# And so the "code words" begin.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [September 4, 2008, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066 "2008-09-04T22:11:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 9
### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/161 "2008-09-08T00:05:04Z")
> [@ArizonaTeach](#):
>
> Yes, I happen to agree that is was vastly inappropriate and not code at all (no snark - being serious).
>
> Saying Sarah Palin should stay home with her kids - now **that’s** code (that was a little snarky).
Who has said that about Palin?
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### Author:  [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/162 "2008-09-08T00:10:45Z")
“Uppity” most definitely has a racist connotation in the South. Even if it’s used for white people, it’s meant to ironically compare a white guy to a n\_\_\_\_\_ that doesn’t know his place.
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### Author:  [@elelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elelle)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/163 "2008-09-08T00:13:07Z")
> [@Li\_l\_Pluck](#):
>
> (Sorry, missed the edit window.)
>
> Well, except for Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, and the late Richard Pryor. And perhaps some others with whom I might not be familiar.
Replying to this post, but also have read all the posts between here and there:
Personal story: Driving around MSPI with my friend Calvin, great blues drummer, and a big muscled black guy. I’m a small, white, red-headed gal. We pulled into a little country store, and went in to buy snacks; soda, hoop cheese and crackers. After a bit, it was obvious that the white store owners were disturbed by our presence together,guys in the back started making nasty cracks. About Calvin’s dark skinness, and my female sleazy ways for being a friend of his. We had to get out of there, and I thought of just not buying the snacks, but got pissed about the insult, and paid, saying," Y’all could try to be more decent, y’now? Thanks." I’m sure they had a fine laugh after, but it was a point of not being cowed down.
When we got back in the car, and safely speeding away, Calvin laughed and said “Man, elle, you’re really a Bright Nigger, light,( referring to my paleness) but man, that’s your new name :“Bright Nigger”. I said that wouldn’t work, because the N word really makes me cringe, because I’d heard it used in the standard venomous ways, that he might not have even heard, behind the white veil. This was the mid 90’s, so a bit before the current rampant use of"Nigga”.
"OK, well how about “Bright Negro”? he said. “That’s just kinda stupid”, I said. Calvin;"Then, how bout “Bright Ney Ney?” Both laughing. Me: “OK, that’ll work .” And that was his good nick for me. I understood the honorary niceness of that.
Really," Nigger" for black people, and “Bitch, Cunt, Whore” for women, are very loaded Bomb words, intended to hurt at a deep level, to rob someone of equal status. When those terms are used by people who the Bomb is directed at, that usage serves to defuse that bomb, mostly by humor and constant use. If you’re using it in that sense, it’s well-used, serving a purpose of diffusing the pain caused by the words. As Nzinga says, those words don’t hold the same power anymore, because of that use. If you’re using them to be a hipster, when you never had the target the bomb word has painted on you, you’re showing your ass. When you use them to their traditional bomb affect, you are an asshole
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/164 "2008-09-08T00:57:51Z")
> [@Li\_l\_Pluck](#):
>
> A
> Trust me, the Southerners on this board know, as we live and breathe, what “uppity” \*is most likely meant to imply \*when it’s applied to black people. Especially by white, Southern congressmen.
Heck, this lifelong New England resident, a product of a lily-white suburb of Boston, knows “uppity” goes with “nigger” like salt pork goes with baked beans.
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### Author:  [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/165 "2008-09-08T01:01:20Z")
Uppity goes with “nigger” like “you” goes with “moron.”
“You,” by itself, means not a whole lot.
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/166 "2008-09-08T01:06:04Z")
> [@elelle](#):
>
> When those terms are used by people who the Bomb is directed at, that usage serves to defuse that bomb, mostly by humor and constant use.
You put me in mind of an evening in Boston, back in the late '70s if I remember correctly, when a friend and I were standing near the Public Library at Copley Square and saw a small group of people approaching along the other side of the street, chanting something. As they got closer we were able to make out the words: "We’re here! We’re queer! We’re **faaabulous!** _Get **used** to it!"_
And that, chilluns, was my introduction to the gay rights movement in person, to their determined taking back of the word from the haters. That was a long time before _Queer Eye For The Straight Guy_, and to this day I get a small thrill of delighted wonder at the in-your-face defiant pride of those marchers.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/167 "2008-09-08T01:13:03Z")
That’s exactly it. It’s like someone from SF or NY calling a guy ‘faaabulous’. Perfect analogy!
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### Author:  [@nd\_n8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nd_n8)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/168 "2008-09-08T01:24:25Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#):
>
> It is funny because white folks get mad when we say it. Maybe you sort of have to hear the actual act, when Paul Mooney does it, to really get the joke.
It’s all good Nzinga, I know you’re not laughing at me you’re laughing with me, I get it. And if you’re laughing at me, then it’s because I’m funny anyway. If my posts cracked you up then you should hear me when I’m not in a racial discussion. 😛
And you have a great point, listening to Paul Mooney does put it in perspective, and is hilarious.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZOGMhuVLjTA?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque
Link disabled because it’s definately NSFW.
“Because I like a little salt on my cracker…”
ROTFLMAO
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### Author:  [@DudleyGarrett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DudleyGarrett)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/169 "2008-09-08T01:28:30Z")
> [@Nzinga\_Seated](#):
>
> Actually, yeah. Harm done to me. I hate that I come across as the kind of person you don’t want to associate with. I didn’t mean to laugh at all white people. Only the ones that wanted to hurt us with a word that doesn’t hold the same power anymore.
>
> It bothers me that you think less of me; Koxinga, too. I do tend to get overly hype sometimes, about race issues. I’m gonna work on it, though.
I think I understand your position more now with this post. I don’t think I’m in the white group to which you’re referring, but I’m not oblivious enough to think such groups don’t exist. When I wrote what I wrote, I didn’t actually “you” as in you, **Nzinga, Seated**. I meant it in the general “you.”
Incidentally, my best friend in the world is a black guy, and we’ve (he, his wife, my wife and me) had a lot of discussions on race. We crack jokes about the stereotypes and laugh and then we’ve had some serious discussions. One thing I said once that he said really opened his eyes went something like this: For all the pain that blacks have felt through their turbulent history, there is a substantial amount of shame that whites share for that pain. I don’t care for the term “white guilt,” because I don’t think it’s entirely accurate; it’s more like “white shame.” His views on things are without anger and without getting bent out of shape on words chosen but more of the meaning behind them. I’d love to have discussions like that here, but every single thread turns into a pile-on by the Offenderati.
I don’t know why I feel shameful, to be honest. But I think it’s kind of like having a relative who murdered a member of someone else’s family, then you having to be in court and looking at the family. You didn’t do anything wrong, but damned are you ashamed to be there, representing their loved one’s killer.
Whenever I hear the word “nigger,” it plucks my shame chord for sure.
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### Author:  [@DudleyGarrett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DudleyGarrett)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/170 "2008-09-08T01:29:34Z")
> [@DianaG](#):
>
> Okay, this is some bullshit, especially after this:
> As a rule, any insult that you’d also consider applying to a \*white \*man is fine, as insults go.
>
> I have no patience for this “What, you people got everything you wanted, and now _I’m_ oppressed because I can’t use the N word” shit.
Pardon me, but what in the fuck are you talking about?
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### Author:  [@Auntbeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Auntbeast)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/171 "2008-09-08T05:00:54Z")
This is interesting to me because I just had a conversation with my husband about how I need to stop using the phrase “good boy!” even though I mean it the way you say it to a dog when they get the trick right. It is one thing that I might mean it that way, but if I say it to a black man, he might take it way, way wronger than I mean it, therefore, I need to stop using that phrase.
I will echo the sentiments upthread that there is zero possibility that the person using the phrase “uppity” and “boy” in relation to Barack Obama did not completely, totally and with their whole heart know exactly what the fuck they were implying.
Half my genetics come from Georgia, and I can not name one person on that side of the family that could make that mistake “accidentally.” It is far more likely that the next Bigfoot they find in the hills of northern Georgia is actually one of my relatives.
No, fucking, way. I’m not buying it. Neither should you.
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### Author:  [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)
#### Post date: [September 8, 2008, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-so-the-code-words-begin/462066/172 "2008-09-08T10:48:04Z")
> [@DudleyGarrett](#):
>
> Pardon me, but what in the fuck are you talking about?
I interpreted this post…
> [@DudleyGarrett](#):
>
> Are there any negative adjectives that can be applied to a black man by a white man that CAN’T be construed as racist?
… as the _ **“If I say ANYTHING negative about a black person, I get called a racist. You can’t even criticize THOSE PEOPLE!”** _ whining that inevitably arises in these sort of conversations. With a sleep-facilitated cooler head, I apologize if that’s not what you meant.
The second part of that post was not aimed at you specifically (which is completely unclear, so I apologize for that as well), but addresses an attitude I encounter way too often, which can be summed up as “Pity the poor white man, so unjustly oppressed by these new rules that don’t allow him to act with the complete impunity God so clearly intended for him.”
You know, the whole “Why don’t all those women and minorities just man up and get a thicker skin? I didn’t MEAN nuthin’ by it!’ And besides, this is AMERICA, I can say what I want!!!” schtick.
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