Name a weird bigot slur and its... "story"

[MemphisVol]

Growing up in the 60s and being a 'wordy', I was always fascinated by some of the names, etc., and where the hell they could have come from. I never did discover many of the stories until the web got jumping, but we're still so politically-correct that there's lots out there I've never seen an explanation for....


To start things off, there's the mysterious 'gook'. This one came about thanks to the lesser-known half of the Spanish American War- the half in the Phillipines. In both Cuba and the Phillipines, there were home-grown rebel forces in mid-revolution. We talked our way in with lots of 'brothers in freedom' BS, then played, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," on them. Spelled phonetically, the name of the revolutionary army & party in the Phillipines were the Gooks. The (Goeuques?), unlike the Cubans, fought back hard and burned us good in the early days. It was very much like Vietnam for a while, except that our forces were allowed to do anything they wanted to crush the Gooks and they spared no brutality.

The name spread as a slur because most of the troops sent had never travelled 20 miles from home. After the war, a good number of them- just to give them something to do- were sent to guard the railroad building projects. Their actual instructions boiled down more to 'guard those shifty chinese, who make up most of the work gangs.' Almost automatically, and probably because all Asians looked the same to the country-boy idiots, the Phillipines vets called the workers gooks, and the name stuck. What's more, the reasoning (sic) stuck, and ever since, if they are any kind of Asian, no matter how different they appear, no matter how different their cultures, are Gooks.

 

[milohimself]

Interesting stuff. Got any more etymology on racist terms?

 

[Hoosier_Vol]

This thread could get ugly!

 

[milohimself]

Nah, I think it's alright. Using racist slurs is wrong, but I don't see the harm in learning about how they came about.

 

[MemphisVol]

Especially if they're talked about in terms of, like... that zoo guy who used to show up on Johnny Carson and show off weird animals and their bizarre behavior....


Another example is WOP. Most of the big immigrations in the 19th & earth 20th Cs were dominated by the Irish. The Italians, however, had some real biggies. New York got the bulk of them- even those that arrived elsewhere. Given how easy it was to sneak into this country before WWII, a whole lot of those Italian immigrants didn't wait for official approval. Though you wouldn't guess it, Italians were actually the group who motivated the changes that ultimately became the modern INS enforcement approach.

At the time, though, the regular cops in NY who had to deal with either the illegals or neighborhoods where the presence of illegals spawned little motivation to talk to cops, called the illegals WOPs for short. Officially they were Individuals WithOut Papers.

In effect, it was just like "*******": A perfectly accurate (if less poetic), unoffensive description which, thanks to how and why it came to be used became a word artificially invested with ugliness.

 

[MemphisVol]

Okay, now somebody else give. Off the top of my head... how about Kike? None of the jewish friends I've thought to ask over the years had a clue- though none of them were that religious... Most of the anti-jew stuff is fairly straightforward, but that one's just got to have a weird story behind it.

 

[milohimself]

I wouldn't know the background of that word.

 

[MemphisVol]

Well name your own, then, damnit.

Personally, I'd kill to know where honky came from. I mean most of them are kind've strange words to an english ear because they often have roots in the target culture/ race/ religion- and in America that usually means non-english speaking (therefore most often not-white and not-protestant, too). But both the honky callers & callees were and will always be American born and bread. People who couldn't say or hear the word "honky" without knowing it wasn't just a weird word, but an outright comedy wordy. It's kind've like calling somebody that other dwarf they tried not to let Snow White find out about......

 

[BHAMVOLFAN]

Originally posted by MemphisVol@Jul 4, 2005 11:24 PM
Well name your own, then, damnit.

Personally, I'd kill to know where honky came from.  I mean most of them are kind've strange words to an english ear because they often have roots in the target culture/ race/ religion- and in America that usually means non-english speaking (therefore most often not-white and not-protestant, too).  But both the honky callers & callees were and will always be American born and bread.  People who couldn't say or hear the word "honky" without knowing it wasn't just a weird word, but an outright comedy wordy.  It's kind've like calling somebody that other dwarf they tried not to let Snow White find out about......

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Honky comes from bohunk and hunky, derogatory terms for Bohemian, Hungarian, and Polish immigrants that came into use around the turn of the century. According to Robert Hendrickson, author of the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, black workers in Chicago meat-packing plants picked up the term from white workers and began applying it indiscriminately to all Caucasians. Probably thought they all looked alike.

 

[MemphisVol]

Originally posted by BHAMVOLFAN@Jul 5, 2005 10:16 PM
Honky comes from bohunk and hunky, derogatory terms for Bohemian, Hungarian, and Polish immigrants that came into use around the turn of the century. According to Robert Hendrickson, author of the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, black workers in Chicago meat-packing plants picked up the term from white workers and began applying it indiscriminately to all Caucasians. Probably thought they all looked alike.

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Bless you, and your little dog too.


I knew the bohemian and polish immigrants got some weird bigot slurs of their own, but I would've never remotely guessed that was a root for honky.

 

[volinbham]

Am I right in assuming "cracker" is a reference to slave masters (whips)? I heard that somewhere.

 

[volinbham]

Found this on a website. Origin of Yankee

According to Random House, it was first used by Dutch New Yorkers in the mid- to late-1600s to describe the English in Connecticut. They were called "John Cheese" by those in NY, which in Dutch read "Jan Kees." With the "j" being pronounced with a scandinavian "y" sound, this became bastardized into "yankees" by others. It was mistaken for a plural, and the word "yankee" was born to describe someone living in CT. It then spread in meaning over the years to mean northerners and then all Americans (outside the US).
According to Alan Lomax (1915- , American folksong collector), the word was in popular use not only nationally, but at also at least in Britain by the time of the Revolutionary War. That's when the term "yankee doodle" was coined by British troops as a satire upon the bumpkin American militia they defeated in early battles of the American Revolutionary War. Later on, as one British soldier wrote, `After the affair at Bunker's Hill, Americans glory in it.' By the way, despite much research, the origin of the melody "Yankee Doodle Dandy" has never been precisely determined.

 

[volinbham]

Originally posted by MemphisVol@Jul 4, 2005 10:44 PM
Okay, now somebody else give.  Off the top of my head... how about Kike?  None of the jewish friends I've thought to ask over the years had a clue- though none of them were that religious...  Most of the anti-jew stuff is fairly straightforward, but that one's just got to have a weird story behind it.

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From a website.

There are many explanations:
* One explanation is that the word kike originates from the word
"keikl", in Yiddish, which means "circle". At Ellis Island, one of
the main immigration checkin points, immigrants were intially
grouped by religion and language in order to make it easier for
them to communicate with each other and also to be identified more
quickly by waiting relatives there to meet them. Christians were
marked off with an 'X' which was likely really supposed to be a
cross; Jews were marked with a circle which was really likely
supposed to be the Star of David. It is easy to see how the staff
could become sloppy at drawing these symbols as 'x' and 'o'. The
word "keikl" was used by the Jews making fun of the poorly drawn
star; they referred to each other as being 'circles'.
Unfortunately, from this innocent usage, the term aquired a
derogatory meaning.
Robert L. Chapman's "American Slang" has a slight variation on the
above. Rather than saying the circle was a mark made by the staff
to symbolize the Star-of-David, the book says: "Jews who could not
sign their names would make a circle." This suggests that it was
Jews themselves who started using the circle- presumably to avoid
the X which was reminiscent of a cross.
* According to "Our Crowd", by Stephen Birmingham, the term kike was
actually coined as a putdown by assimilated American German Jews
for their Eastrern-European bretheren: "Because many Russian
[Jewish] names ended in 'ki', they were called 'kikes'- a German
Jewish contribution to the American vernacular. (Germans are also
said to have invented the term "Bohunk", referring to Jews from
Bohemia.)". Following this explanation, the name kike was
deliberately coined to put-down Jews- but only a certain subset of
Jews. The name then proceeded to be co-opted by Gentiles and used
against all Jews in general.
* Robert L. Chapman's "American Slang" also notes that the word
could be a reference to "Ike", a nickname for Isaac.

 

[MemphisVol]

Originally posted by volinbham@Jul 7, 2005 10:53 PM
Am I right in assuming "cracker" is a reference to slave masters (whips)?  I heard that somewhere.

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I've never heard that, and since 'cracker' is apparently a word people argue alot about the origins of, I figure I would've if it was true.

All I've ever been able to find out about 'cracker' is that:

A: It's NOT about 'white as a saltine'

B: It refers ONLY to White a$$holes from Georgia

C: Nobody knows why 'B' is true, but just about everybody has heard that rule.