Ragtime and coded slurs in the Chicago Tribune

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 11:08 AM, Barbara Need <bhneed at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And there was an article on today's front page about "coded slurs".
> i..e., ways of being offensive without (!?) being obvious. The
> article referenced _reggin" (read it backwards), the reference by Fox
> to Michelle Obama as Barack's "baby mama" (discussed here) and a
> situation in which an Indian was attacked by a co-worker with
> learning disabilities because the latter believed the former was
> Osama bin Laden's brother! (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/
> nationworld/chi-race-codewordsjun30,0,7093296.story)

What, nothing about "Canadians"?


--Ben Zimmer

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