tousled

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS II has five exx. of _Isro_ beginning in 1975.

Ye editor has never encountered _Jafro_ or _Jewfro_.

In college, ye editor had an Italian friend with very curly hair.  He and
everyone else just went ahead and called it an "Afro."


JL

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 6:50 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: tousled
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > if "tousled" is expanding its
> > meaning, it could apply to a large Afro as well.
>
> Exactly so! I hadn't thought of that, though I'd certainly have
> considered a Jafro/Jewfro/Isro to be touslable. (The mind works in
> mysterious ways!) I've heard all three of these in the wild, with
> Jafro being most common. OTOH, I've heard only "Jewfro" on the tube. I
> haven't seen any of them in print.
>
> When I was in Germany, the indigenous human resources - well, it was
> "indigenous personnel," in those days - always said that Negroid hair
> was "schoen!" Unfortunately, the self-hatred that was and is probably
> the major "side-effect," so to speak, of racism, a lot of black GI's
> reacted negatively to this, being able to see in this genuine,
> well-meant compliment only mockery. "My 'bad' hair is 'schoen'? Wha
> chu tawm 'bout, cumrad?! I ain't did nuthin' t' you!" This resulted in
> a lot of unnecessary friction. Of course, the poor Germans, being
> entirely sincere, had not the *slightest* idea what they were doing
> that was so wrong.
>
> But the European scene was a mindfuck for the bruz and cuz. It was
> American racism turned inside out. The primary, indeed, the *only*
> factor that the Germans noticed or cared was race. Except that it was
> a *good* thing! A German acquaintance, sunning herself, rubbed herself
> against me and almost moaned, "I wish that I could be as dark as *you*
> are!" But not because she had any interest in me qua me. Only my skin
> tone mattered to her. A "Warmbruder," or gay guy, trying to pick me up
> in the Hannover-Bahnhof, took my hand, kissed it (I thought that he
> only wanted to shake hands. Really! I was fucking *shocked*!), and
> whispered, "Ich *liebe* Deine *Farbe*!"
>
> It was as though the granite millstone of race hanging from the black
> neck had turned to gold. Being totally accepted simply because of
> skin-color was a creepy as being rejected for that reason. It was
> really eerie, because it wasn't true acceptance, merely weirdly-strong
> interest in the totally-unexpected. Once, in a nightclub in Berlin,
> some random frawline came over to me, took my hand, and began to
> examine it. She held my hand up to the light, staring hard at it,
> flipped it over and back - apparently, she found the pink palm and the
> milk-chocolate back to be almost incomprehensible - stroked back and
> palm with her finger tips, rubbed the back of my hand against the back
> of her hand, checked out the result, released my hand, then turned and
> walked back whence she had come, without having spoken a mumbling
> word. You'd have thought that I was merely some museum exhibit.
>
> Of course, at that time in Saint Louis, nothing like that would or
> could have happened, because it would have simply never occurred to me
> to go into a "white" nightclub.
>
> As for my hair, the consensus of white Americans somehow appears to be
> that it's "fluffy," though once it was described as being "like
> [Causcasoid] pubic hair." Different strokes, I reckon. ;-)
>
> -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
>
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