This is the claim by the head of a local branch of the NAACP. Anything in this? (It does not seem to have originated as a racial slur, but you never know if it might have subsequently acquired that connotation).
They’re talking bollocks it’s not racist at all. They are probably just claiming it is to get the guy in trouble.
Not racial, according to a documentary on the history of English I saw on the BBC. It originated in America, meaning people on the river who couldn’t afford to buy tickets on the steam paddle boats. They went to river on rafts, using something called a “riff” to paddle. The term riff-raff originated from riff raft. Incidently, the people on the paddle steamer were called “high felutin’”, which originated from the way the steam flue was high above the ship.
It appears to have been used in ways similar to an ethnic slur during an election campaign in Israel.
From here:
Also, from this page, we find this:
Emphasis mine.
I suppose riffraff, when (and if) used in the context of ‘foreigners in our midst’, could be considered an ethnic slur. Just not one against any particular ethnicity.
Perhaps if the Rabbi were less niggardly regarding the Orthodox culture, these misunderstandings could be avoided.
Thanks. I needed the laugh!
Riffraff isn’t racist. I think what the NAACP is trying to claim that when the rabbi used the term riffraff, he was feeling superior toward the audience. And because the audience included a significant portion of African Americans, the rabbi was feeling superior to them. And since racism is the belief that your race is superior to other races, the rabbi was being racist when he referred to a crowd consisting of a significan number of African Americans as “riff raff”.
I would just remind you that in the old “Underdog” cartoon, Underdog was white, while his arch-nemesis Riff-Raff was black.
Coincidence???
yeeeeesh!
Riffraff comes from an old French phrase, rif et raf, meaning “completely.” (Rif meant to take away or to plunder or to scratch; raffe was a verb indicating the motion of sweeping something up.)
It wandered away from its original meaning to indicate the sort of chaff and detritus that would need to be swept up, then was applied, by analogy, to lower class people, particularly in the sense of “rabble.”
It had entered English from French prior to the initial English settlements in North America. With the rigid class society that developed in the South, it maintained its currency in that region, although it was applied to white rabble at least as often as (perhaps more often than) it was applied to blacks.
On reading the article, I would guess that the objection to riffraff was to a perception that a majority of people being so described were perceived to be black (and, possibly, poor?). That is a point that those community leaders should work out, together.
If NAACP leader Waters actually believes that “riffraff” is intrinsically racist, he is simply wrong.
Have we just entered a time warp where every single word is a racial slur? What a disappointment. I’d rather see a candyman. One would think that some people want you to live like you’re under sedation. Perhaps I’ll just slink off to become a creature of the night.
“Riffraff” isn’t racist - it’s classist.
“Ahm Riff-Raff Sam, the raffiest Riff to ever riff a Raff!”
To clarify: it wasn’t the rabbi who used the term riff-raff - it was a member of the school board.
I don’t think it is racist to denigrate any group of people who happen to be of a different color or ethnic origin. It’s only if you denigrate them on the basis of their being a different color or ethnic origin.
Anyway, that’s not how I interpreted the guy’s remarks. See also: Tempers rise over
racial insensitivity
I looked it up in the Hebrew dictionary, but the three closest words I found were:
rifref — ‘to blink; to move, flutter’
rifruf — ‘fluttering, hovering’
rafrefet — ‘mud, dirt, mire’
Make of those what you will.
I remember doing the Time Warp!
Well, somebody had to make the Rocky Horror joke, it might as well have been me!
Er, yeah, Otto, and that somebody was Dogface.
I always understood riff-raff to mean people of low demenor and questionable morals. Criminals, con-artists, pan-handlers and the like. No underlying race subtext. A close synonym would be “shady characters”.
This web site has a fairly comprehensive history of the word. Race, be it black, white, African or even Southern USA doesn’t even get a mention.
It backs up my initial reaction that the complaint is BS and is just the sort of clap-trap that sullies real complaints of actual racism.
Whether use of the word here was insulting, however, is entirely another matter. Maybe it was, or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was justified and they were riff-raff. But it has nothing to do with anyone’s race.
Very creative, whether you invented this etymology yourself or it came from the BBC. Just the same, I’ll stick with Webster’s definition, from the French rif et raf, explained accurately above by tomndebb.
NAACP = Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People. Yet, if anyone ELSE refers to “colored people”, even Americans of African heritage, that is considered ignorant at best, virulently racist at medium and a call to combat at worst.
It could be argued that the NAACP is itself racist. After all, they are only interested in the advancement of one specific “race” of people, giving the distinct impression that they apparently therefore hold that race as superior to the others. Sorry, it had to be said–especially in this context of trying to change the language to the point where they alone get to determine what words are racist slurs, regardless of whether they actually are slurs or not.
The ultimate irony for me is that even thought you may not say “colored people”, you get to refer to “people of color” all day long, even on TV!! Huh?? <sound of slapping forehead and then slowly dragging palm down front of face in puzzlement> And while we’re making sense, it bears noting that EVERYONE is a person of color. Some color. I’ve never seen a transparent person (althought I suppose that could be because I looked right through them).
Based on the context of the situation, I would wager the people who were being unruly, and therefore called “riff-raff”, were black people. Does anyone know?