May 25, 2007

The Way We Talk Now

by Cliopatria

I'm struck by two current discussions of terms commonly used in contemporary English, but whose origin is contested.

The first is"the frozen chosen". At H-AmRel, the listserv for discussions of religion in America, one member asked about the term, which he thought was one commonly used by others to refer to Presbyterians. But one of the best known recent uses of it was Bill Clinton's at Coretta Scott King's funeral:

I'm honored to be here with my president and my former presidents.
(APPLAUSE)
When President Bush 41 complained that he was at a disadvantage because he was an Episcopalian...
(LAUGHTER)
... then he came up here and zinged Joe Lowery, like he did...
(LAUGHTER)
... I thought that ain't bad for one of the frozen chosen. He's done a pretty good job.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)

So, the term is often used by low church Protestants (everything from Baptists and Methodists to Pentecostals) to refer to high church Protestants (Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians). It refers to their quiet, reserved demeanor and form of worship. But the discussion showed that many different groups, from Northern immigrants to the South, Mormon missionaries in Scandinavia, and Baptist missions in Siberia, have been called"the frozen chosen". The recent publication of Michael Chabon's alt-historical novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which posits the mid-20th century relocation of European Jews to Alaska, rather than Israel, extended the use of the term in an obvious way. Like so many popular terms ("‘over the top', ‘no man's land', ‘hoisted by his own petard'"), this one seems to have had a military origin, as slang in the Korean War. Marines who fought at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir in December 1950 commonly referred to themselves as"the Frozen Chosen (Chosin) and/or the Chosin (Chosen) Few." By 1964, Mark Gibbs and T. Ralph Morton would give their classic study of lay people the title: God's Frozen People.

The other term is"white trash." We commonly think we know what it means. Matt Wray,"That Ain't White: The long and ugly history of ‘trash' talk," American Sexuality, 9 May*, however, traces the term to the area around Baltimore in the 1820s through Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and, with some very ugly chapters, into the 20th century. Two things occurred to me as I read Wray's article. First, when we say that someone is"talkin' trash," it doesn't seem to me to have an ethnic, racial, or, necessarily even, regional connotation or limitation. Is that relevant? Second, when I was in high school, about the time of school desegregation, one of my friends used a phrase that seemed clever then:"That's mighty white of you." My family shudders if I ever say it now, because it seems to have a racial charge. The odd thing, however, is that"That's mighty white of you" doesn't highly value"whiteness". If you were eating a nice piece of apple cobbler and left me a bit of crust, I might say:"That's mighty white of you." Racist?
*Thanks to Jeremy Boggs at ClioWeb for the tip.

More Comments:

Ben W. Brumfield - 5/30/2007

I've no idea. Probably neither one of use have enough local flavor to pull it off, despite the goatees.

I am certain, for whatever it's worth, that my high school gym coach's imprimatur isn't sufficient to get me to use "Act like white people."

Ralph E. Luker - 5/30/2007

do ya think if Bitch Ph.D. says it, it's o.k. for lesser morts to use it?

Ben W. Brumfield - 5/29/2007

At Bitch PhD. no less.

Stuart Buck - 5/25/2007

I imagine it wasn't the sort of thing that black people would say in the presence of white people! It's funny, though -- I'd never heard of *white* people having used the "mighty white" insult. Wouldn't you guess that it probably began in the black community way back when, and then migrated to the white community, rather than 1) the other way round, or 2) arising independently?

Ralph E. Luker - 5/25/2007

I've never heard black people use the expression. In my experience, it was always a "white-on-white_ expression and meant, essentially, "Thanks for nothing."

HAVH Mayer - 5/25/2007

IMO, "talking trash" has no connection with "white trash." ("White trash," I think, is the Southern equivalent of "Swap Yankee.") Trash talk has a mild black association because of the contexts in which the term has been popularized (e.g., basketball) but does not seem to be a riacial reference either way.

"Mighty white" is racist. A close equivalent of "That's mighty white of you" was "You're a real white man," which makes the point clearer. It associates whiteness with certain standards of behavior. During WWII my father, a Caucasian who had majored in chemistry, was told by a fellow officer, "You're the first scientist I've met who is a white man."

Stuart Buck - 5/25/2007

You're white, correct? Was your friend white? It would be a bit odd for white people to use this, as it is indeed a racially-tinged insult (albeit one with some justification). As a black professor once wrote to me, “when I was a child it wasn't uncommon to hear a Black person say to another Black person, ‘That's mighty white of you,’ or when complimented by a Black person another would retort, ‘White folks raised me.’ . . . What the people who used these terms were doing was admonishing other Black people not to act like the white people, who in these comments were being castigated as arrogant, condescending, and haughty.”