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Even in the South we do not think of Black People in those terms. Stirring the pot is not good.
What? Who is race baiting? Not me. I have a very multiracial family and so we interact a lot with extended family whom we also happen to love - and they often don't look much like me. But conversations about racism and that sort of thing do interest me because I genuinely appreciate the input from folks with other perspectives.
What? Who is race baiting? Not me. I have a very multiracial family and so we interact a lot with extended family whom we also happen to love - and they often don't look much like me. But conversations about racism and that sort of thing do interest me because I genuinely appreciate the input from folks with other perspectives.
"Race-baiting" is often thrown out by people who want to continue being racist without being called on it.
I'd just ignore it and go on. I think this is a fascinating discussion.
I can remember coming home from college and feeling oh, so sophisticated around my country bumpkin parents. I said something about "people of color" and my Dad told me it would be best not to say that as folks don't like being called "colored people," as it hurts their hearts.
Then there was "Jew them down" used when you were negotiating a price on an item.
Yes, I thought about this phrase too - it wasn't one my family used but I do hear it from time to time and it always jars my nerves - I am not Jewish but I can see how it might offend someone.
Someone else mentioned "sell you down the river," and while this is another term that wasn't used in my family, and I don't use it either, thinking about it, I can see that it might have racist undertones.
Here's an interesting phrase that I only recently found out offends some people. "..went south," as in, "Wow, that situation went south really fast," or "Next thing I knew, our relationship had gone south and I was filing for divorce." I have used that phrase a lot - and I am from the South and enjoy my southern heritage. But I always just thought it meant, "went down" because "south" is "down" on a map. Now, several times in fact in the past ten years or so, someone has told me that as a southerner this is offensive to them, because they think it implies that all things Southern are bad or inferior. What?
"Race-baiting" is often thrown out by people who want to continue being racist without being called on it.
I'd just ignore it and go on. I think this is a fascinating discussion.
I can remember coming home from college and feeling oh, so sophisticated around my country bumpkin parents. I said something about "people of color" and my Dad told me it would be best not to say that as folks don't like being called "colored people," as it hurts their hearts.
That's a cool story.
One of my earliest memories is of chasing my brother around and around the car in the church parking lot (in Japan in fact - my Air Force dad was stationed there when I was a kid) and calling him the N word over and over in a singsong voice. Now - I had no idea what that word meant - I had just heard some kid in the neighborhood say it, I guess. Anyway, next thing I knew, my very Southern dad had materialized out of nowhere and grabbed me and pushed me up against the car and got down to eye level with me and said, "YOUNG LADY, YOU WILL NEVER USE THAT WORD AGAIN - DO YOU HEAR ME?"
I grew up with the phrase "n***** rigged" which was usually used as a compliment. I don't use it.
My friend just said that one recently, referring to the way her ex-husband did the electrical wiring in her house. It was not a compliment, but not an insult, either. It's doing something the best way you can with what you have.
Then there was "Jew them down" used when you were negotiating a price on an item.
Oh yeah - I had that phrase used on me by a customer when I was an antiques dealer. I politely informed him that I am Jewish - that cut the conversation short real fast! (Plus he paid full price for the item too.)
But those two terms - "N-rigged" and "Jew you down," are DEFINITELY racist in the sense that they are tied directly to racist stereotypes. To me, those differ from phrases like "Cotton picking" or even "coon fingering" which seem innocent to me.
Like I said, my grandmother, her family, and all their neighbors of every skin tone picked cotton "back in the day." So did my husband's ancestors (who are also white, and in his case, from Louisiana). This was considered hard work, hence the phrase used in place of a "harsher" word, but it wasn't considered to be work based on the color of a person's skin - it was just plain old hard work out in the fields - work that poor, rural folks of any skin tone had to do to scratch out a living. And it must have really been hellacious work since both my grandmother and my mother in law talked about it as being really, really hard backbreaking work that made their fingers bleed.
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