We already have a bunch of other threads specifically about that, anyway. Here’s one from last month.
James T. Haley’s Afro-American Encyclopedia gives a taxonomy of ancestry that shows how deep the supposed science of racism went.
Mulatto, one-half black, white and Negro; Quarteron (Quadroon), one-fourth black, white and mulatto; Metis, or Metif, one-eighth black, white and quarteron; Meamelouc, one-sixteenth black, white and metis; Demi-meamelouc, one-thirty-second black, white and meanelouc; Sang-mele, one-sixty-fourth black, white and demi-meamelouc; Griffe, three-fourths black, Negro and mulatto; Marabou, five-eighths black, mulatto and griffe; Sacatra, seven-eighths black, griffe and Negro. All these varieties exist in New Orleans, and experts pretend to be able to distinguish them.
The 640-page tome was a compilation of the achievements of the “African-American” race meant to give ammunition against the so-called “experts”.
What’s brown and rhymes with Snoop?
Dr. Dre
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
It took me a minute to parse what those divisions were referring to, until I figured out it was saying first the total admixture and then second what coupling would produce that admixture. E.G., Quadroon, one-fourth black (white and mulatto).
I think at this point we’re way too many generations past being able to specify an exact mix of European and African ancestry. A hundred and eighty years ago it might have been more possible.
Eh, by the time you’re down to 1/64, there’s no possible way you could detect it, either by physical traits or by records. Probably not any way by the time you’re at 1/16.
To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law and custom a negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white comrade,
- “Pudd’nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain
Doesn’t get much more random than this. I heard this on a sports show a little while ago. Nah, can’t be, I thought. Finally got around to looking it up and…
In 1982, Buffer began his career as a ring announcer. By 1983, he was announcing all boxing matches promoted by Bob Arum’s Top Rank on ESPN, which gave him a national identity at a time when ring announcers were strictly locally hired talent. By 1984, Buffer developed the catchphrase “Let’s get ready to rumble!” in his announcing, which gained enormous popularity. He began the process of obtaining a federal trademark for the phrase in the 1980s, acquiring it in 1992. Consequently, Buffer has earned in excess of $400 million with the license for his trademark.
My bold.
j
He found a niche and monetized the hell out of it.
It’s widely known that before the Civil War, enslaved people in the United States were sometimes able to escape to freedom in Canada. Today I learned that at one point, some went the other way.
Slavery was legal in Upper Canada until 1819, but it was illegal after 1787 in the Northwest Territory and the territories and states that were formed from it. In or before 1807, two two enslaved men escaped from Windsor, Upper Canada (now Ontario) to Michigan. In the ensuing legal case, United States Judge for the Territory of Michigan, Augustus Woodward, ruled that any man “coming into this Territory is by law of the land a freeman.”
It worked the other way as well. Light-skinned people with few blacks in their history could “pass” as whites and get the legal rights and civil protections that were default standard for whites. This was sometimes resented by darker-skinned blacks, who saw this as a rejection of who they were.
Older works of popular culture often referred to “high yellow” people, another name for blacks with light skin. They were somehow supposed to have yellow undertones to their skin. Some people have claimed that the inspiration for the popular song “The Yellow Rose of Texas” was a “mulatto” girl at the Battle for San Jacinto. Doubtful. The original lyrics were heavily revised when it was revived in the 20th century because it was a minstrel tune sung from the perspective of a “darkey.”
The Wikipedia links I gave open up a world most 21st century whites are totally unfamiliar with.
I finally found out what O.K. stands for!
We are all familiar with the acronyms that we use in general conversations either in person or online just for the ease of conversation via abreviations.
Such acronyms include:
LOL
KFC
IHOP
But O.K. could be the oldest one on record that predates the computer age by over 150 years.
Some people might assume that O.K. is not even an acronym, because it is frequently spelled Okay.
In the Boston Morning Post, on March 23, 1839, O.K. made it’s first appearance.
It stands for:
“oll Korrect” or “all correct”
It was used by railroad engineers (the designers, not the train drivers). People who reviewed the drawings would write “all correct” on it to signify approval. That sometimes became “oll korrect” as a meta humor nerd joke which became shortened to o.k.
A lot of what we think of as starting with the internet like FWIW or IMO really date back decades earlier with shorthand and note taking.
The Master spoke:
https://www.straightdope.com/21341673/what-does-ok-stand-for
It is more fun to make up bullshit.
A farmer cooked up an acorn mash but got distracted by other things and forgot about it. The mash fermented, and then the percheron got into it. A neighbor saw him stumbling about and asked the farmer, “is there something wrong with your plow horse?” The farmer replied, “naw, man, he’s just oak-gay.”
Apparently there was a big (but brief) fad around that time of deliberate misspellings. Compare to the modern usage of “snek” or “doge”. “OK” is the only one that survived.
England played a part in the fad. The satirical poem “Elegy to the Memory of Miss Emily Kay” seems to have been published in 1828 and then widely reprinted in the U.S. for the rest of the century. The poem is more like text-speak, though, with Emily being given as MLE and U for you. The point is that people really love to play with words and since English lends itself easily to the practice, English will always be played with, the pedants be damned.
Too bad it ended; my 733t cow-orkers would have gotten a kick out of that.
I thought it was “1337” ?
Well, it was, but you’re no longer cool.
As long as the word is pronounced “kewl”, I am fine with being excluded. When it gets around to “coo’” again, that is when I will want back in.