“…the dead can’t answer slurs, but I’m here.” Anita Brookner 1938-, British novelist & art historian

I learned something new today about a certain ethnic slur. I thought the word I used was innocuous, but it was at it turns out, a slur of some seventy-fives years ago. Now, but almost forgotten, except by a few older woman where I work, who proceeded to scold me for my insensitivity. My familiarity with it goes back to my grandmother to used it, as I thought, to describe the "rag man" who frequented the neighborhood shouting out "rags, paper rags."

My first abrupt introduction to insensitive ethnic slurs when I overheard a white man address several black day maids at a hotel "How is it going girls?" The sharp retort came back, "We ain't girls Jack, we're ladies!" The expression "girl" and "boy" goes back to the days of slavery in the South. It was still used in the years before the Civil Rights Moment in a 1941 song written by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon, and played by Glenn Miller--"Pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?" The "boy" referred to the train porter.

Put the words "pardon me boy " in your search engine and you will still see today the many uses of this expression in advertising, print media etc. Purists may raise their hackles when the word "Roy" is substituted for "boy" but in today's politically correct world it saves a lot of hurt feelings.

Current fashion and political correctness may be responsible for a few other "corrections" such the infrequent use of the word "niggardly" in print and the media, and the discontinued required reading of the book Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad.

Some people who teased me about my German heritage have called me a "Kraut" and even "Nazi", but it still hurts. To make it even worse the term nazi is entering the dictionary in such expressions as "ski nazi." But that's the subject for another blog. So until then, behave.

K.