very minor note on "lady" (UNCLASSIFIED)

Wed Apr 20 16:07:38 UTC 2011

follow-on to my last post:

There is the innocuous-sounding phrase "the boys in the back of the bus" which IIRC was the title of a best-seller a few years back.

These phrase sounds less than innocuous to someone like me who can remember segregated seating on buses.

I have no objections to a black person sitting next to me on a bus---I once rode a bus to work on which demographics guaranteed me a black seatmate---but to this day it seems strange to me to see a white person sitting on the back seat of a bus.

   - Jim Landau

--- JJJRLandau at netscape.com wrote:

From: "James A. Landau  <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>" <JJJRLandau at netscape.com>
To: "ADS Listserv" <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Re: very minor note on "lady" (UNCLASSIFIED)
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:54:13 -0700

On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:46:19 -0400  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

"IIRC, homeless "(shopping-)bag ladies" have been so called in NYC only since ca1980."

I believe there is a reason for that.

Some time around the 1970's the introduction of anti-psychotic drugs and a general Zeitgest that led to the feeling that too many people were being, well, "incarcerated" in mental instatituions led to many people being released from said institutions.  Some, of course, benefited from their release and became useful members of society etc. etc., but unfortunately some did not or could not adjust to life on the outside and became homeless people.

This is a complicated issue and I am not going to take sides.  I merely wish to point out that the above led to an explosion of the homeless population in the years leading up to ca1989.
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On 19 Apr 2011 17:11:53 -0400 George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:

"From the article in American National Biography on Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.:

In a television interview in March 1960 Powell referred to a Harlem
widow, Esther James, as a "bag woman," someone who collected graft for
corrupt police. She sued and won."

I remember the incident but not the details.  Didn't Congressman (pardon me, Congressperson) Powell have Constitutional immunity from being sued?

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On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:49:55 Zone - 0500 "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
"As opposed to Cat Woman (a sexy
woman of the build of Lee Meriwether, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry,
Julie Newmar, etc. who wears too tight clothing and purrs -- Eartha Kitt
never really did it for me.)"

How can someone named "Kitt" not be a Cat Woman?

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aside to Wilson Gray:  the road to Hell is paved with well-meaningness.

Seriously, my father was careful to teach me NOT to address a black person by his/her fist name until the person asked me to.  (This once led to my shocking a janitor by addressing him as "Mr. Thompson".)  However, I cannot recall when I learned that to address a black man as "boy" was insulting.

aside to my aside:  in the early 1970's there was a TV commercial in which a police officer (white) says to a driver (white) "You're in a heap of trouble, boy."  I wonder what your take on this would have been.

    - Jim Landau

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