racial epithets

Fri Jul 29 23:24:44 UTC 2005

These exx. are the mildest I could find on the Net, Ferber's being the earliest.  More are unfortunately available at overtly racist sites, including dire references to the "poisoned bite."

[ ca2003 _The FictionMags Index_  http://users.ev1.net/~homeville/fictionmag/s706.htm : Woods Hutchinson, "Does Blood Tell?" _Sat. Eve. Post_ (Apr. 29, 1911) "mentions a popular belief that the bite of Negroes with blue gums is poisonous, which I had never heard before."]

1911 Edna Ferber _Buttered Side Down_ 212 : Looking like a flat-nosed, blue-gummed Igorrote [sic].

1939 [WPA Federal Writers Project] _Tennessee: A Guide to the State_ ch. xiv [http://newdeal.feri.org/guides/tnguide/ch14.htm] :  Thousands of Tennesseans still judge character by physical traits catalogued by generations of observations. "You watch," they say, "and see if politicians don't most usually always have big noses. You take a man with stubby fingers. He masters his way through the world and he's bull-stubborn. Take a man that grays early. Most likely he's a fine fellow and will lend you money. A blue-gummed Negro is a killer and his bite is as poisonous as a copperhead's. A dimple in a girl's chin is a mighty bad sign, means the devil within. But a dimpled man is a good steady sort of fellow and can be trusted. Don't know why it is, but rich men most usually are hairy. Any man who talks to himself has money in the bank, but he won't lend you any.

2003 _Cringe Humor Forum : Comedy That Questions Your Morality_ (Feb. 10) :  I never heard the term Bluegum until you posted it, but sure enough it is in the Racial Slur Database: http://rsdb.fuck.org/ .

2005 Thadeus Davis, at  _Oprah's Book Club : The Sound and the Fury Q & A_  [http://www.oprah.com/obc_classic/featbook/asof/fury/qa/fury_qa_display.jhtml?contentId=20050708_08.xml] :  The black man—who in Versh's story became a bluegum with the changing of his name—has certain powers connected to the full moon, but he is eventually eaten by his own bluegum children. (According to folk tradition, the bluegum bite carries poison.)

2005 "GODBLESSAMERICA" at  _Amazing Talking [African] Parrot_ [http://comments.big-boys.com/?id=3685] (May 11) : I have not met any african american (ie. porch-monkey, spear-chunker, Mississippi blue-gummed ****) that could speak english.

(Onomastic note: Prof. Thadeus Davis is a woman.)

My copy is misplaced at the moment, but ISTR an entry for "bluegum" in _Dictionary of Americanisms_ with 19th C. exx.  Wentworth & Flexner (1960) defines it naively as "a Negro. Civil War use," which tells me they got it from _DA_ or _DAE_.

JL

George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: George Thompson
Subject: Re: racial epithets
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the very distant past of my life as an English major, someone told
me that the term "blue-gum" appeared in one of Faulkner's novels.

It might be possible to look up where, though be damn if I see any
reason to. I'll take requests, though.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Wilson Gray
Date: Friday, July 29, 2005 2:51 am
Subject: Re: racial epithets

> On Jul 28, 2005, at 4:20 PM, Mullins, Bill wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: "Mullins, Bill"
> > Subject: racial epithets
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
> > --------
> >
> > high yellow -- HDAS has 1923, OED has 1951
> > "At the Theatres" | Nebraska | Lincoln | The Lincoln Daily Star |
> > 1916-06-22 p. 3. col 3.
> > "They present the typical minstrel nigger and high yaller octoroon."
> >
> > "Honey Boy" Minstrels Please Large Audience at Atlanta
> > The Atlanta Constitution; Mar 12, 1915; pg. 12 col 3.
> > "Eldon Durand is a classic in make-up in his part of the Miss
> > Flooeyanna
> > Wilkins, the "high yellow," for whose charms "Lasses" inevitably
> > falls."
> >
> > blue gum -- not in OED nor HDAS, as near as I can tell
> >
> > THE MAGIC CHARM
> > The Atlanta Constitution; Oct 18, 1891; pg. 11 col 3.
> > "Their bite is as bad as a blue gum nigger."
> >
> > "BLUE GUM NEGROES"
> > Ohio | Lima | The Times Democrat | 1897-07-23 p. 7 col 4.
> > "Among the numerous superstitions of the old plantation days which
> > still
> > linger in the south none is more pronounced or more widely diffused
> > than
> > the belief in the fatal effecs of the "blue gum nigger's" bite." "
> >
> > [I had heard "blue gum" as an epithet for AA for years, usually
> taking> it to mean "a black person whose skin is so dark their
> gums look blue
> > in
> > comparison". But I've never heard this business about the bite
> of a
> > blue gum.
> >
>
> If this term is in actual use an epithet, it must be used by only a
> vanishingly-small portion of the white population, since even you are
> unaware of the term's referent. I personally have never heard it
> spokenby anyone anywhere. It's strictly a literary term that I'm
> familiarwith only as a consequence of having read the book,
> Mandingo, by Kyle
> Onstott (1957 et paperbacks seq.), in which the term appears.
> Accordingto a white character in the novel, blue-gummed black
> people, such as
> the Ibo, are inferior to pink-gummed black black people, such as the
> Mandingo. It's not clear whether this is Onstott's own opinion or
> merely that of his character. It's more likely only that of his
> character. For his time, Onstott was way liberal. Anyway, if not for
> this novel, your mention of it would have come as a surprise to me.
>
> I've had a series of friendly discussions with one of my sisters-
> in-law
> as to whether white Americans have any idea of what black people
> actually look like. Your post supports my claim: that white people
> haveno real idea of what black people look like.
>
> Allow me to run it down to you.
>
> Some black people are non-distinct from white people WRT the color of
> their gums. Other black people, among them your humble correspondent,
> have gums that are a kind of mottled pink and blue(-ish) in color.
> Thismottling is what the term, "blue(-)gum," refers to. This
> phenomenondoes not correlate in any way with the bearer's skin
> tone - i.e. the
> percentage of white ancestry that a black person has - or with any
> other visible feature. Within a given nuclear family, some members may
> be blue gums and other members may not be. A pink-gummed black couple
> may have blue-gummed children and vice-versa. It appears to be one of
> those random, benign mutations that has no application but doesn't die
> out.
>
> -Wilson Gray
>

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