Ethnic-based terms of contempt

[Herb Stahlke]

I used to spend a fair amount of time in my Language and Society
classes talking about whiteness, markedness, and race, with Robin
Lakoff's introductory and Ebonics chapters from The Language War as
required reading.  To my overwhelmingly white, largely rural and small
town Central Indiana students it was a stretch.

Herb

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Ethnic-based terms of contempt
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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.
>>
>> --
>> ========================================================================
>> Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
>> Haskins Laboratories                            tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
>> New Haven, CT 06511 USA Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  fax (203) 865-8963
>>
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