New racist etymology

[Jocelyn Limpert]

For some time now publications like The New York Times and the Washington
Post have been on the fence about using "African American" or "black"
editorially. Articles just switch back and forth between the two, settling
on neither. And there is also a preference for the nonhyphenated "African
American," the reason being that other such designations, such as "Japanese
American," are not hyphenated.

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 12:30 AM, 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: New racist etymology
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 10:56 PM, Jonathan Lighter
> <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I guar-on-tee you that "buck Negro" is a "literary" confection.
> >
> > I never heard "buck (nigger)" in NY, but I've read them many, many times
> in
> > stories about the South and, to a lesser degree, West.
> >
> > There's an old sea shanty verse from the 19th C. that goes,
> >
> > Who's been here since I been gone?
> > Big buck nigger with his sea boots on.
> >
> > When sung nowadays by (99 44/100 % white) harmonizin' folkies, it's
> altered
> > to the culturally-insipid-but-not-offending-anybody "Arkansas farmer with
> > his sea boots on."
>
> I think, as also in the case of Huckleberry Finn and such very
> enjoyable writings, the un-Bowdlerized original is the way to go. The
> truth leads to more breakthroughs than the lie. One of the reasons
> that I consider Äfrican-American"as a replacement for "black" is that
> I *clearly* remember when the absolute, very worst thing that you
> could do to a black American was to call him "black."Sure, on a
> drive-by insulting, you could upset a any colored fellow by shouting
> "Nigger!", if you really wanted to tear the the heart right out of his
> bosom, then the way to go was to call him simply "Black!" My first
> letter-to-the-editor was motivated by the common practice of using
> "African *blacks*" and not "African *Negroes*." What a gratuitous,
> entirely uncalled-for, unnecessary, embarrassing "racist" insult!!
>
> That _black_ is no longer regarded as the most degrading, humiliating
> epithet that anyone, regardless of his own race, creed, color, sexual
> orientation, or previous condition of servitude can apply to a person
> of any degree of sub-Saharan ancestry and has become simply another
> word, as innocuous as "white" as a racial denominator, is no less than
> a there-is-really-no-possible-way-to-characterize-it, phenomenal
> sea-change in the psychology of Black America.
>
> That _black_ is now being rendered "insulting" all over again by the
> loud mouths of random "African-American" assholes and their p.c.
> running dogs for the sheer assholery of it and "Negro" and "colored"
> are deemed even more insulting than "darky"and "coon," as though the
> history of the use of _black_ were empty of content and despite the
> emergence of large number of *genuine* Americans of immediate African
> ancestry into all aspects of American life - cf. e.g. the lical law
> firm of Krasno, Krasno & Onwudinjo - well, what can I say?
>
> EBONY and Jet went from "Negro" to "Black" - because "Negro" has a
> capital? - and from "white" to "White" - because "Black" has a
> capital? - but, as the oldsters retire, more and more
> "African-American" is beginning to creep into their pages.
>
> Sigh!
>
> --
> -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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