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This list is far from comprehensive, but will hopefully serve as a starting point for you to examine your own language.Īpologies to Hall and Oates. As long as we’re reevaluating racist American foundations, our language shouldn’t escape direct scrutiny. Plenty of other everyday words and phrases have had their racist origins obscured by time. This column has previously examined the deeply racist connotation of the word thug, and yet Donald Trump wasn’t the least bit bashful in his all-caps proclamation that Minneapolis protesters were “THUGS” (in a tweet that Twitter soon hid because it violated the company’s rules against glorifying violence).īut that’s just the beginning. As people march and protest across the country, including in Philadelphia, racism in all forms, including language, is the subject of a long-overdue conversation.
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The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has raised our national consciousness about the racist systems that our country was built upon. The good news? We’re all paying more attention to this, including the Angry Grammarian. Let’s start with the bad news: Racism is embedded in almost every institution in America, and language is no exception. Catch a Nigger by the toe.Editor’s note: Please be aware offensive terms are repeated here solely for the purpose of identifying and unpacking them honestly. If you will excuse the use here of the openly racist reference: Eenie, meanie, miney, moe. If Justin Bieber & Sean Kingston have "cleaned it up" in their song, most Americans of my generation (early post WWII, pre-Civil Rights movement) will understand the connection. The "caller" (the person doing the "random" picking and reciting the verse) points to the persons or things in the group with each emphasized syllable of the rhyme. You should understand that this originates from a racist children's rhyme used in picking members of a team, or items from a group, or whatever (Wikipedia calls this a "counting rhyme").