A couple of weeks ago, I encountered some words I had never heard before. I'm not repeating them as they are racist slang terms from the early 30's and were casually tossed around by several characters.
But, what surprised me was the book they were in: the first Nero Wolfe novel from 1934. I've read a lot of books from that era, and had never encountered those before.
My Irish immigrant grandfather would call other Irish-American immigrants "Mic", "Mac" or "Micmacs" -- in my memory, nearly exclusively. He died in the mid 90's when i was a teen and I never thought anything of it until I was reading something on NINA (No Irish Need Apply) in college and realized it was a racist epithet leveled at Irish immigrants by others!
Made me think it was actually him taking back the words, which was kind of surprising/interesting.
And then i remembered he referred to most people by racial terms -- my Italian immigrant grandmother/his wife's family were all dago's--and think, eh, maybe Grampee was just super racist
My Irish immigrant grandfather would call other Irish-American immigrants "Mic", "Mac" or "Micmacs" -- in my memory, nearly exclusively. He died in the mid 90's when i was a teen and I never thought anything of it until I was reading something on NINA (No Irish Need Apply) in college and realized it was a racist epithet leveled at Irish immigrants by others!
Made me think it was actually him taking back the words, which was kind of surprising/interesting.
And then i remembered he referred to most people by racial terms -- my Italian immigrant grandmother/his wife's family were all dago's--and think, eh, maybe Grampee was just super racist
In a similar story, my wife would refer to her family as Hunkys, or talk about certain foods as being Hunky foods. I recently got curious and googled that term and to my shock given the usage I'd heard, it was apparently considered a racial slur.
My search then took me to a post on r/Pittsburgh - it's very much a western PA and surrounding areas thing - in which another confused newcomer to the area was talking about it and 90% of the replies read something like this
"Yeah it's officially a slur but dang it if my family don't call themselves Hunkys with pride and love"
And no one was talking about how it was actually offensive.
I think this is a very common pattern in terms of ethnic nicknames. I've read that lots of the Italian-American community are the same with Guido. In Britain, by and large the once slurs of Taff, Paddy and Jock have become harmless nicknames that are often happily adopted by younger generations. And on and on. It takes real, real work to produce an ethnic nickname that doesn't become fine over a few generations, largely because they just get adopted by so many people who say them with zero spite. At least the cool sounding ones. The rest just get forgotten.
I arrived in Australia in 1979 (from England and after 5 years in New Zealand) and the place was crawling with every nationality you can think of. The local mostly (northern European) white population had different insulting nicknames for each of them, and they had their own derogatory names for the whites (I was a Pom to all of them). Greeks and Italians, for example, referred to the whites as Skips, after the Skippy kid's TV show, while Asian migrants called us all sorts of foul names (there were very few Africa migrants back then). And everyone used abusive language when referring to the Indigenous population, who gave as good as they got.
It was an extremely racist environment by today's standards to and from every direction and so common and casual it was completely accepted, which is why I find it absolutely amazing that I don't hear any of that today, even in private. We have come a long way in a short time.
On the surface the US has done too, except that if you dig in places the NYT doesn't (anything that isn't some kind of upper-class suburbia, where all the journos come from after a stint at some secluded upper class liberal arts college) it's basically the same.
Timeless crass language (descriptions of bodily functions to express strong emotions) is a 10/80/10 split. You'll win some, you'll lose some, and the solid bulk of your audience is probably paying attention to whether the story is any good.
Sex and violence (you didn't ask for this but ...) are time honored ways to hold an audience that is slipping away. Whether you can stand the feeling of dirtiness when you employ it is up to you
Derogatory terms are very tied to their age, say in units of fifty years. Sometimes a term will turn from good to bad to never heard it within one hundred years.
Remember: What Miss Manners prescribes now will be diametrically opposite to what she (he) prescribes in fifty years. We need to sell papers and political strategy statements somehow. Solving actual problems is too hard.
You know what, I think we should never have wiped out Neanderthals. Surely not even the most pantywaist social arbiters could have had an issue with us insulting another species, with their flowery funerals and their peace-loving natures?
A thing that always fills me with dread, it's bad enough if it's somebody that I know, it's much worse conversing with a stranger.
There's constantly a little inner voice urging me to tell them to f*** off.
I arrived in Australia in 1979 (from England and after 5 years in New Zealand) and the place was crawling with every nationality you can think of. The local mostly (northern European) white population had different insulting nicknames for each of them, and they had their own derogatory names for the whites (I was a Pom to all of them). Greeks and Italians, for example, referred to the whites as Skips, after the Skippy kid's TV show, while Asian migrants called us all sorts of foul names (there were very few Africa migrants back then). And everyone used abusive language when referring to the Indigenous population, who gave as good as they got.
It was an extremely racist environment by today's standards to and from every direction and so common and casual it was completely accepted, which is why I find it absolutely amazing that I don't hear any of that today, even in private. We have come a long way in a short time.
The mix and melting pot reminds me of one of the best crushingly racist scenes because it's so anti-melting pot and because it's so honest and forthright. It comes towards the end of, The Good Shephard, which is set in the US in the 50's. The scene is between Matt Damon (Head of CIA counter intel) and Joe Pesci (mob relation) and Pesci asks Damon, who is wonderbread white in the movie, Why he cares. The two lines are something like,
Pesci: "We Italians we got the church and our families. The Irish, their homeland. The Jews, they got their temple and traditions. Even the n-words, they got their music. What'd'you people got?"
Damon: We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.
The mix and melting pot reminds me of one of the best crushingly racist scenes because it's so anti-melting pot and because it's so honest and forthright. It comes towards the end of, The Good Shephard, which is set in the US in the 50's. The scene is between Matt Damon (Head of CIA counter intel) and Joe Pesci (mob relation) and Pesci asks Damon, who is wonderbread white in the movie, Why he cares. The two lines are something like,
Pesci: "We Italians we got the church and our families. The Irish, their homeland. The Jews, they got their temple and traditions. Even the n-words, they got their music. What'd'you people got?"
Damon: We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.
On the one hand, this is xenophobic. On the other, this is a clear statement of assimilation. Immigrant populations stop being separate when the adopt the dominant culture to the extent that the members of that culture can't tell the difference. In most of the US you would have an awful hard time telling that someone was Irish, Jewish or Italian by their speech, culture or mannerisms.
Of course, the dominant culture also internalizes some of that immigrant culture. Thank god for the Italians, or we still wouldn't be eating vegetables in the US.
Wasn't it "We are the United States ..." I should look it up. In any case, I always thought it had nothing to do with race but with what he considered his mission - a bit templar like, "We've been here for hundreds of years etc."
Was he depicted as racist in the movie. It did make the CIA to be terrible and terribly efficient and the Soviets as just nothing, didn't it?
Wasn't it "We are the United States ..." I should look it up. In any case, I always thought it had nothing to do with race but with what he considered his mission - a bit templar like, "We've been here for hundreds of years etc."
Was he depicted as racist in the movie. It did make the CIA to be terrible and terribly efficient and the Soviets as just nothing, didn't it?
It isn't a race thing. Irish isn't a race. Pesci makes a statement about subgroups in the US. Damon's response is about how what he sees as "Americans" are the people that don't see themselves as subgroups.
It isn't a race thing. Irish isn't a race. Pesci makes a statement about subgroups in the US. Damon's response is about how what he sees as "Americans" are the people that don't see themselves as subgroups.
That's a super generous reading of that scene that I don't see the prior narrative supporting, but, sure. Given the age and era they're depicting, and the groups listed, Pesci isn't talking subgroups, he's talking "races" and Damon is the ideological poster child for, America = a country of, by and for anglo-protestant men.
I adore the movie and could talk about it ad nauseum but i think he's presented as a tragic figure able to see the tragedy of his life and unable to change or affect change to avoid that tragedy. Damon's character is based on the real life James Angleton, who was the head of CIA counter-intelligence and who is also a sadly tragic figure.
Eugenics, "breeding", racism and cultural superiority are woven into every facet of the movie and characters. Everything is tradition, birthright and hierarchy. Damon comes from old money, attends Yale, joins Skull and Crossbones and helps found the CIA, but he's Tier 2 Old Money, not Tier 1. He doesn't aspire to Tier 1 Old Money, but he also can't see any other viable life and so that's what he pursues. He marries (into Tier 1 Old Money) due to an accidental pregnancy. He helps found the CIA because what was he gonna do, fight on the front lines? Do you know who his parents are?? He runs counter intelligence because he's trustworthy stock--"we know him". He's trapped, "happy" and repeats the lessons and mindset of hierarchy.
He (head of CIA counter intelligence) is also fooled, multiple times, showcasing the lie of "genetic" superiority.
When he's stationed in Berlin, his secretary (and mistress) is spying on him. They turn a Soviet general, only to later realize that they got played by the Soviets and the man they "turned" is actually a double agent and not even the general they thought. He kills his wife's fiancée, on their wedding day, because he suspects she's a spy.
Is he racist? Yes. He's of his era. There's Anglo white men--and everyone else, and they all fall into neat tiers. Various depictions of Angleton show him as paranoid, competent, an unconfident alcoholic, a company man, a fool in need of a father figure, a worthy opponent and a man convinced of his superiority. Good times!
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