"shambo" (was " Charlie")

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 12, 2004, at 4:44 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "shambo" (was " Charlie")
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> At 1:45 PM -0400 10/12/04, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>> "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> says:
>>
>>>>>>>
>>  [Gerald Leonard Cohen:]
>>>   Just a guess: ["shambo"]

FWIW, "-ambo" is a common Japanese string, as in "kurambo" and
"roshambo" and "sh" is one of the Fifty Sounds or whatever that thing
is called. My career as a student of Japanese began - and ended -
around 1967, whatever year it was in which The Beatles released "Blue
Jay Way." As fate would have it, one of my classmates lived on that
street.

-Wilson Gray

>>>  Seems to be an alteration of "Sambo."
>>
>> I hate to disappoint you, but "Little Black Sambo" was a Caucasian!
>>
>> In the story little Sambo has to deal with a pride (?) of tigers.  Now
>> tigers are found only in Asia (any tigers in Africa, the limerick
>> about the
>> "young lady from the Niger" to the contrary, are in zoos).  Hence
>> Sambo
>> lived in India.  Now many Indians have very dark ("black") skins, but
>> they
>> are all Caucasians.
>>  <<<<<
>>
>> Uh, Jim? We aren't dealing with ethnology here, but with etymology.
>> The
>> people who might have created "shambo" as an alteration of "Sambo"
>> weren't
>> taking their knowledge of the fictional character from
>> ethno-geography, but
>> from a then-popular children's book called _Little Black Sambo_.
>>
> My take on this is that LBS, the book, is indeed set in India, but
> there's been a cultural reanalysis somewhere along the way, as
> testified to by the use of "Sambo" as an ethnic/racial slur directed
> at African- (not Indian-) Americans (and other blacks in Africa and
> elsewhere).   Insisting that "Sambo" *really* denotes an inhabitant
> of India is very much like insisting that "nice" *really* means
> subtle and not pleasant, or that "aggravate" can only mean 'burden'
> and not 'annoy'--what Mill called the etymological fallacy.
>
> Larry
>