We have been discussing the expanding number of terms and phrases deemed racist or, in the new lexicon, a form of “microagression” against minority groups. An example this week is found in the decision of the Port Authority in Pittsburgh stripping buses of its new ad campaign after complaints that “Ziggin Zaggin” is racially offensive because it reminds riders of the n-word when read backwards.
The Port Authority that “. . . due to recent complaints about how this message appears when read backward, we have decided to remove the message from our vehicles.” That will take days and added expense. In all honestly, I really did not get the slogan or why it was selected. However, the decision is being debated as to whether we are becoming too prone to injury or offense in our society.
This controversies raise the difficult question of where or how to draw the line when some object to an interpretation or reaction to particular words. I expect some would be surprised to see the word “Naggaz” or “Niggiz” in a reverse image in a car mirror and would take a second look. However, is that enough to deem the slogan offensive?
What do you think?
Source: CBS
Two of my favorite books on our wars have been fairly short. The Civil War one was written by a guy who’d been a 13 year old drummer boy on Sherman’s march to the sea…and I can’t find it just now in my library or I’d cite the title. I think I have too many books and sometimes carelessly re-shelve them our of genre. Anyone who knows this book, remind me of the title, please. The view of a child working in columns of soldiers as a signal man of sorts, along with the buglers, is very clear and revealing. It’s not an “interpretation” per se…the young man was there on the march. The other book, on the Second World War is “Past Forgetting” by Kay Summersby, General Eisenhower’s driver and closest aide at the time of Normandy. It is a first hand insight in to the anguish and tension involved with the invasion and the final decision to go on 06 June, written by a woman I’d say loved Ike but managed to retain perspective. It gives a sense of humanity to that horrible war….just as the little drummer boy did his war. Humanity is an important aspect of all warfare, and is easily forgotten amidst tomes on strategy & tactics. You can get a sense of “being there” from reading such works.
Aridog – when I retired from teaching I gave all my history books to a small school for wayward boys so they could build a library. Included was a volume that consisted of letters of soldiers to their wives, etc regarding the Civil War. I had tried to get my Reader Theatre group to allow me to write a script based on the letters and they said it would never play. A year later Ken Burn’s Civil War came out using the same letters. 🙂
Paul
Shelby Foote’s a fairly good writer and has written much regarding the South. However, his stuff is not without the color of his opinion and no where near authoritative. Just because you agree with his work doesn’t make it biblical, or perhaps, for you, it does. His opinion, my opinion, your opinion, each shared by many.
issac – you haven’t read Shelby Foote’s work so you do not have an opinion to give. Next year, when you finish the books, come back and we will talk.
Confederate battle flag v Stars & Stripes.
Which flag was on the ships bringing in slaves?
Don’t forget that blacks held slaves back then as well as whites.
PC. Another form of intolerance, on steroids.
SamFox
Planet Earth will remain in the catagory of pirate planet so long as humans keep adherence to religion and try to step above others by race or ethnic differences. Some our your territories are civilized but not many.
The League of Galactic Planets will not let you in on our existence for another hundred years or so and will let Planet Earth join when you Earthling crawl out of the sewer.
Paul
A million words or ten million words. Foote empathizes with those affected by the Civil War. As with most things of the ‘past’ they can be seen from multiple perspectives. Mine is that those that fly the Confederate flag do so not out of a reverence for some past glory but for some misguided invention of this or that right. There is a glory in upholding the rights of the individual, the individual state, and the individual political party-unfortunately only two exist in the US. However, the Southern cause regardless of the bravery, sacrifice, and ideological argument, was at the root a fight to keep blacks in slavery. Without the issue of slavery there would have been no Civil War. The rest is window dressing, the same window dressing that can be pulled to obscure the War in Vietnam, the Iraq War, and any other crime committed by a group against another, by any country or race of people. As with most wars and struggles those that march off to defend this or that principle are used by those who typically are driven by economic arguments. If the oligarchs of the South at the time had felt that their economic situation would have benefited by freeing the slaves then they would have done so. The European countries that lead the way and the North did not rely on slavery as much as the South and were a much more comfortable distance from the issue. Perhaps those that lead the way for emancipation would have felt differently if their bread had been buttered in the South. However, slavery was and continues to be evil. The South could hardly have rallied around their economic advantages of their slavery based economy. So they picked the flags that most identify with, freedom, rights, etc. The story is as old as mankind. The flag that they flew represents in all honesty the fight to keep slaves. The rest is merely the necessary lubricant.
Shelby Foote was a prolific writer. I read, years ago, parts of the Civil War, a narrative. I much prefer Doctorow’s ‘The March’. Doctorow is much more the novelist than Foote.
One must always be able to recognize the apology that creeps into one’s history.
issac – when you have finished the entire book, tell me how prejudiced he is. Until then, you really do not have an opinion to stand on. Get back to me in a year when you are finished.
The eternal battle between the I and the WE can be seen in arguments centering on ‘States Rights/Power/Whatever. Somehow the smaller and more localized the group the holier but more forlorn the cause. The cause for maintaining a ‘lifestyle’ in the South up until the middle of the last century was defended and is still defended today, even though an accepted part of that lifestyle was and in some degree continues to be disgusting. The source of racism is founded on one I being worth more than another I. The implementation of racism is when enough I’s get together to defend it. It is what it is and it was what it was. If your great great grandfather fought to preserve a way of life that included slavery then he was no different than the Nazi that felt strongly that the Arian race was enough above the rest of humanity so as to rule it and when necessary enslave it. This is and has been a common thread that has woven its way throughout the history of mankind.
It is nothing more than a societal tail that is slowly evolving out of our desired collective persona. Bubba and the Roadmasters* wailing behind chicken wire at the local tavern with a Confederate battle flag defiantly hanging behind on the wall is either a sign of ignorance and/or stupidity or racism. That is where it belongs, not on a pole over the representation of the WE or government building.
That doesn’t mean it can’t make for lilting adventures in novels and TV documentaries by the likes of Shelby Foote a well known, in some parts of the world, fiction writer who came to prominence when he referenced history for the spines of some of his books.
The place for the Swastika, Confederate flag, and other such emblems of man’s failures is on the bedroom wall of the rebellious adolescent or over the beer, pee, and ammonia wafting out of the men only door.
*Thanks to TW
issac – the day you are invited to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences you can piss on Shelby Foote’s grave. His The Civil War: A Narrative is almost 3000 pages, over 1 million words. The envy has to be gnawing at you.
My first “grown up” trip through the south at age 18, informed me that the Confederacy was no more about states rights than it was about Boo Bear. Jim Crow was horrible and anathema to me who grew up very used to mixing with all hues and ethnicities. My parents were forever taking someone in to help them get on their feet…It’s just what they did and I grew up amongst it. We have our differences, but I can always find some grounds for commonality. I may be a “Pollyanna” on this, but it is a core value to me wherever I’ve lived, even as the almost only white guy in a countries I didn’t initially speak the language. It was initially (among the planter class) about economics & land expansion but morphed in to a race issue and equality under the law. Lincoln’s assassination set those gains of the War back 100+ years….IMO anyway. I am a firm believer in “states rights” so long as they do not betray the equality meme. The voter ID issues of today are nonsense….I watch immigrants just turned citizens vote en mass every election, all with photo ID’s. Call me a liberal conservative I guess. Actually, just call me an “American.” If anything the hard core “ill-liberal left” sponsor dissension, which makes no sense to me.
On the topic of States Rights:
Often it will be spelled: StatesRights!
When you examine the Constitution is delineates State Powers and individual Rights of persons.
The term StatesRights comes in strongest when the federal government sends in the Justice Department and perhaps the FBI to investigate a lynching. The lynchers start ranting about StatesRights!
The reason that the States Rights term is preferred is that it is less offensive than State Power!
The implication is that the federal government is tramping on a state’s right to do something. But really it is a state power. Oh, the state of Mississippi had the power to prosecute those who lynched civil rights workers but they failed to exercise their power and duty. So the feds have to come in.
Read the Constitution.
Yzarc!
You’re correct about state’s rights being hated by the left.
Squeek, Are you born and raised a Longhorn?
Sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you.
@NickS
The Old Confederates were a hundred plus years ahead of the rest of the country in fearing the growth of the federal government. That’s what really p*sses off the left about the flag—the rebellion against the government and encroaching power of the supposed intellectually elite.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Isaac is of course locked into the Yankee mindset regarding the Civil War and the Confederate flag. Shelby Foote knew more about the Civil War than anyone here, and more than just about any other scholar. For some Canadian to poo poo what Foote has to say is beyond ludicrous.
Inmates and criminals are the best @ reading upside down. A file being read by some authority figure w/ an inmate sitting across from them is read by the inmate just a bit more slowly, upside down. I learned to tilt the file back so they couldn’t see it.
DBQ … I suspect your are correct on the evolution of that term [“Spade”].
I skipped it because I doubt most here are as old [worse than dirt] as me. When some accuse me of taking advantage of “White Privilege” I know they did not grow up in my neighborhood, nor under my parents. You learned many of your “manners” back on the block. I miss those days. Sound family and solid friends…for the former I owe everything. I still recall getting my behind kicked by a guy I insulted [named “Tomasi”] with an Italian pejorative. One way or the other, we learned. Now most of us are dead.
Aridog – it would take a trip to a big library to settle this, but I think we are mixing metaphors. Black as the ace of spades and Call a spade a spade. The first describes a color. The second, I think, comes from a period during the end of the 19th century when euphemisms were in fashion. Nothing was called what it was. Instead of saying “You don’t have the guts to do that!” you would say “You don’t have the intestinal fortitude to do that!” To get back to the original and certainly more colorful language, you want to call a spade a spade instead of a digging implement. Today we have sanitary engineers, not janitors. We never got on the band wagon. 😉
“learning to read upside-down and backwards”
Ha. I learned that in the 2nd grade in the mid 50’s My parents were printers and ran a small town newspaper for a while. They did the hot lead, linotype on site. My mother ran the linotype. We set the type and engravings into the galleys and my job was to pick out the big headline letters and words and set them into the galley. Upside down and backwards. Paul is correct….veeeery handy in school.
the racist use of the word “spade”
As I recall, it was “black as the ace of spades” and then got shortened into just spade. Also banned in my family as well.
Karen S [& Issac] … Karen, you are too young to remember the racist use of the word “spade”…however, Issac is right that it isn’t a term that made sense. Never-the-less in the late 40’s and the 50’s, “spade” referred to black men, and it was a banned term in my family’s house.
Same as the term “Jew” [not Jewish] was banned due to the vernacular [common parlance] of those days and the large number of Jewish friends my father had at the time. The shortened version implied a “cheater.” Others banned were the N-word, “Jungle Bunny”, “Spear Chucker”, and similar terms that reflected the racial past of our country. Oddly, though Irish, “Mick” wasn’t banned, but Wop & Dago were. Guess dad cared more for Italians. 🙂
Well, on this backwards stuff, I can sort of understand it. For some reason, I get a little queasy every time I see Nunc pro tunc, which is a legal term meaning, ‘Now, for then.”
🙄
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
DBQ opined …
I think that ISIS is working on this [big disaster] while the US is high centered on Bruce Jenner’s genitals …
Perfectly said.
PS: Scary thread this one….I find myself agreeing with Issac entirely too much 😀