Re: Whiteness?

Roger Mills wrote:

> Adrian Morgan wrote:
> -->Oh, there was a shift from Negro to Black?
>         Indeed there was; along about mid-60s, I'd say.  IIRC M.L.King Jr.
> still used Negro, but the younger generation (black & white) shifted to
> Black-- Black Power, Black is Beautiful etc.
>         Within my lifetime, polite Northern usage has gone from darkie (rare
> & mildly affectionate) to colored or formal Negro, to Black (where I'm still
> stuck) to Afro-/African-American (too many syllables for my taste).
Here in Texas, "darkie" is as unacceptable as "nigger", and has a certain
patronizing overlay, but sounds extremely dated. "Nigger" is absolutely taboo
as elsewhere. "Colored" is still used by some elderly people without a particularly
negative connotation.  I remember my grandfather using that during the '80s, and
to my knowledge he harbored no prejudice against black people.

> The N-word has always been highly pejorative. An elderly Southern lady of my
> acquaintance still uses darkie/colored for those few she likes, N... for the
> many  she doesn't.
That's actually a fairly common distinction among racists in the South.  My
nextdoor neighbors used to use "black" for the 'good' people of color, and
'nigger' for the 'bad'.  These were the same people who, as children, played
a game called 'nigger-knocking', which consisted of knocking on doors and
then running away.  (Yes, they had many other extremely questionable beliefs,
to put it lightly, and most of the other neighbors didn't and don't find them terribly
enjoyable to be around usually.)

> Some "educated" Southerners, who simply couldn't manage
> to enunciate Negro, used -- and still do-- Nigra, hardly an improvement over
> N.... though I suppose they think so.
This is not actually a different word -- it's simply "negro" operating under normal
dialectal soundshifts.  In many areas of the South, final /ou/ in polysyllabic words,
mostly of native English vocabulary, gets reduced to schwa. My mom, originally
from Waco, usually doesn't say /fAlou/ for <follow>, but /fAl@/.  Hispanic loan
terms, like <hidalgo>, <barrio>, <rodeo>, etc. show /ou/ as expected.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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