rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

I predict the existence of the thread would prompt a lot of posts that will basically be micro-/aggressions to readers. I regret my anecdotal post above already, because I felt really shocked and bad when it happened and it wasn't even about me. I don't want that experience to continue to hurt others on the internet.

Hmm. I'm just thinking about that thing where hateful speech is so seamlessly absorbed into our culture and seemingly defanged with time and distance that it becomes very easy to thoughtlessly use words and phrases that seem completely innocuous but which have sinister origins. Like I only just learned about 'peanut gallery'.

What exactly did you just learn?

Originally a derogatory reference to unwanted commentary from African Americans relegated to the cheap seats.

You should probably go unlearn that.

If you have some information to share...

I'd been thinking that it might not be a bad idea to have a thread for words whose racist/xenophobic origins you were not previously aware (cue the story about that one time when I was a kid and had the misfortune of learning what a particular Devo song title meant only after I'd walked through a room singing it while my mom's friend (whose son has Down Syndrome) was visiting).

just had to look up if "Blockhead" had any meaning I was previously unaware of

xp The cheapest seats in vaudeville theatres (IE the highest) were also the ones that saw the most consumption of peanuts, the cheapest of the snack foods. Which also made them more likely to heckle by throwing them.

Right, I get that. But also: who do you imagine the holders of the cheapest seats were during the heyday of vaudeville?

I imagine that a significant percentage were African American, but I'm not sure that's how this works, unless you're claiming that all class-based insults are inherently racist?

I think the suggestion is that all the theaters were segregated and that a whites-only theater had a peanut gallery too? eg we are aaalllllll classist

i don't know how reputable this site is but it seemed fairly well written and researched (which suggests it's not racial)
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/03/origin-phrase-peanut-gallery/

just had to look up if "Blockhead" had any meaning I was previously unaware of

― frogbs

not a long history of racist insults in charlie brown. "dennis the menace", otoh...

Not only are there untold numbers of racist epithets out there, both current and half-forgotten, but there are also untold numbers of folk etymologies that misidentify the origins of words. So any thread devoted to delving into the racist origins of certain words or phrases is bound to contain about equal amounts of information and misinformation. Let's drop the idea.

^ yeah bad folk etymologies are a menace

In lieu of further discussion here, can anyone recommend a book/books on the subject?

just had to look up if "Blockhead" had any meaning I was previously unaware of

― frogbs

not a long history of racist insults in charlie brown. "dennis the menace", otoh...

spooks and ghosts

another questionable one - getting "the itis"

one time i let "niggardly" slip in conversation and felt really bad about it afterwards

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/kimberley-strassel-mueller-may-have-trump-in-his-sights-but-hes-been-very-good-to-obama-and-his-team

This might not be the right thread to bring this up in (so many racism threads...), but I find this developing story of bigoted ass showing interesting.

https://www.houstonpress.com/news/franci-neely-appears-in-viral-video-yelling-at-a-family-taking-birthday-pictures-11228931

It's been bouncing around local social media this week. The person in question was initially thought to be some rich rando, but as the linked story reveals, this person is actually a pretty major Houston socialite, somebody who's on a load of Charity honor roles and has, like, buildings and shit named after them.

Are you really wondering if that was racist?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/NINTCHDBPICT000481760748.jpg?w=960

WHAT THE DUCK? Waitrose axes ‘racist’ chocolate Easter ducklings after customers complain dark brown figure is labelled ‘ugly’

The Trio of Easter Ducklings were temporarily pulled from shelves while new labelling was put on packaging

WAITROSE has apologised over a "racist" Easter duckling product after customers complained the dark chocolate one was labelled "ugly".

The £8 box set of white, milk and dark chocolate ducklings upset some people for being marked "fluffy", "crispy" and "ugly".

It was temporarily pulled from shelves by the high-end supermarket so the packaging could be redesigned after a "small number" of customers were offended.

The Waitrose Trio of Chocolate Easter Ducklings are now available to buy again in shops and online.

Although not made explicitly clear by supermarket bosses, it's thought that the name "ugly" may have been chosen as a reference to the classic fairy tale song The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen.

The song is about a "stubby and brown" duckling which is mocked and shamed by other ducklings, but grows into a beautiful white swan.

One Twitter user shared a picture of the chocolate product and wrote: "Crispy, Fluffy and Ugly - trio of Easter ducklings at Waitrose.

"Ugly is the dark one on the right.

"Overheard women saying 'this is not right', I agree, doesn't look good at all.

"Thousands of other options... Why ugly?"

A Waitrose spokesperson said: "We are sorry for any upset caused by the name of this product, it was absolutely not our intention to cause any offence.

"We removed the product from sale several weeks ago while we changed the labelling and our ducklings are now back on sale."

Isn't the whole point of Andersen's tale – the reference is abundantly clear – that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover?

A bird by its plumage, rather. Wouldn't want this to get too self-reflexive.

Crispy duckling?

I need a ruling on this one:

https://i.imgur.com/INoxIHk.jpg

First time I heard this "play on words" was 30 years ago from one of my dad's friends. It was the punchline to a racist joke about a black man who dropped his wheel of cheese down the side of the hill, whereupon my dad's friend picked it up and carried it home.

I haven't heard that joke told again since 1989.

BUT I have heard plenty of well-meaning folks make the same pun since then. It's always made me a little uncomfortable, since I remember hearing that joke, but also because it's a "play on words" revolving around a supposed African American dialect. However, I see the pun made so often, I'm starting to wonder if this is just me. Kinda like how I grew up thinking the word "fart" was a profanity, but now you just about hear it said in Disney movies.

When I was a child, everyone who told me this joke used a Mexican boy as the character who dropped the cheese. 🤔

(IOW, it's not just you)

Having never heard the joke in spoken form, it took me a while to figure it out. But I did. It's racist.

I saw an ad for Subway yesterday where the slogan was iirc "NACHO AVERAGE SANDWICH" and am kind of amazed that a whole marketing team and whoever else thought that works as a collection of words you see for a few seconds at a time in the street

puns don't really work that way

I don't get the 'speed zone' thing

A pun on Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson

especially since a 'speed zone' invariably denotes a lower speed limit and that is exactly what the ad is supposed to be promoting.

I'm hungry for a big plate of notyo's

hmm... this one's iffy.

When I was a child, everyone who told me this joke used a Mexican boy as the character who dropped the cheese. 🤔

See the irony here for me is that the joke's never been about Hispanics.

Machismo = excessive manliness

Machismo = excessive cheesiness

Nachismo, gah

Nachismo = excessive racialness

btw, don't do this to nachos you guys.

personally i wouldna chose to

You know what I'm taco about.

i guess the question here is can a bad pun overcome its historically racialized context once that context becomes, uh, highly attenuated

Somebody's response to an advert for an upcoming Africa day being 'when is Ireland Day' & not liking being told March 17th.
Going on to say it's a religious day when I thought it was a widespread commercial event across most of the globe.

ireland is my favorite continent

(xp) Celebrating a Welshman, of course.

I think I first heard the nacho/not-your thing on Seinfeld when Elaine said it. I didn't think of it as a dialect joke.

yeah I’ve never heard it framed as a dialect thing. it was always just a regular old pun.