****** in the woodpile.

[The Atheist]

I used to think it, but have changed my mind. You won't change the diehards, but others will. If open racism is accepted ("No Blacks, No Irish, No Gypsies" signs in bars for example) then the next generation will grow up feeling that's fine until they maybe decide to challenge it.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough - I don't think institutionalised racism is a good thing.

If you don't grow up surrounded by racist attitudes, then you are unlikely to develop them later. Non-acceptance of casual racism would make a difference.

Yet Don Black's own son was able to outgrow it.

I know he's only one example, but he's a good, extreme one. He was a complete racist until he actually met some Jews & blacks.

There is also the "fake it to make it" approach, where pretending emotions actually leads to them.

Does that actually happen?

 

[Craig B]

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough - I don't think institutionalised racism is a good thing.



Yet Don Black's own son was able to outgrow it.

I know he's only one example, but he's a good, extreme one. He was a complete racist until he actually met some Jews & blacks

There are people who carry on being complete racists even after they actually meet some Jews and Blacks.

 

[Gilbert Syndrome]

The point is that he's an unintelligent lout, and that is mostly my impression of the kind of people who used the n-word back in the 1970s. It just marked the person as low-class.

The point is not to knock Andy Capp--I loved that strip. But would I want to be that type of person? No thanks.

Poor Andy Capp, lol. I feel Alf Garnett would be a better example, though, as others have said. I don't recall Andy being much of a dick, well, maybe to his suffering wife!

 

[jimbob]

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough - I don't think institutionalised racism is a good thing.

I wasn't responding to you as though that was the case - I read you as questioning the efficacy rather than the intent.

Also I was talking about social pressures, which are generally more effective - drink driving in the UK at least is a good example, it was illegal for a long time, but it fell when it became socially unacceptable in many circles.

Yet Don Black's own son was able to outgrow it.


I know he's only one example, but he's a good, extreme one. He was a complete racist until he actually met some Jews & blacks.

That is the converse, and it does happen quite a lot. In the UK, racist attitudes tend to be more common in more where there aren't many non-whites But I really doubt that people would go the other way, except in very odd situations

Does that actually happen?

I'd guess that a lot of charismatic Christians play along and eventually start believing. "Slaying in the spirit" is a bit like this.

 

[Noztradamus]

Is this thread meant to exclude the USA? Shouldn't it be in SI/CE?

There's a different standard in the USA, perhaps because our racial battles were more prominent earlier. Terms that were acceptable in the USA in the 30s to 50s, albeit eschewed in "polite company" are nearly totally banned in common usage now. The N-word is the most famous, but the f-word for gay people, d-word for lesbians, spick, beaner, chink, wetback, trannie, pollack, kike,... etc... are all pretty much considered bigoted comments at worst and culturally/sociologically insensitive at best.

The Aussies and Kiwis are the last holdout, I've found. It's probably from the blood rushing to their heads having to hang upside down on the bottom of the earth, but the "didn't mean nothin' by it, it's just what we've always called 'em" stubborn defense is still entrenched.

Times change... get with 'em.

This, and no. The American tendency to elevate ordinary if slightly crude words to triggers terms should not be encouraged by the English speaking peoples.



And it is a ordinary word. The English neger is cognate with the French negre and Spanish negro

 

[TragicMonkey]

This, and no. The American tendency to elevate ordinary if slightly crude words to triggers terms should not be encouraged by the English speaking peoples.

It's not unique to America. "Bloody" carries different weight in the US vs the UK, for one example.

 

[quadraginta]

This, and no. The American tendency to elevate ordinary if slightly crude words to triggers terms should not be encouraged by the English speaking peoples.

Are you suggesting that there are no such terms in any of the other English speaking countries? No words which at some time in the past were acceptable even in "polite" society (maybe when polite society wasn't quite as polite) which have, over time, become less acceptable?

Why do you single out Americans? The word in question occupies a somewhat unique position in the American psyche because of a series of unique and pivotal events in American history.

Sure, it is going to be viewed differently in other places, where such a weight of historical onus does not exist.

There are no analogues to this anywhere else?

And it is a ordinary word. The English neger is cognate with the French negre and Spanish negro

So what? All words are "ordinary" words when viewed etymologically.

This does not mean that events cannot give them additional connotations not originally part of their formation. The meaning of words and the connotations are not static.

The swastika used to be just an "ordinary" good luck symbol.

Times change.

 

[Foolmewunz]

This, and no. The American tendency to elevate ordinary if slightly crude words to triggers terms should not be encouraged by the English speaking peoples.



And it is a ordinary word. The English neger is cognate with the French negre and Spanish negro

We're going to have to agree to disagree, a not uncommon occurrence.

It's not an ordinary word in the USA, just as kaffir is not an ordinary word in South Africa. It has a whole lot of history and baggage.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I am reminded of the story about the movie Dam Busters. Wing Commander Guy Gibson had a black Lab named "******", who was a darling of the Lancaster squadrons being trained for the eponymous dam attacks. He would accompany Gibson on training flights, and hung out with the pilots. He had a reputation for liking his beer. (Yeah. The dog.)

The dog was popular enough that his name was used as the code word to signal the success of the mission against the Möhne Dam, " -. .. --. --. . .-.". (I hope I just didn't get in trouble for trying to evade the auto-censor. )

By tragic coincidence the dog was killed by an automobile the night before that mission.

All in all this made it somewhat inevitable that the dog would become a notable character in both the book published in 1951 about the raids and the movie that was made from it only four years after the book came out.

The dog's name was used ... unaltered ... in both the book and the movie without causing any particular notice. As one of the actors in the film commented in an interview about the movie half a century later, when asked if anybody had made any comments about the name when the movie was being made, "No, none at all. Political correctness wasn't even invented, and an awful lot of black dogs were called ******."

This changed with airings of the movie decades later, starting with an ITV showing in the late 90s, in which all references to the dog's name were cut.

Many people were not pleased, and ITV blamed it on an overzealous underling.

Since then showings of the movie have ranged from leaving it alone to dubbing in alternate names. "Trigger" has been used as a replacement.

(But they still aired the Morse Code signal "-. .. --. --. . .-." without change. )

I think this type of situation is quite an interesting one. I would tend towards the idea that given it was the name of the dog at the time and that the movie is supposed to be historical then it would be perfectly acceptable to use the name.

On the other hand, the name of the dog is completely irrelevant to the story and it could just as easily have been called Rover without changing anything of importance. So there is absolutely no real need to include the name in the movie.

That being the case I would probably err on the side of leaving it out if it is going to offend some people.

Of course in the case of this MP she has no excuse and her choice of expression reflects very badly on her. There is still far too much of this casual BS floating around for it just to be brushed off as nothing. At the same time I would probably say resignation is a step too far.

 

[Samson]

I was most interested in Agatha's post.
In a real world we engage happily with disparate people.
Joan Withers explains how executive boards perform with increasing profitability as diversity increases.
I will post shortly an interview where she encourages women to have plastic surgery to better contest boardroom positions.

 

[Ian Osborne]

I think this type of situation is quite an interesting one. I would tend towards the idea that given it was the name of the dog at the time and that the movie is supposed to be historical then it would be perfectly acceptable to use the name.

On the other hand, the name of the dog is completely irrelevant to the story and it could just as easily have been called Rover without changing anything of importance. So there is absolutely no real need to include the name in the movie.

That being the case I would probably err on the side of leaving it out if it is going to offend some people.

I'd leave it out for the sake of preserving historical accuracy. That word was a pretty common name for a black labrador in the Forties, and certainly wouldn't have provoked a negative reaction, or even interest, from those who heard it. Today, however, it would really stand out, and leave moviegoers wondering why a bunch of racists in the RAF using that word drew no comment from their comrades or superiors. As you rightly say, the dog's name isn't central to the story, so dropping his actual name and calling him something which raises no eyebrows now, just like his real moniker didn't then, would make the movie more historically accessible to the casual observer.

 

[The Don]

How about "Racism in the Tory party is like the horsemeat in the lasagne"?

My suggestion that the Conservatives wanted to return to the 1950's with all that meant for members of ethnic minorities and homosexuals was sufficiently incredible that it made it to someone's sig.

 

[fuelair]

Bob001 only offered you a few examples, which happened to relate to classrooms. This was part of the most recent furor over the book, because of its use as a study example in American literature.

Maybe this will be more enlightening.

​

If you refer to that link you will learn that it was banned from the Public Library of Concord, MA as far back as 1885, and from the children's section of the Brooklyn Public Library in 1902.

I seem to recall having seen somewhere an ALA compilation of the many times and places where Huck had been successfully banned, as well as those where the attempt to ban it had been made. But my first cursory attempt to locate that on the web for this post was unsuccessful.

Be assured, it has not been objected to only for use in classroom studies. In fact, that is relatively recent. It has been banned in school and public libraries, and many attempts have been made to ban it in others.

One thing which I find interesting is the various different reasons for the banning.

For example. The two early public library bannings I mentioned above were not because of the use of uncomfortable or potentially divisive words like the "N" word, which nobody saw any problems with because they were common parlance at the time, but rather for depictions of coarse language and behavior which might exert a bad influence on and encourage imitation by the children who read it.

Can't find that ALA list either, but, very good item on Huck here: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~acareywe/huck.html

 

[quadraginta]

I'd leave it out for the sake of preserving historical accuracy. That word was a pretty common name for a black labrador in the Forties, and certainly wouldn't have provoked a negative reaction, or even interest, from those who heard it. Today, however, it would really stand out, and leave moviegoers wondering why a bunch of racists in the RAF using that word drew no comment from their comrades or superiors. As you rightly say, the dog's name isn't central to the story, so dropping his actual name and calling him something which raises no eyebrows now, just like his real moniker didn't then, would make the movie more historically accessible to the casual observer.

Through some mysterious synchronicity (or possibly coincidence) there was an airing of the 1974 version of Huckleberry Finn on one of the cable channels a few days ago.

I noticed that they had no probablem including the use of the "N" word. For literary accuracy, I guess. It was produced by Reader's Digest, after all.

I'm not sure why they bothered, since this was a musical version of the story, and that alone made literary accuracy something of a moot point.

But as I watched I tried to recall if there had been any particular furor about that when the movie came out. I was unable to.

Possibly the sight of Harvey Korman and David Wayne on a raft on the Mississippi singing about being royalty left viewers in such a state of shock that nothing else in the movie seemed all that bad by comparison.

 

[commandlinegamer]

I'd leave it out for the sake of preserving historical accuracy. That word was a pretty common name for a black labrador in the Forties, and certainly wouldn't have provoked a negative reaction, or even interest, from those who heard it. Today, however, it would really stand out, and leave moviegoers wondering why a bunch of racists in the RAF using that word drew no comment from their comrades or superiors. As you rightly say, the dog's name isn't central to the story, so dropping his actual name and calling him something which raises no eyebrows now, just like his real moniker didn't then, would make the movie more historically accessible to the casual observer.

Leaving the dog out is a trivial issue, compared to the fact that the word was also the codename for a successful strike on one of the dams.

 

[applecorped]

I know it is hard to believe these days, but some people rethink the errors of their youth and change.

In the early 1940s, Byrd recruited 150 of his friends and associates to create a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Sophia, West Virginia.

According to Byrd, a Klan official told him, "You have a talent for leadership, Bob ... The country needs young men like you in the leadership of the nation." When it came time to elect the top officer (Exalted Cyclops) in the local Klan unit, Byrd won unanimously.

In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to a Grand Wizard stating, "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."

28 in 1946. Still using theN word in 2001, at the youthful age of 83.

 

[Noztradamus]

And I can recall that we studied this in high school

Noöne developed any prejudice against Cockneys

http://manybooks.net/original_covers/c/conradjo/conradjo1773117731-8.jpg

 

[Graham2001]

I think this type of situation is quite an interesting one. I would tend towards the idea that given it was the name of the dog at the time and that the movie is supposed to be historical then it would be perfectly acceptable to use the name.

To quote a recent 'Publishers note' on the ebook version of a 1990's era WWII novel:

This book is set during World War II, and includes views and language on nationality and ethnicity that reflect those common at the time. The publisher has retained this terminology in order to preserve the integrity of the text.

I think that is a reasonable statement, even if it does make me wonder whether they would alter the text if they could have done so without people noticing.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

Leaving the dog out is a trivial issue, compared to the fact that the word was also the codename for a successful strike on one of the dams.

Which is also trivial since the precise word used is irrelevant. It could just as easily have been banana or sponge.

 

[Ian Osborne]

Which is also trivial since the precise word used is irrelevant. It could just as easily have been banana or sponge.

You beat me to it. The word was used in honour of the dog, which was run over and killed on the day of the mission. If the movie called the mutt 'Digger' or 'Trigger' or such, they'd just use that word as the code for a successful raid too.