[Vision2020] Rick Perry's Newest Problem

[Paul Rumelhart]

It makes you wonder if someday descendants of the people murdered by an 
ancient East Germanic tribe when they sacked Rome and Carthage might 
someday look in horror upon a small college town in Idaho that had the 
gall to name their sports team after their killers.

Same thing with people that have been mauled by cougars or bears.

Paul

On 10/03/2011 07:02 AM, Tom Hansen wrote:
>> Courtesy of Dr. John E. Koontz, Department of Linguistics, University 
>> of Colorado at:
>>
>> http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/faq/etymology.htm 
>> <http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Ekoontz/faq/etymology.htm>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>>
>>       Is squaw a bad word?
>>
>> The etymology is perfectly innocent.  The problem with squaw has 
>> nothing to do with its etymology.  Nigger has a perfectly 
>> unobjectionable etymology in Spanish *negro* 'black', for example.  
>> The difficulty with nigger is that it came to embody and represent a 
>> discriminatory attitude toward blacks.  Similarly, the difficulty 
>> with squaw is that it is associated with a discriminatory attitude 
>> toward Indian people and sometimes by extension toward women generally.
>>
>> The pattern of racism associated with squaw is not readily perceived 
>> by many people today, especially by non-Indians, perhaps because the 
>> word squaw is obsolescent, found mainly  in historical literature and 
>> movies, or as a fossil in placenames and expressions like squawfish,  
>> squaw dance or squaw corn (a term I actually first heard used quite 
>> innocently by an Omaha man).  It seems inoffensive to many people in 
>> these contexts, and they don't see any point in avoiding it, even 
>> though the same people would never use a form like nigger, and may 
>> instinctively avoid placenames based on such forms, as well as fossil 
>> expressions like niggertoes and perhaps even the wholly unconnected 
>> word niggardly.
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Another thing concerning offensive language . . .
>>
>> As many schools have reestablished school mascots, so as not to seem 
>> offensive (i.e. Stanford University Indians reestablished as Stanford 
>> University Cardinal) . . .
>>
>> WHY haven't the Washington REDSKINS, an NFL team in our nation's 
>> capitol (for God's sake!), been required to establish a more 
>> appropriate mascot???
>>
>> Tom Hansen
>> Moscow, Idaho
>
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