When I was in second grade 62 years ago we were required one day to tear from our music books Stephen Foster’s sentimental song Old Black Joe. This unusual demand – akin, I thought, to book-burnings in Nazi Germany – was justified, we were told sternly, because the word “black,” was a horrid, vicious term never to be applied to other people.
The proper descriptor for those of sub-Saharan African ancestry was “colored people.” But over the years that phrase has also become offensive, presumably because it recalls the word “colored” posted on racially segregated facilities. The currently approved term has been transposed to “persons (or people) of color,” except in the organizational name National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
At the same time, growing up in the New York area, I was taught to enunciate “knee-grow,” and never to use what is now called the “N-word.” But when I worked summers as a teenager in Georgia, I heard both African-American and local white companions routinely use the currently forbidden pronunciation without a trace of disrespect, animosity or malice.
I retained my Yankee pronunciation, but understood the alternative – at least at that particular time – to be simply ethnic dialect that some white people had adopted.
Substantiating that observation, the “N-word” was described in my Webster’s Collegiate dictionary published in 1951 as “a substandard term. . .often used familiarly.”
In marked contrast, the 1986 edition defined it as: “Negro – usually taken to be offensive,” and a later Unabridged noted, “a vulgar offensive term of hostility and contempt.” Webster’s II New College dictionary of 2005 does not contain the word. Apparently, in 56 years the “N-word” has become so foul as to have been purged from our written language.
The fact that some African-Americans still use the word among themselves in the earlier convivial sense, but are deeply aggrieved if Caucasians use it, suggests the change in meaning might have been contrived for strategic social reasons. How better to suggest victimization than to create a hateful intent behind what previously was a relatively innocent, although “substandard,” term?
As a child I was told there were other words to be shunned. The designation “native” applied to aboriginal people was considered degrading, and the word “immigrant” was identified as malicious and discriminatory, never to be spoken in polite company. Likewise, the words “foreign” and “foreigner” had hostile connotations.
As I recall, people who immigrated to North America after 1492 A.D. were referred to in our Social Studies classes as “colonists,” “pioneers,” and “settlers,” but never “immigrants.” Today the relatively new phrase “illegal alien” is criticized as not merely humiliating but clearly “racist,” and is to be replaced with “undocumented worker” – despite the contradictory evidence that some people who enter our country without authorization carry forged documents, and may not intend to work.
I am sad – as I think we all should be – that some words cause some people pain. All of us probably have been taught “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” That simplistic idea has served me fairly well through my life, but apparently does not work for many other people.
I remember as a young boy being called “bastard” by an antagonistic little fellow. When I asked my mother what the word meant she told me it referred to someone whose mother and father were not married. “Why would he say that?” I asked, “You and Dad are married.” She replied, “He just wanted to hurt your feelings.”
I saw no reason for that, and concluded the boy either had me confused with someone else, or was demented. Thus my feelings were no more hurt then than when I was called “honkey” and “wallaby” in the Army, “gringo” and “paddy” in Mexico, or “big nose” and “round eyes” in China, because those terms were to me of no consequence, and therefore devoid of emotional impact.
I wish the old “sticks and stones” ideal worked for those who are hurt by rude words. But perhaps some people simply complain to make others feel sorry for them, or deliberately seek offense to imply that others should somehow be indebted to them.
I understand now there are movements to ban the state songs Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, My Old Kentucky Home, and Florida’s The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home), presumably because the original lyrics included the word “darkey” that currently reflects racial prejudice and therefore causes mental anguish. I believe there was no intention originally to hurt anyone’s feelings.
On the contrary, like many old American songs, those three tended to glamorize humble lifestyles – as the lifestyles of people like my own dispossessed and distressed ancestors from Holland, England, Scotland, and Ireland are being glamorized in novels and movies today.
Now, 62 years after I destroyed Old Black Joe as ethnically prejudiced, the word “black” is no longer insulting but accepted with pride, regardless of a person’s actual pigmentation, and the word “native” (as in “Native American”) is no longer considered offensive but laudatory.
So although changing or prohibiting the words we use and tearing songs out of books can provide solace to some people, in the long run experience seems to suggest that 62 years from now today’s hurtful words will have changed again, and that Virginia, Kentucky and Florida might even be able to resurrect their traditional state songs.
Stuart Clark Rogers is retired Clinical Professor of Marketing, University of Denver, and author of “Marketing Strategies, Tactics, and Techniques,” published by Quorum Books.
