Ethnic-based terms of contempt

[Wilson Gray]

You're certainly correct there, Herb. I once received an e-mail from
an old M.I.T. buddy. In my reply, I noted that he had used a
particular turn of phrase that, theretofore, I had never seen or heard
before from a (Northern) white speaker, though the phraseology was
"standard" (FWIW, I put "standard" in quotes WRT BE to indicate that
whatever is referred to is a general feature of BE, such that, if one
wished to write a grammar of BE, one could state the the feature
referred to is stone soul and wouldn't nobody be reading the grammar
and saying "That's jive! Don't nobody be saying nothing like that!")
in BE. He replied that my claim was unlikely, since he didn't
associate with any black people.

Naturally, in order to maintain close personal relations with white
people, we black people have to overlook this, unfortunately,
extremely common habit among white people of unconsciously "promoting"
their colored friends to white.

Needless to say, we colored find this to be really creepy, because, as
far as we can tell, at least, it allows our white friends to maintain
their  unconscious or sometimes, no doubt, conscious perception of the
"real soul brother/sister" as an (undeservedly) overpaid,
empty-headed, Cadillac-driving athlete or as a (deservedly) underpaid,
empty-headed, Cadillac-driving welfare queen.

But, what can you do? It's difficult to "top from the bottom."

And it's an order of magnitude nicer than, "When I say 'nigger', of
course I'm not referring to colored people like you, Wilson. Why, if
they were all like you, there'd be no problems!"

Tell that one to the Jews.

-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 Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Ethnic-based terms of contempt
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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. Â 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: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â 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   Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  faber at haskins.yale.edu
>>> Haskins Laboratories   Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â  Â 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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