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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094 |
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking-thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time, in the day, and in the nighttime, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating alond, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"-and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094 |
Oh, will someone tell me what the prefered appelation is now? Pleeeeese.
I think the accepted term now is simply "black". It's not totally correct, but it's just used as a descriptive term, the same as saying "that person has blonde hair."
At least that's the way I see it.
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
A story, read of long ago and well remembered, for which I cannot now provide citation and must tell from memory:
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Alexandre Dumas (the junior, "Dumas fils'), 1824–95, in conversation:
"Gentleman": Do I understand that you are an octoroon, sir?
Dumas: Yes
Gentleman: And thus that your father was a quadroon?
Dumas: Yes.
Gentleman: And his father a mulatto?
Dumas: Yes.
Gentleman: And his mother was?
Dumas: A negress, sir.
Gentleman: Then what was her father, sir?
Dumas: An ape, sir!!! My ancestry begans where yours has ended!
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How sad to realize that the words octoroon and quadroon were once so commonly understood that this story could be related in ordinary conversation.
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
African-New Zealander is a bit of a handfulShould have taught him/her manners, then. 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
In my youth in Pennsylvania and Maryland, before the civil rights movement, "colored" was the most polite way in which whites referred to negroes (the other acceptable term). I was often amused by the fact that in Pennsylvania (not in Maryland) the term "colored girl" meant "maid" or "cleaning lady" ("char", to Brits). One white lady might say to another, "Well, they're pretty well off -- she has a colored girl twice a week.", this even though the "girl" might be 30, 50 or 70 years old.
When we moved from PA to Baltimore in 1953, I was surprised that the newspapers always identified colored with the word "negro" in news stories, as in "John Smith, negro, was arrested yesterday ..." but they never said, "Tommy Chu, chinese, ..." or "Chauncey Cholmondely, white, ...".
Modern-day black crusaders' tirades notwithstanding, it amazes me how much improvement there has really been in race relations in the USA in the last 40 years. Not that we don't still have a ways to go.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I have a very, very black girl from British Guiana working for me at the moment, bright, very self-confident and not behind-hand in coming forward. During a heated discussion over the National Health Service at lunch the other day, she announced "I'm a black-and-white kind of a girl!". A colleague sitting beside me had coffee streaming out of his nose and watering eyes ....  The rest of us didn't know where to look! She, of course, knew exactly what she was doing ... poor Keith!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
Hmmmm. Black and White. Isn't that a brand of whiskey or sumpin'?
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618 |
Does anyone know where Sambo fits in? From memory its the son of a mulatto and a negro/negress.
I hate not knowing the correct, politically or otherwise, terminology.
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