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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] The longest post yet-Anger
  • Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 18:24:52 EST


> > but I noticed that when she herself
> spoke she was talking about "the negro people".
>

A good number of people on this list are old enough to remember when the
common term was "colored" people. From this era we have the National
Association
for Advancement of Colored People. When it was time to make an issue of that
word in order to demonstrate our underlying racism, the accepted term became
"negro" and hence we have the United Negro College Fund. Then for a time the
correct term was Afro-American. Jesse Jackson in a fit of utter ignorance
protested that we call people Italian Americans and and German Americans and
so he
made a non-existent racist connection with Afro-Americans and insisted that
it be African-Americans. Ignorant, I say, because it has long been
Franco-American, Sino-American, Russo-American, etc.

A business associate from England was telling me once how he hardly
recognized his native hamlet. After being un the US for a few years, he
returned there
and went ot a local restaurant and ordered black coffee. There was silence
and stares. He learned that (and I am not making this up) the proper term
was
non-white coffee.

I'm only willing to take this silliness so far. I've got a big chip on my
own shoulder when it comes to Southern and Mountain culture, so I try to take
a
deep breath and listen. Real offense I'm willing to be corrected over. But
I
draw the line at silliness.




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