What's in a name?

Great Debates
1

In a GQ thread Is there a word for . . . SqrlCub asks for a new word to describe a theoretical subset of city dwellers which will encompass the characteristics embodied by his view of “hicks.” He feels that this is the appropriate place to continue my observation that the request itself is prejudice. So, here I am, Sqrl, and here goes my reply.

The word hick means much less, to many people, than it does to you. To many others it simply means an unlettered, and uncultured person from a rural background. The addition of the aspects of socially and ethically despicable behavior patterns is something that became common in the last thirty years or so. Once upon a time hicks, and hillbillies, were thought to be essentially noble savages. That changed over time.

What changed was the implication that hicks were inbred, sadistic, antisocial and stupid. The growth of that meaning was greatly encouraged by James Hickey, and others. In many ways it is the same as the growth of the term nigger, from Negro. Negro was once a polite and widely acceptable term for a member of one specific race. Nigger, although possibly only a pronunciation variation at first quickly gained its inherent bigotry from its use by blatant racists as a pejorative. Now, many people find Negro objectionable, and insist on the use of black.

Calling people hicks and crackers, along with rednecks, yankees, and almost any other label based on grouping people by association not relevant to the human beings themselves is prejudice. It might not be prejudice as obviously objectionable to you as nigger, or faggot, but it is prejudice. Making up new labels for groups of people is not simply searching for a word. It is looking for an object where there are only unrelated people.

The group so named is described by every denotative and connotative meaning for the word chosen. I find it difficult to credit your desire for a name for urban hicks to be based on a need to describe social pathology in an impersonal examination of observed behavior. You want a tag. A name to describe what you perceive hicks to be that doesn’t limit them to the country. You blithely ignore the subsumed judgment that all country people show those characteristics.

You seem to me to be a decent person, and nothing of what I have written here is intended to say otherwise. But the use of group tags for behaviors is inherently prejudiced. Even when it is limited to descriptions of observed behaviors, like Jocks, Wonks, or geeks, accepting the validity of the term condones the associations of every aspect of the word choice, and imposes that judgment on every individual in the group.

We all have prejudices. We all have unreasoned judgments of others based on our own experience and reports we have heard. But that doesn’t change the fact that those prejudices are prejudices. It seems easy to take the step from despising an individual who perpetrates an evil act, to associating that act with others associated with that individual. After all, the value system had to come from somewhere, so why not ascribe it to the social group as a whole? But the association of is a judgment without evidence.

The biggest difference between other peoples prejudices and our own prejudices is that theirs are easier to see.

Tris

2

Obviously you knew what I was talking about when I used the word hick. I am sorry that I struck a chord with you. Anyway, my version of “hick” relates to a person whose behaviour is synonomous with the things bad in society such as wifebeating, sheepraping, child neglecting, child abuse, swillbrewing, drugdealing type of person. I am sorry that you think completely disliking this type of behaviour and trying to find a name for that type of person in an urban setting who is commonly known as a hick in the country /rural setting makes me a bigot. Your response was very erudite and explanatory. You misread my intentions from my initial post.

I admit I am bigotted towards wifebeaters, sheeprapers, child abusers, etc. Aren’t you? I seem to remember you saying somewhere that they should be locked up. I believe I explained my thoughts pretty well in my initial post, yet it was misread or taken out on a tangent by you.

Tris says, “The word hick means much less, to many people, than it does to you. To many others it simply means an unlettered, and uncultured person from a rural background.”

You knew what I meant. My definition of hick is above. I explained it in my first post. One can be “unlettered, and uncultured person” and still be a decent human being. I thought the wifebeating, child abusing person fell into a specific type of category. You being a Christian (remember I am not a Christian) should know that God sent Adam and Eve forth to name all the creatures. I personally believe that all people have a need to classify existence.

“The addition of the aspects of socially and ethically despicable behavior patterns is something that became common in the last thirty years or so. Once upon a time hicks, and hillbillies, were thought to be essentially noble savages. That changed over time.”

Which is why I wondered why you took issue with me. It doesn’t mean what you thought it did originally. Words change over time. Like the word Gay. When I was 10 years old I thought it was an insult but now I don’t. It simply is. A few hundred years ago it meant happy and later changed to a perverted person but still not referring to a homosexual person. The evolution of hick may have gone from noble savage to a despicable savage. So what. Words change meaning over time.

“What changed was the implication that hicks were inbred, sadistic, antisocial and stupid.”

Which was my initial point. There are a whole lot of despicable people out there who have a whole host of bad qualities. Following your line of thinking calling a person or set of person’s inbred, sadistic, antisocial, and stupid is not bigotted yet finding one word that encompasses all of that is. I don’t understand that type of dichotomy. I think convict could encompass all of that and more but one doesn’t take issue with calling people in prison convicts. You might, but I feel that you calling a convicted antisocial, sadistic, murderer a convict is a bad thing.

“The group so named is described by every denotative and connotative meaning for the word chosen. I find it difficult to credit your desire for a name for urban hicks to be based on a need to describe social pathology in an impersonal examination of observed behavior. You want a tag. A name to describe what you perceive hicks to be that doesn’t limit them to the country. You blithely ignore the subsumed judgment that all country people show those characteristics.”

This is where the entire misunderstanding came up. Sure I want a tag for people who act like sadistic morons that is just as descriptive in one word rather than using a whole string of words. I never said all country people were that way, that is something that you assumed when reading the word. I know many country people who are unlettered and uncultured as you said above whom I would never consider to be hicks simply because they don’t fall into that despicable category which you noted as a common meaning of the word in your second paragraph.

“You seem to me to be a decent person, and nothing of what I have written here is intended to say otherwise. But the use of group tags for behaviors is inherently prejudiced. Even when it is limited to descriptions of observed behaviors, like Jocks, Wonks, or geeks, accepting the validity of the term condones the associations of every aspect of the word choice, and imposes that judgment on every individual in the group.”

And I think you are a decent person too. This is where we disagree though. To tag a despicable set of behaviours with one word rather than the string of words is where I take issue. You say that saying a person or a set of persons is “sadistic, antisocial, etc” is better than saying that person is, to use an earlier analogy, a convict is much more accurate and descriptive. Well, in this instance, using the word convict has the extra connotations of being imprisoned, thought by society to be despicable, learning more bad behaviours, etc. I agree, that it can be seen as being prejudiced when I follow your logic. Since you believe that classifying a sadistic, antisocial, moron into a specific word is prejudiced I guess I am. I have always been prejudiced of people who hurt others. I am sorry that you don’t feel that way also.

“We all have prejudices. We all have unreasoned judgments of others based on our own experience and reports we have heard. But that doesn’t change the fact that those prejudices are prejudices.”

Yes, and you are implying that those are bad. Would you go around in a prison shower bending over? I don’t think so. Most people believe that a person will get raped if that happens.

“It seems easy to take the step from despising an individual who perpetrates an evil act, to associating that act with others associated with that individual.”

And that is not my intention. You have read way too far into it. I never intended the word I was looking for to be associated with any one else other than the individual. As I said in the other thread, my father is a/an insert appropriate word for an urban hick, yet I don’t believe my sisters or mother are. I would also include myself but I don’t think I am qualified to label myself that way in a subjective manner.

“After all, the value system had to come from somewhere, so why not ascribe it to the social group as a whole? But the association of is a judgment without evidence.”

And my whole point was that the word is only associated with particular individuals. Not necessarily the people associated with them. I am sure at some time you called someone an idiot or similar type of derrogative. I am sure that you didn’t necessarily mean for it to include their entire family or friends unless those people were also joining in that type of behaviour that caused you to make the initial judgement of “idiot.”

It seems that I have hit a specific nerve with you. I apologize if the word hick offended you. That was not my intention. You knew what I was talking about obviously by your response and decided that it was relevant to call me a bigot and prejudiced because I think certain types of violent and harmful behaviours in people are despicable and need a singular word to be described rather than a whole slew of words. If you think that calling a person an antisocial, moronic, raping, murdering, wifebeating, asshole is any less prejudiced than calling him a convict or future convict (whichever is true at the time) than I suppose that I am prejudiced against the person who is an antisocial, murdering asshole. I believe most people are against that type of behaviour as well. And yes, there is a whole subset of people (convicts) who participate/participated in that type of behaviour. Is it wrong to call someone in prison a convict? Most people don’t think so. Again, this is a place where you have issues and most other people don’t. We can start a poll in IMHO and see how many people think it is wrong. Actually I think I will. You can go to http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=45811 to see results as they show up.

I hope this explains myself better. I don’t think what I said was prejudiced. You just made assumptions on my part about what I was thinking that I didn’t intend to make.

HUGS!
Sqrl

3

Sqrll,

What you intend your words to mean is only half of what happens when you use words to describe groups. You feel hick means someone who assaults his wife, and has sex with his kids. To someone else, it mean that you ascribe that to all country people. You can say you don’t mean it a million times, but that doesn’t change what it means to those who hear it.

Faggots are people who try to seduce young boys into sexual practices that will condemn them to spiritual and emotional damage. I only use the word faggot to describe homosexual pedophiles. Surely you know I mean only that incredibly small percentage of homosexual men who are pedophiles. Does it sound all that free of prejudice now?

You don’t use hick to describe a group of behaviors, you use hick to describe a group of people. Not every stupid person is a wife beater, not all wife beaters are inbred, and not all inbred people are cruel to their children. What possible purpose is served by creating or using a single term for the combination? The purpose served is to avoid having to consider them individual people. That is prejudice.

Tris

4

Tris, I see your point but I will never agree.

A singer sings, a drummer drums, an artist creates art, a hick does despicable things, etc. You easily saw the intent of my message yet disregarded it. You even go so far as to read into it what is not there. This is where we don’t agree and never will. I am more than happy to be bigotted towards people who neglect children etc. I am happy to label people inmates/convicts if they are in prison. You may not but it seems that this is where the debate ends since no rational thoughts will really come out of it as I won’t agree and neither will you.

HUGS!
Sqrl

5

I hope you won’t mind a third voice in this debate.

I think it is a natural characteristic of people to categorize everyone and everything. In fact, it was probably evolutionarily advantageous to do so, for instance, in distinguishing between predators and prey.

I think that lots of us still do it, and in some cases it is still advantageous and useful. SqrlCub mentioned some of those cases:

I myself do not find it useful to label people in derogatory terms even if they do bad things. In kidding among my friends, I tell man jokes and blond jokes. And I will sometimes mutter unkind things under my breath about other drivers, but I am not immune to making an occasional driving mistake myself.

At a thread in the pit last month titled RosieWolf, Idnew, wardensu, Little Potato, started by Lynn Bodoni for a useful reason, name calling and flaming abounded to people who were perceived to be different from the average Doper (whoever that is) and I don’t see that any of that solved anything, or adhered to The Straight Dope motto of fighting ignorance, or the first rule (don’t be a jerk).

I purposely didn’t link that thread, because I would prefer to see it die, and the last post was before Halloween.

My point (and I do have one) is that even if you could find a satisfactory word for citified hicks, it would not be descriptive; people are too different for that broad a term to really apply. And it probably wouldn’t be useful to get those people to change their behavior by calling them names.

I noticed at the thread I mentioned and did not link, that some people had a sort of smugness about them, a sort of superiority as they called this family names and corrected their grammar and spelling. And what good does this do?

I think it’s the medical profession that has as its motto: first, do no harm. Using a word like this would eventually hurt people, and might cause them to do even more damage. Maybe it would let people feel smug for a while who used the term (well at least I’m better than you), but in the end I think it is pointless to come up with more bad names to call each other.

6

Since I posted a reply in Sqrl’s thread, I thought I should post one here, too.

I actually agree with Tris’s main point. Hick does not mean what Sqrl thinks it does. (Don’t worry, Sqrl, I’m not abandoning you.;)) It means a poor, rural white, and carries with it the connotation that such a person is likely to be uneducated, bigoted, and possibly violent. It is, in other words, a slur, not unlike nigger or faggot.

So why do I agree with Sqrl in this debate? Because the reason that nigger and faggot are unacceptable terms is not merely that they are slurs, but that they are considered highly offensive by the groups to which they refer. I am fairly certain that it was someone on this MB who wrote recently that they consider it each group’s right to define what is offensive to that group. (Sorry I don’t remember who. If you read this, speak up.) So far as I know, the majority of people to whom the word might refer do dot consider hick offensive. (Not desireable, certainly, perhaps even derogatory, but not offensive.) I may be wrong about this, but if it is true, then I think Sqrl’s question is legitimate.

If Tris has decided not to use any slurs, even those approved of by the slurred group, because he believes that all such terms are genuinely harmful, I applaud him. He is probably right. As a Christian, I admire his determination to “do no harm” even where no harm is percieved by others. Presumably, his decision includes not using terms like nerd or geek, either, nor telling blond jokes, though it need not necessarily. However, although the SDMB is certainly an excelent place for philosophical debates, such as this one, about whether such usages are harmful and how one should speak ethically, indignation resulting from such usages should probably be left, at least initially, to members of the slighted group.

7

Hey those sheep consented!!

8

Tris said, “Faggots are people who try to seduce young boys into sexual practices that will condemn them to spiritual and emotional damage. I only use the word faggot to describe homosexual pedophiles.”

I just thought that this should be brought up. Tris, following your line of thinking this would be wholly wrong as it puts a certain group of people into a specific category. My line of thinking is that this type of thing is ok because it falls into a very specific category of behavioural and social connotations. Since you actively use this word to describe homosexual pedophiles then I see absolutely no problem using the word hick which to me and to you (as the new common meaning which you, yourself conceded earlier) to mean a moronic, violent, uneducated, sadist.

HUGS!
Sqrl

9

Sqrl,

I said that, using words specifically chosen to offend you. I did it to display why using words to group people is offensive. You seem offended. I would like to point out that that was my point.

I don’t use the word faggot. I don’t use it at all, other than discussions of the word itself. When I do, I know what it means. It means homosexual. It includes strongly negative emotional connotations, and a condemnatory judgment. Your definition of hick includes judgments. That judgment applies to every country person in the world, whether you wish it to or not. Judging people in groups without evidence is prejudice.

Tris

10

Uhm, SqrlCub, since when do you get to make up your own definitions of words?

I’ve never in my life known anyone who attributed the behaviours you list to hicks.

Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary defines a hick as: Informal -n. A gullible, provincial person:YOKEL. -adj. Marked by a lack of sophisitacion:PROVINCIAL <comes from a hick town>

Where on earth (besides your own personal prejudices) would you get the idea that a hick is someone who necessarily, or by definition, beats his wife, screws goats, neglects or abuses children, swills brew or deals drugs? :: Scratching my head in utter amazement ::

Well I’m sorry that you fail to see that in ascribing those characteristics to people in rural settings, and then claiming (falsely) that those people are “commonly known” as hicks, is, in fact, bigotted, not to mention just plain incorrect.

That you dislike those behaviours is admirable. That you wish to define people who exhibit them with one word, well, that’s up to you if you want to make up a new word to categorize a subset of people, I guess. OTOH, it’s completely offensive that you would misconstrue the word hick in seeking your new word for use on urban assholes. And for that matter, why not just make up a new word to use on those types of people no matter where they live? Or are you just prejudiced against country folk? (And for the record, I’m a city girl, myself.)

11

I raised the same technical question that Shayna has over on the GQ thread that started this (linked by Tris in the OP). Nobody bothered to respond, there, so I’ll ask it again, here.

When did hick change from being simply an uncultured (and sometimes naive) person from the countryside and take on the nasty attributes mentioned by SqrlCub? I’ve seen redneck used in that way, but never hick*.

12

I have to strongly disagree with SqrlCub’s definition of “hick.” Growing up in a small town in rural Pennsylvania, we used “hick” to refer to each other all the time. It never had any of the seriously negative connotations that SqrlCub assigns it. We knew that it was used by “city people” as a derogatory insult, but we used it as a form of social identification. “Hicks” were just people that lived out in the sticks.

I’ve often referred to myself over here in Oxford as a “hick,” and no-one has fallen over in horror, thinking that I’m a incestous goat-beater. Nor did anyone in the States or Canada think that. Personally, I’m wondering who does, and I’d like to know whether SqrlCub has met anyone who does.

13

Fine, call it a redneck then. Hick to me and my subset of gay friends typically has all the redneck connotations.

Tris, the word faggot doesn’t offend me. Now, you said explicitly, “I only use the word faggot to describe homosexual pedophiles.” I suppose that you could mean that you really don’t use it in real life. You should have been more clear. To me this looks like you are writing that YOU use the word faggot to describe homosexual pedophiles.

HUGS!
Sqrl

14

Am I the only one who finds it horribly amusing that Tris went out of his way to create an argument by analogy that Sqrl would find offensive, and that Sqrl is completely unoffended by it?