"Canadian" is the new "nigger"

[topaz]

"Canadian" has become the new slur for "black" in some parts of the South, according to Canada's National Post.

I am so boggled I do not know where to begin.  Thanks be to kcatalyst for the tip.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

At the risk of lowering everyone's opinion of me a tad, I have to admit the development makes perfect sense to me. You see, my boyfriend's building has a lot of residents who are relatively recent immigrants from Russia. Most of these have a standard of behaviour that is, by our standards, boorish--very pushy, demanding, and rude and eager to use the "no speak English" defence when called on it. (For instance, house rules are that residents must reserve the outdoor grills in advance, but Russians will regularly occupy them without doing this and brush you off when you complain about them taking your grill.)

So we frequently have cause to complain about "the Russians" there. At one point, I mentioned to him that the last thing we needed was for some track-suited flathead to overhear one of these gripes sometime and decided to teach us a lesson and suggested we adopt a euphemism. We opted for "Tartars" for our cryptoslur, since it both suggested barbarism and was very unlikely to be understood. I can equally well see choosing "Canadians" for its sheer humourous inappropriateness, but it didn't occur to us.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, I can see the logic in choosing some wildly arbitrary word in order not to raise alarm bells. But that's why it pegged me as so odd. It seems unusual for a racially derogatory term to be chosen with such care, and with attention to discretion, of all things.

Your comment that "slur" might not be the right word because it's not a word that people would use with the target group is also interesting. Whatever this is, it apparently plays a different role from the more mundane epithets.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

In a world where you can get fired for using the word "niggardly" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22), you really can't be too careful with epithets. And I wonder if you aren't falling into something of an either-or fallacy here, assuming that only hardcore racial bigots who want to offend minorities have need of such terms. Genteel racism is alive and well in this country and those who practice it feel more need than ever to be covert about it. I can't believe I'm bringing this up as an example, but NYPD Blue did a heavy-handed message episode that include what I can only assume is an actual euphemistic gesture: Moving the open hand, palm facing inward, from top to bottom in front of the face. As one of the characters who uses this gesture explains it, "It's a way to say it so you don't have to say it."