McWhorter on "Negro" [Was: on "Negro English"]

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/16/2010 02:24 PM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>Even though that racist caricature has not survived in popular
>memory here in the way that it has in the US,  where it originated (and even
>though there are obviously huge disparities with regard to the two countries'
>histories concerning race relations), it was still stupid for Australian
>television to air material that brought those demeaning depictions to mind.

No longer I think a linguistic topic, but I wonder whether anyone has
compared Australian racism towards their aborigines (I apologize if I
should have used some other term, such as "Indigenous Australians")
with American racism towards their "blacks".  From the little I've
read about Australia, its racism, some persisting into today, was
quite brutal and/or demeaning at times.

And obviously I don't mean all Australians, or at all times.  I
recall an Australian tour on a small bus -- six of us -- where two
male Australian civil servants were talking with two young white
female schoolteachers from the Midwest.  I can't report details,
since I was sitting in a somewhat separate compartment next to the
driver.  At dinner the two Australians relayed to me some racist
remarks by the American schoolteachers about the aboriginals we had
encountered (which my companion had heard; she was in the back with
the other four).  The Australians were puzzled and dismayed by the
racism displayed by these presumably educated Americans, who were
employed in teaching children.  They asked whether all Americans were
like that.

Joel

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