Light and darkness have been metaphors for good and evil from antiquity. It’s covered in any Greek mythology course. It’s also a metaphor in many religions.
A couple basic examples.
Jesus’ resurrection was from the darkness of hell into light.
2 Corinthians 11:14 (New King James Version)
14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.
I don’t think anyone disputes this. It would be interesting to see a cite on absence of a racial element to the phrase, though.
There is a similar kind of phrase in British English: “Play the white man”, meaning “do the right thing”. It would be harder I think to put a non-racial spin on that. Outside of older fiction I have only ever heard it said a couple of times in my life, both times by people who would vehemently deny their obvious racism.
Let me repeat Strassia’s call for a cite.
All of the evidence so far provided here says that the phrase means, “that’s something a white person would do,” with “white person” being European Protestant, as opposed to Jewish, American Indian, African, or some other race that wouldn’t do such nice things.
I would definitely consider it a racist phrase, given both my experience with people who say it and the etymological data provided in the LanguageLog link.
I REALLY hope you were being facetious.
White indicating good is, indeed, an ancient metaphor in European culture. (Although it is interesting that rather than citing an actual reference to white, the quote you selected refer to light rather than white.)
However, as the original link by Inner Stickler demonstrated, its usage in the phrase in question was clearly an association of “goodness” with white people of Northwestern European ancestry. There is no evidence that it was not racial, (or, at least, ethnic), in origin and there is overwhelming evidence that it was racial/ethnic in origin.
My anecdote is
I grew up in the South. How I heard it said was wide not white.
Given “wide” and the contexts I just assumed it was similar to saying “big of you.”
“That was mighty big of you.”
hmmm
A google search brings up a fellow Doper who had similar experiences and understood it in a similar way
In terms of anecdotes, the people with whom I associate have used it in a negative way for forty years, or so. However, it is spoken with an arched eyebrow and a tone of voice that indicates that they are using what had been a compliment as an insult, with the understanding that the target of the phrase, recognizing its racist association, would understand that he or she was being “complimented” for being prejudiced.
= = =
In terms of the OP, when white people of Northwestern European ancestry were not merely dominant, but overwhelmingly dominant, in this country, racial or ethnic slurs were so accepted that few people even paid attention to them. To “jew down” a person while bargaining only became commonly unacceptable in the late 1960s. To “gyp” someone only began to come under polite taboos later than that–and both phrases are still used by many people.
Went back and found it. Exactly. Bay City is a dark place.
I’m 55 and only ever heard the phrase from racists or ignorant people. There may be a way to go, but we’ve evolved.
[QUOTE=brossa]
I’m aware of the racist origins of the term, but nowadays I only hear it in the negative sense - ie someone displaying absolute minimum consideration but feeling entitled to praise. It’s a sarcastic usage. “Yep, that’s like a white dude all right - take the best parts of something, leave the crap bits for everyone else, and expect to be thanked for it.”
eta - making ‘white’ behavior the standard to avoid rather than the one to aspire to.
[/QUOTE]
Brossa’s description is the only way I’ve ever heard it used. It’s like a “verbal eyeroll” to an idiot who thinks they are superior or thinks they’ve done something exemplary, but is not even close.
Almost certainly incorrect.
Roosh…, I believe.
Indeed. I’ve been working my way through the Complete Sherlock Holmes, and I’ve been … amused … by the amount of casual racism in the narrative.
I actually haven’t heard the phrase in quite a long time, but this has been my experience as well. Every time I’ve heard it, it’s been used sarcastically. The few people I’ve heard use it have been people I’m fairly confident aren’t/weren’t racists.
Yep, but it seems somehow more excusable in Doyle’s day compared with 30 or 40 years later.
“‘You know what those niggers are–that ignorant!’”
That’s from The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, a classic children’s book not much older than Chandler’s. Civil rights didn’t really get going til the '60s.
By the 1970’s when I became aware of it, it was more like a sarcastic Archie Bunker moment - you try to be complimentary to the other guy while making yourself (or him, or both) seem boorish ignorant racists. Basically, a backhanded compliment.
Just because a character in a novel uses a particular phrase, doesn’t mean he’s speaking for the author.
That being said, I find the phrase offensive. No different than “It’s mighty Christian of you.”
Oh, heck, dig up a copy of Tintin In The Congo if you can. Or Little Black Sambo. Or Our Gang shorts. Jack Benny and Rochester? Amos and Andy? The Golliwog in Noddy? “Eenie Meenie Miney Mo,…” Two Bugs Bunny cartoons not regularly shown nowadays, one involving a black hunter and the other involving a Japanese soldier. Frito Bandito, Speedy Gonzales. “I bin done seen bout everything, when I seen an elephant fly…” Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby (I believe Disney has never reissued Song of the South, and was very embarrassed by Peter Pan)… The fact that Oliver Twist’s Fagan was Jewish seems to have been completely missed by whoever wrote the various abridged children’s versions I grew up with.
“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”
By comparison, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice was a paragon of modern tolerance…
Where a black man is actually asking for the hand of a white woman… well, technically, actually, Italian. I’m sure that play did not get much study in the US south.
True - it’s just “how it was” then. I remember when my grandmother was getting toward the end of her life, and some of the things that would come out of her mouth that were simply rooted in “how things were” in her youth. She was living with my mom at the time, in a community with a large Hispanic population. She’d see white girls dating Mexican boys, and remark, “they go for the Latin men because of their reputation as great lovers”. Well, no, they date them because these are the boys they’ve grown up with, and they see them as regular people. But Grandma was speaking from “how things were”. And it was stuff she knew better than to say, but her mind was going by that time.
Partly right and partly wrong. You may possibly remember reading how at one point only white male property owners could vote. This is somewhat similar.
21 used to be the age of majority. “Free” means that you are neither a slave nor an indentured servant. And of course “white” should be obvious. Somebody who meets all three qualifications has the most options available and has the widest possible range of choices.
Here’s Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry using it in both a tad racially charged and sarcastic humor kind of way. It’s from the third movie, The Enforcer, he’s just entered some king of black establishment and is going in the back to talk to the head black guy who tells Harry his female partner (Tyne Daly) has to stay up front. As he leaves the jive-talking youths say to the effect that, “They’ll keep an eye on her & make sure nothing bad happens”.
In this context, I think it’s pretty funny…