offended.
>
>This reminds me of something in my own experience.  The only time I've
>ever heard the word "nigger" used (i.e., used as a normal part of
>conversation, as opposed to being discussed as a word) was by a taxi
>driver in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1969.  After preliminary introductions
>like where I wanted to go and where I was from, she started into a long
>rant about "niggers."  When she had asked me where I was from, I had
>said something like "the US, Mississippi" or "Mississippi, in the US."
>I wondered later if she launched into her appalling, racist harangue
>because she had heard or read that Mississippi was supposedly full of
>racists.  I'll never forget that experience.  My ears are still ringing
>from it over thirty years later.
>    --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm