*sighs*

[conuly]

Historically, people have invented work songs. Whether or not people actually sang while they worked is up to interpretation, but I suspect at least some people did. It sets a nice rhythm, and it keeps you from being bored stiff while doing boring, repetitive tasks.

So I'm sitting here trying to figure out why a song invented and sung by black slaves is now offensive to black people. Yes, it's talking about slavery - that's what the people were doing when they sang it.

Of course, the comments to the story are enough to make me weep. Sure, white males, they're the most discriminated group in America. Uh-huh. Go tell me another one, why don't you?

Or how about "As far as the 81 year old aunt who has a bad back due to cotton picking, she had a choice to pick the cotton, slavery was banished long before she was born." Riiiiiight. And what else, pray tell, was she to do? Are we to believe she chose that job because she prefered it to the other options? Or maybe her option was to have no job, not pay the bills, starve.... Great. That's a choice, all right!

It's like people just turned off their brains....

Oh, and on the subject of "things Connie doesn't get", when we're in class reading an excerpt from "Kaffir boy", and somebody asks what the word "kaffir" means, and we've been using that damn word all class, and I define it, correctly as the Afrikaner equivilant of "nigger", don't tell me not to use the word "nigger" unless you're saying to everybody else "don't use the word kaffir". I'm not calling you a nigger, or any other sort of slur. I'm using the word as a definition, because that's what the damn word means. I know it's a charged word, but I'll be damned if I'm going to revert to childhood and start calling things "the n-word". I guarantee you that I'm never going to use the word in anything other than a quotative (or, apparently, definitive) fashion, and you know that, so....

Comments

[davidkevin.livejournal.com]

My dad's mom was born in 1901, brought over here from Germany as a baby. She grew up on a farm in Arkansas, and as a child she picked cotton. She started before dawn with an empty sack, stopped at noon just long enough for lunch (a lard and sugar sandwich and a dipper of water from the well), and then continued picking until after dark, dragging a by-then hundred-pound sack behind her.

She was "white", and she had no choice. If she and her siblings didn't pick the cotton, they would have starved, and I'm not talking about "I'm starving, what's for dinner," I mean dying from hunger and malnutrition. She escaped only by marrying my dad's dad.

Chattel slavery isn't the only way labor is forced.

[conuly]

Chattel slavery isn't the only way labor is forced.

Exactly.

[ciara-belle.livejournal.com]

the only people that are discriminated against these days are white males

*eyeroll*

I know people complain about over-PC-ness today, but this is still not true.

I don't get where all these idiots come from. Like, how are they still alive if their brains will only function at such a low level?

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Good for you.

I don't actually know what PaBoC sounds like, but dosh darn folk music is FULL of songs about back-breaking labour with a good beat.

[mhari.livejournal.com]

I know it's a charged word, but I'll be damned if I'm going to revert to childhood and start calling things "the n-word".

I've noticed this before. More than even the most intense sexual taboos, racism is literally the unspeakable. You're not even supposed to allude to it.

Kind of spooky, really.

[conuly]

I know! And I'm not one of those twits going "but black people can say it!" I'm just saying that when I have a reason to say it (say, explaining that, yes, so-and-so *did* say something inappropriate), I can say it instead of having to circumlocate the subject.

[davidkevin.livejournal.com]

My dad's mom was born in 1901, brought over here from Germany as a baby. She grew up on a farm in Arkansas, and as a child she picked cotton. She started before dawn with an empty sack, stopped at noon just long enough for lunch (a lard and sugar sandwich and a dipper of water from the well), and then continued picking until after dark, dragging a by-then hundred-pound sack behind her.

She was "white", and she had no choice. If she and her siblings didn't pick the cotton, they would have starved, and I'm not talking about "I'm starving, what's for dinner," I mean dying from hunger and malnutrition. She escaped only by marrying my dad's dad.

Chattel slavery isn't the only way labor is forced.

[conuly]

Chattel slavery isn't the only way labor is forced.

Exactly.

[ciara-belle.livejournal.com]

the only people that are discriminated against these days are white males

*eyeroll*

I know people complain about over-PC-ness today, but this is still not true.

I don't get where all these idiots come from. Like, how are they still alive if their brains will only function at such a low level?

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Good for you.

I don't actually know what PaBoC sounds like, but dosh darn folk music is FULL of songs about back-breaking labour with a good beat.

[mhari.livejournal.com]

I know it's a charged word, but I'll be damned if I'm going to revert to childhood and start calling things "the n-word".

I've noticed this before. More than even the most intense sexual taboos, racism is literally the unspeakable. You're not even supposed to allude to it.

Kind of spooky, really.

[conuly]

I know! And I'm not one of those twits going "but black people can say it!" I'm just saying that when I have a reason to say it (say, explaining that, yes, so-and-so *did* say something inappropriate), I can say it instead of having to circumlocate the subject.