Heard on The Judges

[Wilson Gray]

Tweny-year-old white woman ffom Michigan who has also lived in Florida:

"I have a list of all the bills that I've _peed_."

After the requisite double take, I realized that she must have said
"paid," but with an [e] very much higher than (what) I'm accustomed to
hearing.

This kind of thing can cause serious problems. German [e] is also much
higher than (American) English [e(i)]. As a consequence, "Comrade"
(Germans) quickly learned to use "Schwarzer" and not "Neger" [ne:g@]
in the presence of "hamburgers" (black GI's), lest the latter word be
heard as [nI:g@]. Ironically, in that period, late 'Fifties through
early 'Sixties, for a "cheeseburger" (white GI) to have referred to a
hamburger as a "black" would have been more insulting and more hurtful
than referring to him as a "nigger." Indeed, my only letter to the
editor, back in the day, complained about the newspaper's use of
"blacks" to refer to African-Africans instead of "Negroes," by which
the paper referred to African-Americans.

(At this time, there was something referred to as "status of forces,"
left over from the Occupation, still in effect in American Germany.
This meant that Americans could not be arrested by German police or
tried in German courts. The MP's had to be called, but not even a
cheeseburger MP would arrest a hamburger under such circumstances-
*We* get to call them that, not you! - Hence, a German who had been
merely punched out by a hamburger for supposedly calling him a
"nigger" basically had to "take the meat," as GI slang had it, or to
"bend over," as they say on contemporary cop shows. In that foreign
setting, your being a fellow-American outweighed your being an example
of the "Negro Problem." But it was weird to be stopped while "boppin'
the strahss" (strolling about the local town or city) by a white
fellow-American who just wanted to say hi.)

-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.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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