Random thoughts:
Long day AFTER a long weekend.
Gotta stop going to bed after midnight.
What was Charlotte thinking giving this guy a license to ill?
Cooking’s fun, but I wouldn’t want to do it for a living (except in small doses).
Abby’s been a peach.
Camille is WHACKED! But in a funny way.
Susan is addicted to iTunes.
Do I look fat? I feel fat.
Red? We were supposed to wear red today?
Speaking of red, is redneck a racial slur?
3 Comments
>> Speaking of red, is redneck a racial slur?
Good question, Herb. When I’ve used it, I’ve generally meant it as a slur. Because I think of that term as applying generally to white people, does that make it a racial slur? I never thought of it that way. Then again, some people apply the label to themselves as a point of pride, or at least in an effort to “own” the label, not unlike, say, the way that some African-Americans use the n-word.
I had an interesting conversation once with an African-American friend about the term “cracker”. I always considered “cracker” to be a very specific description of a poor white person from central- or north-Florida. The friend I was talking to had always considered it to be a racial slur against white people.
Hmmmm…
I thought it was interesting that we had a story in the paper on Monday about a guy in Winston-Salem who started a “redneck” dating site on the Internet.
I don’t think “cracker” could ever be a racial slur in my eyes any more after Matthew Broderick’s line in “Biloxi Blues” when, after he told the prostitute that he was from Georgia and she asked him if he was a cracker, he said: “Cracker? Yeah, my whole family’s crackers.”
Every time the word comes up, including references to food, I think of that line and bust out laughin’.
Redneck can be a slur, depending on context. Redneck means the same as cracker, it just came from different parts of the Southland. It was used to describe white sharecroppers, but as we all know it can imply the worst. I find it interesting that so many white Southerners wish to call themselves rednecks when in-fact, they’re not. Wealthy landowners and their families were never called rednecks. Unless, of course, it implies some sort of behavior.
If you called me a redneck I could only agree because as you know I’m the son of a sharecropper. I wouldn’t consider it a slur unless I thought it was intended to be.
Sometime when we’re face to face (others reading might take it out of context) remind me and I’ll tell you a tragic, yet funny story about my grandfather’s use of the N-word. The story helps me keep the whole conversation in perspective.