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epitome of incomprehensibility
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Not personal shame. More like shameful family_histories. But maybe shame isn't personal anyway? Not only. It requires context.
It started in German class. We were watching a short video called "Schwarzfahrer," a word that literally means black rider, but not like in The_Lord_of_the_Rings; it's someone who rides public transport without paying.
A_film_you_should_see and everything will make sense, maybe.
Anyway, the main characters are a younger Black man and older White woman who starts this racist rant against him and immigrants in general - apparently they simultaneously steal jobs and refuse to work, which is some accomplishment!
Despite the topic, the short packs some humour, and our class tried to unpack that while speaking German. The prof switched to our common tongue to talk about the words for Black people in English, and how that changes. How it was politely "negro" once, before "coloured person" and "African-American," and now "Black" is most common, but would seem rude as a noun instead of an adjective.
Then Eli after class went up to the professor, saying, not angrily but firmly, he preferred if she didn't use? show? the n-word. I didn't hear all of this, as I was packing up my things, but I registered a sort of annoyance: why was another Kirsten-coloured person saying this? wasn't that putting Pamela on the spot, who was also standing there?? as if she had to be the representative of Black Canadians and yay or nay this???
The thing was, I hadn't heard all of what Eli had said, whether he meant THAT N-word, which had appeared in the video's English subtitles, or Gerlinde saying the related "negro."
But for being put on the spot, it was my turn; Prof. G. turned to me and asked what was my opinion as a linguist. I affirmed that the word's history made it particularly insulting, but I was thinking of the one I wouldn't say, and maybe G. didn't understand.
...
I told this all to David later, asking him why I'd been annoyed with Eli, as if he could interpret my every thought. He said, "Maybe this is what people mean by 'woke' in the negative sense. Oversensitive. Picking at unimportant things."
I objected, "But that 'woke' is often code for right-wing objections to actual social justice, not the lip-service performativity they're supposedly criticizing" (less eloquently).
"Well, that doesn't mean I have to subscribe to THAT usage if it's a useful way to describe something."
"But it sounds silly. If I said it, I would sound like a kid. So I wouldn't say 'woke' either in a good or bad way."
"Why not?"
"Because it's cringe and not lit," I grinned, glib with my [ɪ] sounds. "But anyway..." and I told him a version of the following.
...
My Aunt Sarah made a binder of her research into her and Dad's family, which she gave my brother several years ago for Christmas. The family-tree content, though mere printouts from ancestry.com, appealed to my nerdiness. I also tried to convince my brother that Geoffrey Chaucer was there, but he wasn't buying it.
Anyway, for a while I didn't get to looking at the back section with reprints of documents and records of passed-down stories.
Most of them didn't have much money and therefore few official records earlier than 1800. But the Dodge branch had some of both, including a deed from Richard Dodge to his son Daniel (also my dad's name) in 1703.
He was my great x 9 grandfather, 11 generations ago.
But it still felt very...uncomfortable...to read the last sentence of this deed: "Likewise I give Daniel my negro boy and all cattle, horses, sheep, swing, money, goods, and chattels not otherwise disposed of."
It wasn't the word "negro" that was the problem here. Maybe the word "boy" - not because he was an actual child then, but because this was a way of infantilizing Black people to justify enslaving them. The text in "Genealogy of the Dodge Family of Essex Co. Mass: 1629-1894" (thrilling title) states: "About two years before his death, he [Richard] divided his property among his children, giving his negro man, Mingo, to the eldest son."
So he has a name there, at least. But it sounds like a nickname one of the dodgy Dodges would give him, thinking it sounded African. I don't know.
People making other people slaves is worse than whatever words. But words can also evoke the dehumanization, the belittling, used to excuse that. (Putting a man on a property list along with "goods and chattels not otherwise disposed of"!!)
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