Negro/negro & black/Black (also Nigger vs. Colored, et al.)

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 4:43 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> sooty

Down in Marshall, I knew a local boy nicknamed "Sooty." He was lightly
teased about this, but it was never clear how he came by that name,
his skin-tone being not at all remarkable in an "all-originals" social
environment. (Sooty was the first to burst into raucous,
thigh-slapping laughter upon hearing my brother pronounce "Cooper" as
[kup at r] instead of as [KUp@], the pronunciation likewise insisted upon
by Cooper, the eldest of the Manning brothers. "Dingy," IME, has only
its dictionary meanings in BE, but "dinge," IME used only by white
people in literature and in the cinema, *is* regarded as an insult,
primarily because books and movies make it clear that it's *supposed
to be regarded as such.

OTOH, "sable" is regarded as pretty cool, very likely because of its
being associated with the expensive animal fur and/or with Point du
Sable (in't it the French word for "sand," as it occurs in that name,
i.e. "sandspit" or some such?), reputed founder of Chicago.
"Brunette," though rarely used with the meaning, "black," these days.
is also all right.

--
-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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org