Ethnic-based terms of contempt

[Wilson Gray]

Unfortunately, the subtext can escape your notice when it's not
relevant to your own experience of life.

In the last issue of TIME, a white man has written a letter to the
editor taking black Harvard professor, Henry "Skip" Gates, to task for
claiming that "nigger" is not necessarily a term of opprobrium when
used between or among speakers who are themselves black. The writer
states that Gates is wrong. "Nigger" is unequivocally an insult, under
any and all circumstances. Period.

The clear subtext: niggers don't know shit, even when they're
discussing their own speech acts, regardless of their academic status
or level of education or social position. What has led me to this
conclusion? Why, the mere fact, that as a white person, this is my
considered analysis of the situation. If I'm white, then I'm right,
though I've not experienced so much as a nanosecond of the life of any
black person.

-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.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:46 PM, Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
> Organization: Haskins Laboratories
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Ethnic-based terms of contempt
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson Gray wrote:
>> I don't know that this was ever a term of contempt, but, in my younger
>> days, people spoke of the "Texas fif(th)," a full quart of whiskey, as
>> opposed to the usual 4/5 quart normally referred to as simply a
>> "fif(th)."
>>
>> "Running on CP (colored people's) time" = "running late" was also
>> quite common, in BE at least, back in the day.
>
> Funny, when I was in college (early 70s), we used to refer to this as
> "Jewish time".
>>
>> Back in the '80's, I used to hear "nigger box" and read "ghetto
>> blaster" used for "boom box." More recently, there's "reggin (_nigger_
>> spelled backward) weed" used for poor-quality mariguana.
>
> I first heard the term "ghetto blaster" in the mid 80s, from a colleague
> who was ordinarily the sort of person who would have gone out of her way
> to avoid terms with potentially disparaging subtext.
>
> --
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