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I'm reading a book about the Photographer Dorothea Lange and her work during the depression era and beyond as part of my photography course. I came across a photograph which she had taken in late '30s Mississippi. It's of the front of a small cinema, ornately decorated and adorned with the words:
'Theatre. For colored people only.'
Okay, typical of the era of segregation BUT why isn't it spelt Theater instead of Theatre???? I thought the former was more common in the US whilst the latter is often seen in Europe. If it is a case of a transition from one word to the other then did this take place in the '30s? And if so, why then?? What surprises me most is its inclusion with a clearly Americanised 'colored'. Have these words evolved into American English at different times?
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You'll find the spellings theatre and centre occasionally in the US. It is probably a sign of some atttempt at being high class.
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You'll find the spellings theatre and centre occasionally in the US. It is probably a sign of some atttempt at being high class.
No, Faldage, the spelling more so represents the forgiving nature of the southern South as opposed to the more grudgeful northern North. Despite the atrocities visited upon us by the bloody British in the past, we are a most forgiving people and I write you from Birmingham, which is
sixty miles down the road from Centre, Alabama where only a few confused hill people pronounce it cin-tree.
I'm not through...
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the forgiving nature of the southern South
What I like about you, milum. You do the tongue in cheek so well.
We forgot about the Waw bout a hunnerd years ago.
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Hi! In my early youth - which occurred in the 1930s - the spellings center and centre were both in use. My Dad, a newspaper man, told me that at the time many were conflicted between the English spelling (centre) and the American (center) with the American version eventually coming into most general usage. Some teachers, for instance were of an older generation which used the English centre and passed it along to their pupils ... and, remember, these same older teachers were recalled to their jobs during WWII when the younger men and women went to war either in the Armed Services or in war-related jobs.
The Associated Press Stylebook, btw, requires center.
As to "colored" - it was used to refer to all "people of color" i.e. those not European white. I heard colored used well into my teens, mostly in regard to Negros, the word that gained prominence in post WWII years and changed little until the Civil Rights Movenment.
Neither was considered pejorative at the time but rather more polite than "colored."
Oh, will someone tell me what the prefered appelation is now? Pleeeeese.
(Feeling really out of date -econ)
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I never fully realized how shameful the treatment of African Americans in the South was until one day in the center of Atlanta in WWII I was riding in a trackless trolley that sideswiped a regular trolley. Two soldiers, one black and one white had their elbows out the window of the trolley and were horribly injured, their arms being pulled right out of the sockets, the most ghastly dissection of the axilla, brachial plexus and blood vessels I ever saw. When I got out, the crowd would not get out of the way to let the ambulance personnel through. When I yelled at them to get out of the way, one man looked contemptuously over his shoulder, and sneered : "It's nothing but an n-word!" Only when I yelled that there was a white boy also terribly injured did they part for the medics.
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We forgot about the Waw bout a hunnerd years ago.-Faldage
Those who forget waws are destined to repeat them. -one of the Durants.
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Those who forget waws are destined to repeat them. -one of the Durants.
And those who don't forget them...
-- Faldage of Fong
Conceptual Detective and Free Lance Fool
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wwh: Your note brought to mind the moment in Huck Finn when Huck, mistaken for Tom Sawyer, tells Tom's Aunt Sally about a river boat blowing a cylinder-head:
"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"
"No'm. Killed a nigger."
"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get
hurt..."
As usual, Mark Twain said it all.
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Dear slithy toves: I think it is worth mentioning at this point current PC castigation of Mark Twain as racist is totally erroneous. In your quote, the callousness did not represent the author's beliefs. On the contrary; he knew that unconcealed anti-racist propaganda would offend just about everybody. When I was a teen-ager, I was really shook by the scene when Huck and Jim are going down the river on the raft, and Jim's crying because he misses his wife wakes Huck up, and for the first time Huck understands that Jim has feelings just as much as any white.
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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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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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A story, read of long ago and well remembered, for which I cannot now provide citation and must tell from memory:
----------------
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!
----------------
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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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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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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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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Hmmmm. Black and White. Isn't that a brand of whiskey or sumpin'?
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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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where Sambo fits in?
The Sambo of Little Black Sambo was (sub-continental) Indian, if memory serves.
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Faldage, I looked it up and you are correct, sir.
Doc, I don't know about Sambo's parents, but their names were Black Mumbo and Black Jumbo.
My children always loved it when I read them that story. The illustrations in the copy that we had were marvelous.
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But you never gave them any ghee on their toast.
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theatre/theater For some reason, I've always used the -re for this as a sign of respect and integrity for the art, or to indicate the legitimate theatre...as in "The Theatre". Don't now how or why I was steered into that habit of usage, though. Center is always center for me.
Mark Twain PBS is currently airing a magnificient Ken Burns' documentary, Mark Twain,
in which both black and white historians vindicate the author and Huckleberry Finn from erroneous racist labeling, and, in fact, point out that Twain's intentions and effect were quite the opposite.
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> will someone tell me what the prefered appelation is now
I'm pleased a thread about skin colour has come up.
For quite some time I've noticed the free and easy use by the US members of the Board of black or white to describe themselves and others. Laugh you may (considering my comments in I&A about xenophobia), but I feel really uncomfortable with both. Not that I'm asking you to change or that I am offended, I am merely interested at our relative sensitivities to the matter of one's skin colour.
I guess seven years in an executive recruitment role (where ONLY the candidate's qualifications and experience can be discusssed without courting accusations of discrimination) and more than twenty years in and around the mining industry (where aboriginal interests play a big part these days) has made me hypersensitive to these terms. Frinstance, I would never describe myself as "white" (even though I am) - I'd prefer to say 5'10", blonde and medium build. Similarly I wouldn't "black, average height" to describe an aboriginal - I'd say "of aboriginal appearance".
I wonder if others share my sensitivity on this and if any others have felt uncomfortable around these terms when they pop up on the Board. I'd hate to think we'd drive anybody away from a place where words matter.
stales
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Well askually...I've always contended that black, white, yellow, and red are all wrong and inaccurate, anyway, because it's all the same pigmentation...we're all really just different shades of brown.
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It ain't what you say about ancestry, so much as how you say it. The police have a genuine need for such distinctions, though "profiling" can become vicious. I have been called "WASP" in an unfriendly way. In a population shift, now that we're in the minority or soon will be, that could become painfully pejorative.
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Well, I LIU'd...
"Classification", Parentage, Fraction of Black Blood
Mulatto, Black and White, 1/2
Quadroon, Mulatto and White, 1/4
Octoroon, Quadroon and White, 1/8
Mustifee, Octoroon and White, 1/16
Mustifino, Mustifee and White, 1/32
Cascos, Mulatto and Mulatto, 1/2
Sambo, Mulatto and Black, 3/4
Mango, Sambo and Black, 7/8
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I did not know before that "Sambo" was used to quantify miscegenation. I guess that explains why there was such potent boycott of a fast food chain called "Sambos". I think "Jumbo" was coined by Barnum for his huge African elephant.
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Well, I LIU'd by an alternate route:
Interestingly, although bartleby's thesausus provides a great many terms (by searching "quadroon") "HALF-BLOOD, half-breed, half-caste; mulatto; quarteron or quarteroon [rare], quintroon or quinteron, quadroon, octoroon, sambo or zambo; cafuzo; Eurasian; fustee or fustie [W. Ind.], mestee [W. Ind.], mestizo (fem. mestiza), griffe, ladino, marabou, sacatra [U.S.]; zebrule.", the bartleby's dictionary omits almost all of the less-familiar ones. It does define mestizo: A person of mixed racial ancestry, especially of mixed European and Native American ancestry
However, my Webster's defines "mestizo" specifically as mixed indian and european ancestry.
[Aside: Chrispus Attucks, the first colonial fatality in the American Revolution, is commonly identified as negro or mulatto. I believe however that orignal records show that he was in fact mestizo.]
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interesting thing about "mixed blood" vs. "pure"--
and yes, i am thinking of the more common meaning of pure, and not crossing threads
there are all over the world, populations that tend to remain pure-- island populations (particulary ireland) or ethic, (particulary east europian jews) -- some studies have shown these populations to be the most pure-- almost to a point of being inbred.
and it shows.. these population have a high percentages of inhertable genetic disorders..
the same thing showed up in the pharoahs of egypt, and in the royal families of europe.
the healthiest thing you can do for your children, grandchildren and future generations, is cross breed!
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This lurker now ventures into daylight to ask: what is the history of the word "marijuana" ("marihuana")? A friend thinks "marijuana" was coined by Randolph Hearst (?!), which I doubt; my limited dictionaries say it's of American Spanish/Latin American origin, but also add "?" and give no history of the word's usage. Could someone tell me what the OED has to say about it? - Circumstances make it rather difficult for me to get to the library.
No packages, please! Only information! : )
Thank you,
Tsyganka
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Welcome, Tsyganka. I can't answer your question, but will offer a bit of instruction, here, since we have several
newcomers--and this IS meant as a helpful hint, not a chastisement in any way.
I've noticed that quite often, people can't figure out how to start a new thread, so I will explain here. When you go to the index page of a category, say Q & A, you will see a list of all the thread titles that that page has room for (threads that don't get new posts for a while will drop out of sight, but not out of mind--just click on the 1, 2, etc., just below the list).
Just above the list of threads, over to the right, you will see a row of gray and gold icons. The one furthest to the left looks like it has light rays in it--that's the one to click on to start a new thread in that category.
Another suggestion for all newcomers: please do check out the Helpful Hints & FAQs thread in I & A; I have just brought it back up to the top. This is a pretty comprehensive set of helpful things that we old-timers contibuted to, and then Jo and Max organized.
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Welcome aboard, Tsyganka! Why don't you try it: start your first new thread? [stealing the 20,000th post -e] [Edit: just saw that jtd beat me to it; came back here to edit, and found his note below. You *are* quick, jtd! ]
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I got the 20,000th post in just before you posted, apparently.
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[stealing the 20,000th post -e][Edit: just saw that jtd beat me to it; came back here to edit, and found his note below. You *are* quick, jtd! ]I got the 20,000th post in just before you posted, apparently. Boys will be boys! Next thing you know, they will be playing rock, paper, scissors for the honor of posting number 25,000! [just kidding-e]
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So I just happened in (but slightly unpunctually) at this auspicious time? Congratulations, jimthedog! Does this mean you've just received a new dictionary? - Not a gold watch and chain, obviously: your timing is excellent!
Thank you, Jackie and Keiva, for the welcome, help, and encouragement. My question has now been succesfully posted as a new thread in Q&A.
Tsyganka
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Indo - of mixed Indonesian and European blood.
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they will be playing rock, paper, scissors for the honor of posting number 25,000!If y'all are going to take Angel's suggestion, here's the Official Strategy Guide. http://www.worldrps.com/
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"today's hottest RPS topics..."
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Official RPS Strategy Guide"So much to study, so little time..." ROFL, faldage.
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If you're not a big time RPS player, Keiva, you could probably put a low priority on this one.
If, however, you really want to get into the Big Time in this glamorous and high-paying sport this site is a must visit.
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I did not know before that "Sambo" was used to quantify miscegenation.
I knew something that Bill didn't know!! I knew something that ... hang on ... M-I-S-C-E-G-whatever. I knew something that Bill didn't know. Fades into background.
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From "The World RPS Player's Responsibility Code":
5. Encourage novice development by explaining blunders in judgement with a mind towards being helpful. Don't berate.
Amen
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