[Ads-l] The NY Times prints "nigger" ...
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Sep 15 00:20:37 UTC 2016
> On Sep 14, 2016, at 7:29 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> 1. A stupid or worthless person. Obs.
>
> 1908 Kenneth McGaffey _The Sorrows of a Show Girl_ (Chicago: J. I. Austen)
> 17: Some old pappy guy out in Chi.... I don't know who or what this old
> wop is that made this crack.
>
> 2. An Italian.
>
> 1912 Rex Beach _The Net_ (N.Y.: Harper) 154: Do you see that...wop next to
> Cesar Maruffi?
>
> 1913 _Saturday Eve. Post_ (March 25) 10: He had eaten...a banana snatched
> from the stand of a somnolent "wop."
>
> [Etc.]
>
> (Also, any person of Southern or Central European descent; the Italian
> language.)
>
Not to be confused with wogs, reputed to start at Calais. Perhaps that's now official doctrine, given Brexit.
LH
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 5:16 PM, Joel Berson <berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> and "wetback" and "chink" also. Today, in "A [Racially ] Charged Title. A
>> Canceled Show. Now a Cal State Official Resigns." [Bracketed "Racially" on
>> paper, but not in electrons.] By Andrew R. Chow. Page C5/1 in New England
>> edition.
>>
>> "Michele Roberge, the director of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at
>> California State University, Long Beach, resigned last week after the
>> university told her to cancel a campus performance of a racially charged
>> show."
>>
>> "The play, “N*W*C,” whose full title is three racial slurs, stars three
>> actors of African-American, Asian and Latino descent [not in that order!]
>> as they reflect on their conflicted experience with race in America. The
>> slurs are used in an attempt to deflate them, according to a 2007 New York
>> Times interview with the show’s creators. The performance was scheduled for
>> Sept. 29."...
>>
>> "The play, written by Allan Axibal, Rafael Agustín and Miles Gregley, had
>> its debut in 2007. The three authors have been performing it steadily on
>> campuses across the country, including a sold-out performance on the Long
>> Beach campus last year. While the title of the show (the initials stand for
>> 'nigger,' 'wetback' and 'chink') was initially criticized by the Long Beach
>> branch of the N.A.A.C.P., Ms. Roberge said there were no live protests
>> before or after the performance."
>>
>> (A more racially-offensive W than "wetback" would have been "wop,"
>> although I suppose that might have required dating the play 100 years
>> earlier. As a side note, however, the OED dates "wop" to 1919 and
>> "wetback" to only 10 years later -- the latter perhaps an outlier, since
>> the next quotation is 1972.)
>>
>> Joel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=CwIFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=aLEr40ajrQxmfxMgtI4B4jTH23SJrr_S4vIrB8DYXvY&s=tm4OjGTKyj6AJlWpoysqWjpL4MAksgtMl8ptfuXH5JY&e=
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