The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #134052 Message #3049943
Posted By: Lox
09-Dec-10 - 05:33 PM
Thread Name: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
Subject: RE: BS: Racial Slurs in Quotations
I disagree with that definiton of "whitey".
I would put "whitey" in the same category as "the man".
When "whitey" has been used by black poets or musicians, it has been used in this context.
"the man" represented self serving and unsympathetic white authority.
The plantation owner was "whitey", the Ku Klux Klan was "whitey", and today Dick Cheney is definitely "whitey".
"the man" later went on to mean authority generally as white groups like bikers etc began to borrow from black speech and culture etc, but it has a definite black root.
Here's an example of how "whitey" was used.
It isn't a poem about you or me, its a poem that attempts to convey a feeling, contemporary to that time, that many Black Americans had, that though he might live in the same town, "whitey" might as well be on the moon for all the chance that black people had of sharing his lifestyle.
"whitey" was a ghetto word, that was sometimes said in anger, and on some occasions even with violence.
But, (forget ballpark), it does not inhabit the same universe or have anything like the same grotesque deformed hideous perverse power, connotations or meaning as the word "nigger".