Welcome to Night Sashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking today, Nate? We are smoking the CAO Flathead 554. Yes. I am a big fan of the Flatheads. I've never smoked this model. I like the 660s a lot, which we smoked on the show earlier. Boxpress, Maduro, all those wonderful things that I enjoy in cigar. And I generally like the CAOs, even though they're not all winners. When they're good, they're good and you can get them for pretty cheap most of the time.
While I'm outside, my lighter absolutely hates the cold. It doesn't matter how much fuel is in there. I don't think. It just absolutely hates it. I don't know if that's common in lighters or not. The Bix definitely don't like the cold. I don't know about torches. Yeah, if I hold it in my hand and warm it up a bit, then it's fine. So anyway, initial impressions, good. I was expecting something good because we like the other Flathead so much. Right. Oh, yeah. So far, it's been very good.
Good light, good draw, all the things you'd expect. Yes. Good quality cigar. So what are we going to talk about? Indeed. Well, I did a lot of research for this episode. I'll have everybody know I haven't done this much research since our last open enrollment for our medical plan at work. And that's the season, I'm guessing. That is correct. For me as well. Does your employer pay you to do your enrollment? No. Well, I mean, we do the enrollment on work time, if that's what you mean.
Right. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. Mine does as well. So our topic tonight, because it is, what, a week after Halloween? Something like that. Something like that. So when this airs, it will no longer be a week after Halloween, but it is fresh in our minds as podcast hosts. So I thought we would talk a little etymology, and we're going to go through some words.
And Mike and I are going to let you know if that word that is being requested by certain people to fade out of common usage. If the word is racist or if it's linguistic tyranny that they're asking that this word be removed. Okay. And we're going to make a little bit of a game show out of it, kind of. Am I a contestant? We're all contestants in the game of life, Mike. Sounds good. I'm going to be Burt Reynolds in the SNL skit.
All right, I'll have everybody know that I am just now starting a vodka tonic. And I guess the other disclaimer is if you do not want to hear two white dudes that are straight, talk about words that progressive people may or may not want out of the lexicon. This episode might not be for you. But if you don't mind that we potentially say some things that certain people might think is racist, then step right up and listen to this shit. I think it's appropriate in a way, right?
Because we're the targets. We're the ones that want to convince that we need to change our ways. I'm guessing. Most of the time. You know, some of them. There's going to be some surprises in here. I mean, I went through this list of words. So just to preface, I went I had a personal story. I was not being accused of being racist, but I had a personal story where a friend was over and they said, you know, and we'll get into this a little bit more later in detail.
I don't want to give anything away at the start of the show here. But they were saying that a very common word was racist. And I was like, no, you've got to be crazy. So I looked it up and turns out that, you know, and that's what kind of got this thing going is looking up the origin of these terms and if they were rooted in racist past or if they were terms that had been co-opted by racist people.
So and certainly there are words that if used a certain way are racist and if used a certain different way, they're not racist. So but that was kind of the jumpstart into this topic because I thought who better to tell us if a word is racist or not than Mike. Mike the notorious racist. I am not a notorious racist for anybody who does not know that. From the great hinterlands. From the great hinterlands. Yes. The Western. I grew, I lived in the Western regions where all the racists live.
Yes. Which is not to be confused by the nether regions. No. All right. So as one can imagine trying to research this topic, there are a whole slew of websites that have a very either progressive liberal slant where everybody is evil or a very conservative slant where they want to take our fun words away. So it took a little bit of digging but I found a nice article or a nice-ish article from CBC.ca which is out of Canada and I believe it's the Canadian broadcast company or something.
I didn't bother looking up too much about the website other than I saw it was from Canada and that it seemed to be written without an overt slant one way or the other. It simply put up the words and said why you might want to consider not using them instead of trying to make you feel like an evil person for even reading this article. Okay. Yeah, the CBC is their state-funded news. Okay. So the first word here and this is the one that kicked off the whole thing so I figured let's start with it.
Since Halloween just happened that word is spooky. I have heard that term used to cover up certain things. Okay, well. I have heard that term used in a way that is potentially racist.
We are going to get into that but what launched this all off was there's an orchestra that had a like a spooky concert series and they decided and they came out and made a big like public news release about it that due to racist undertones of the word spooky they are dropping that from the name of their concert series or whatever and this made some kind of bigger waves amongst some more progressive people I guess.
Okay. And there's a similar thing here in where I live where one of their events for Halloween is called spooky something and so that kind of set off a little bit of a oh I don't know what you would call it some kind of polite conversation certainly not a disagreement on Facebook. I was not partaking and I haven't read that particular argument online because I don't care but it did lead me to believe or lead me to do research on whether or not this word is racist.
Okay. So I will tell you what I found and then you can tell me if we should drop spooky because it's racist or if we should keep spooky because we don't want to fall victim to linguistic tyranny which is a word I found in my research of this podcast topic and I really enjoy that linguistic tyranny. It's kind of like when they ban books.
Sure. Yeah. So this word spooky or spook came into usage in the 19th century which means the 1800s for those of you who would otherwise normally assume that the 19th century would be 1900 something but alas our world is not sensical like that. So and it's a Dutch word that meant ghost or spirit or spy. Okay. So 1800s came into came into existence meaning a ghost or spy. Nothing race related.
Then it wasn't until a 19 or yeah 19 well 19 yeah but World War II was its first known usage regarding race and it was the African-American pilots and they were called the spookwaffa. Sure. You know and that is decidedly a racist usage. Oh for sure. Of that. It's kind of clever. Well you know. I mean in that sort of like shitty way but. I mean I'm not saying it to be racist I'm saying it because that's just the history of the word. I've never heard that term before. That's incredible.
Well this whole thing. I apologize to any listeners who are offended by me laughing. That is hilarious. Well we laugh because we care. Yes. I appreciate old timey racism. I do. It's like right out in the open and it's so stupid. Yeah. I'm not laughing. I'm laughing at it not with it. You know. Yeah. It's so dumb. Well and you know just to get it out there I mean racism on a whole is just so dumb. But actually you know what. Let's reserve more judgments on that for later.
We're just going to go through each word here. So since I've already researched all these and I've kind of formed my own conclusions. What is your conclusion Mike on the term spooky? Well I've heard it's all about connotation right. Like if you get spooked that doesn't have a connotation that's racist. No. And something being spooky can have a connotation that's racist or it could be the more traditional way of you know spooky ghost type situation. I've also heard spies called spooks before.
Yeah. And they certainly weren't being used as a racist term. So it's kind of like any other word. Almost any turn of phrase can be used in a racist way. Yeah. If you try hard enough and believe in yourself I suppose so. Right. I mean I've heard you know like it's awful dark in there. You know what I mean. Like that's racist. Yeah let's put this one in context and say spooky celebrations for Halloween. Is that racist or not racist? No unless it's talking about like something that's racist.
I mean you could use that you could use that exact phrase in a racist way. I suppose. So but what they're doing is they're taking these Halloween celebrations that are called you know spooky hayride. Yes I know you could have a spooky hayride and have it be racist. Yes. You could do that with anything like you said. But this one is Halloween celebrations at like the city government level and orchestra levels you know across the world.
Right no. And so yeah and so I felt this one was a classic example of linguistic tyranny because the word didn't have racist origins to begin with. We'll get to some others that do and have. And it's not often used in a racist connotation. And even the racist derivative of this word has fallen hugely out of favor since I think the 1950s possibly in 1960s. You know it's not a common racial slur anymore.
Right. Well the guy that I knew who used it was a Native American man and he used it very tongue in cheek. Yeah. He was trying to be funny in a race you know trying to be racist and funny in an inappropriate way of course. Yes using humor to get a free pass to be racist. Yes but he was also Native American so how do you break that up? That's reverse racism. Sure. Something like that I mean it's still racist for sure.
Yes. But in the modern paradigm of power and you know blah blah blah you know all that all that nonsense. So I don't want to rush us along but I do have four pages of notes. Holy crap. Okay. We don't have that many words it's just I had to take enough notes so that I could speak somewhat intelligently about because etymology isn't my strong suit.
It's interesting you know kind of in passing like the term like the term pussy doesn't actually when you call somebody a pussy you're not calling them a female's vagina you know it's short for something else that meant cowardly and I can't remember what that word is hence why it had been shortened to pussy. Right. But moving right along this one I'll tell you what it is and then we'll get into it. The word is blacklist.
Okay. Okay and so they were this is typically used nowadays with internet you know you can blacklist certain sites or whitelist certain sites to allow them or deny them through your router or your firewall. So the recommended changed word of this would be the allow list or the deny list which doesn't quite roll off the tongue the same way but once we decide if this blacklist term is racist then we can decide if it's worth the extra tongue muscle movements to say the replacement.
I've heard this argument before because in our society we associate good things with the white and bad things with black. Yes. And I've heard the argument before and I don't necessarily disagree with it as a general concept. As a general concept sure you know even before well in a lot of the old westerns the good guys wore the white cowboy hat and the bad guys wore the black cowboy hat but the good guys and bad guys weren't necessarily black or white. It was just the clothing choices.
So we could go into the whole I don't have this word on there but dark like we could just you know is dark bad you know just light for the start. I don't know. But like you know some of that stuff is and we've talked about this before with movies and books and some of it's just artistic license. Like you need a quick and simple way to let somebody know who the good guy and bad guy is.
At least back then in the westerns you know we the audiences maybe weren't as sophisticated or the studios didn't think the audiences were sophisticated to get the subtleties of there could be characters kind of in that gray area. But regardless we're talking about the blacklist here and there's been big TV shows called blacklist and you know Hollywood had a blacklist and there's you know the blacklist from the communist era. But let's get down to the origin story of blacklist.
It originated in Philip Massinger's tragedy called the unnatural combat. And this came out in the year 1639 a hell of a year. And it had to do with the whatever king it was. I failed to write that down because you know royalty doesn't interest me a huge amount. But the king had a blacklist of people that went that had gone and killed his family. And so he made a list a blacklist if you will. And it had nothing to do with race.
And my my kind of question offhand is is black associated with death because when when organic material decomposes it turns black and it has nothing to do with race. It's just the state of life after death. So interestingly enough I just listened to a great courses series on King Arthur and black was associated with negative things in European society a thousand years ago before black people were a common thing. Now that might have been a common thing there.
A common well a common thing for them. OK. And that might have been affected by the Crusades as well though. That could have been an effect because they knew about moors obviously and they were not the good guys to the Europeans of course. So I don't know. I don't know if it was racially motivated or not. Do you know since you did the research?
I did the research and I just I kind of decided that since it came out in a literary sense and the usage of the word or the first coinage of the word was in relation to a list of people about to die that it was not racist because these people were all you know English nobility that fucked over the king basically. Right. So and you know as far as I know the gallows hoods even for beheadings were all those were all black. So yes possibly did not show blood.
You know again something not racist overtly or unconscious like racial thing. The old executioners were it was a hereditary post and a lot of those guys wanted to hide their. Oh I meant I meant the one they put over the people being executed. Oh I thought you were talking about the executioner. No but I suppose they were black. I suppose like so if we if we go ahead and say that the blacklist is racist then is calling it the black plague racist. Right now it's definitely due to the color.
I mean I know like I know it's called the bubonic plague if you're at least somewhat moderately scientifically motivated. But you know the common parlance was black plague. Right. So then you'd have to go and examine everything like is my is my car black or do we have to invent a new name for that color. You know I think it's the same thing and I don't know. I know that they use the blacklist against communists. You know blacklisted but those people weren't necessarily black in skin color.
Most of them weren't. So I don't know that this blacklist thing really holds a whole lot of water with me because it doesn't have much to do with African-American people despite somebody somewhere reading it and then applying it to themselves and thinking themselves offended. Right I the arguments I've heard are that there's the subconscious stereotype that whiteness is good and blackness is bad attached to the visual images and possibly terms.
And I don't know if that's true or not because I've never experienced that those thoughts. I've never associated it that way but apparently some people do. And that's perfectly legitimate everybody gets to make their own decisions. Yeah everyone gets to make their own decisions until they tell the rest of the world that they can't do a certain thing. Well they can say whatever they want. That doesn't mean that people are going to do anything different. Oh no no I understand that.
I'm just saying for the purposes of our game show and that's all it is a game show on a podcast about cigars and nothing to do with race or states rights even. But is that a term that we're going to look into on the game show. There are some terms that will call up fond or unfond memories of the states right era. Perfect. I would say blacklist is not particularly racist. Yes I would say blacklist falls in the same category as spooky for me even more so I think.
I think blacklist is more firmly in the linguistic tyranny camp because it was never associated with African-American people. Sure. Which is the group that the I don't know what you would call them the social justice warriors are trying to protect. Right. All right so that's blacklist and spooky that's two down and we're halfway halfway through one page kind of.
Nice. Okay so the next one and I just I mostly took these in order that they were in the article except I bumped spooky to the top because that was the word that kicked this whole little personal vendetta off for me. Sure. It's not really a vendetta it's more like a learning exercise I guess because sometimes you never know if something's racist or offensive until something you say is interpreted as that or you're made aware that that is you know. Right you don't know until you know.
And it was kind of nice because you know this article one of the other articles I found was a lot of people will use these terms without intending them to be racist or not knowing that they could be interpreted as racist and that's okay but once you're made aware that's when you kind of have to you know make efforts to not do that. Right. So I'd say these these range from some that are struck me as very clearly racist and some that I was you know kind of shaking my head at.
But this next one it's a two parter some of these are two or three you know words that are all kind of similar or the same as it were. This next one is ghetto or inner city. Well ghetto didn't that term come from European Jewish ghettos. You are not far off Mike. I thought it was. There's a few different origins of this term. I guess there's a little bit of discussion in the etymology reddit threads about where ghetto originated from. Sure. Things are heating up there I guess.
But so the origin the most solid origin I could find was 1516 and it described where Jewish people were forcibly segregated to live segregated to live. But the I don't know if it's like Latin or Italian there's some other word that looks like or sounds like ghetto but it's spelled with those those funky word spices you know like the umlauts and the other things. Yes all the things that we don't have in English.
And ghetto meant foundry in that in that sense and it just so happens that there the biggest foundry was where they made all the Jewish people live. So that's I think that's just an example of like the evolution of that where you know nobody in the upper class wanted to live near the foundry because it's smelly and dirty and what have you noisy I don't know. So that's where they put all the Jewish people and the definition of ghetto is a group or a section of a city where the minority lives.
So this one necessarily isn't necessarily racist only towards black people. Right. This would be racist to anyone who's in the minority I suppose. I don't think it's racist. It's a descriptive word of a fact. It is not you can use it just like any other word you can connotate something negative from it but all it is is a descriptive word of the fact of the situation.
There are areas in the cities every city where poor people live and those poor people are usually not white in the United States and that's just a fact. What other term are we going to use? The next term is going to be the new racist term at that point. You could say underprivileged area or underserved area. And we'll get into more of this and some of this is you know a lot of these intentions are good I believe or at least some of them are.
I think in my mind because it originated with we forced the Jews to live in the least desirable part of the city and then we called it the ghetto. No not you or I. I'm just saying you know the people who coined this term and started using this term. Those people forced the Jews to live in the least desirable part of the city and then called it the ghetto because the foundry was there. So in my mind that makes it racist. I understand the argument.
But to your point part of life is you need to be able to describe things. So you've got the suburbs. You've got well I guess inner city is lumped in here and I would say inner city is probably not racist because to me that inner city doesn't necessarily mean anything bad either. No not not not to my knowledge not to my knowledge either. I didn't do too much research on inner city because I just didn't feel it had the same kind of like pull as ghetto. Right. When I hear ghetto I think poor.
Yep. I think of the Elvis Presley song. Yes. But you know I think this one could go either way. Like you said I mean you'd have to kind of reestablish ghetto in the sense devoid of race and just where the minority lives. But then you know there's a lot of minorities that don't like being called a minority. But and then you know I don't even think of the minority aspect. I just think the poor people live there. Yeah. And so but that's the thing is not all of these words are racist.
Even though I said at the top like you know racist or linguistic tyranny. But like racist or ableist or classist or you know some other classist terms are good. You know the poor and the working people need to know where they're at. Like we're together and you know it's not a bad thing in my opinion. The rich people don't want us to think about it but. Well and to your point I mean we have to describe things somehow.
And a lot of these words can be used in a racist manner and a lot of words can be used in a non racist manner. You know like oh they live in the ghetto. Well to me that means they lived in some burned out shithole. You know what I mean. Yeah. And that's not really what it's supposed to mean.
So I think the word you know I think this one's probably safe to say you know maybe we should have a new descriptor word for if we if we need to define where the minority lives in a city then we probably need a word that doesn't conjure images of you know burned out buildings. Right. I wouldn't use it at work. Let's put it that way. Yeah and maybe maybe that's use the term at work. Yeah and maybe that is racist.
Yeah I mean and this is one I would feel comfortable saying you know what ghetto that one is racist. I would say I have to I have to agree. So and that's what I liked about this article because it had some that were goofy and I was and I was thinking like that can't possibly be. And it had some like this one where initially I was like I don't know if it really is. But then you know learning about the origin of it I was like OK that seems pretty racist to me.
And just the way it's evolved since that time it hasn't really changed. It always kind of comes down to race. And I know I know it was you know it's intended to describe where the minority lives and that comes down to race. At least in when most people say the minority. They're not thinking necessarily along economic lines. Right. I guess I've never really thought of it in modern usage as a racial term. But I understand how it is. I mean when you explain it.
I look at the world mostly through economic lenses as you know. Yes. And if you go down to Lenscrafters not a sponsor they'll give you some racial lenses as well for a small upcharge. Yes. Tell them nasty Nate sent you. OK the next word on our on our list is nasty Nate. No I'm just kidding. The next the next phrase. And it's OK I'm just gonna say it. And again we're not saying these words to be racist or you know have a chance to air these words out in a public forum.
This is strictly a learning and educational exercise. The next phrase is sold down the river. Sure I can understand what people would consider that to be racist. So what is what is sold down the river mean to you Mike. When you hear somebody say that phrase. That means that somebody screwed me over. Yep. So it means kind of like betrayal or being screwed over. Are you interested in the origin of this phrase. Yeah. Is the origin what I think it's going to be. I think it very much is.
This term originated in slavery era America where the naughty northern slaves to be punished were sold down the river usually the Mississippi to the southern slaving states to live out harsher lives in harsher slave conditions. OK that sounds about right. Yep I mean that sounds about like when I first read it and this is not a phrase like I kind of knew what it meant in my in my in my head but it's not a phrase I've ever used. I don't think I've ever used that phrase.
I've never really heard anybody use that phrase in the past 10 or 15 years at least. Yeah I've seen it on old television or old movies. But that's it I've never heard I don't think I've even heard anybody say it. Yeah. But we also like grew up very north you know. Yeah. Interesting. So I would call this one racist for sure. Yeah I totally understand why people would say that. I would say that at least with the people that I associate with this is not a phrase that ever gets uttered.
So I'm hoping it's I'm hoping it's fallen out of favor in modern times here. So maybe we don't have to worry so much about this one. But I think definitely it is it is racist. All right. I'm about halfway through my cigar by the way. I was just going to say I'm about halfway it's been wonderful. I had to do a little bit of a relight because I've been talking a lot and kind of let it sit in the 30 degree weather. But it's great. The lighting issue was environment and me and not the cigar.
Yes. OK. Next term are they going to get progressively worse. No. OK. Well let me let me check. I hope not. We'll have to we'll have to see. I think I think this this sold on the river and this next one might be the biggest offenders on the list. Not to predetermine your decision on this next word. The next one is grandfathered in. Why would that be racist necessarily. I understand the term and I have used it myself. Yeah. And they use it in. That's like a legal term. A lot of things.
Yeah. Yeah. But here's why it's a legal term. The click now and the truth will shock you. It originated in the southern United States as a way to deny blacks the right to vote because they had a literacy component to voting and a lot of the poor southern whites couldn't read. But if they had a grandfather who cast a ballot and voted they were grandfathered in and the literacy requirement did not matter for them.
And it couldn't possibly apply to the blacks who just recently got the right to vote. Because none of their grandfathers ever voted. That makes a lot of sense now that you've said that. I mean it's definitely got race. The origins are in racism for sure. But it's also a descriptor of what the action is. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it might be narcissism. You know I mean if you just want to call it that. Sure. You know you're grandfathered in.
Or I mean it happens a lot in even in businesses where you know if there's like an acquisition or something the people that were employed by the company being acquired gets to keep some of their benefits that the new employees that are the new hires wouldn't necessarily get because they weren't with the company being acquired and they're coming into a new company. You know what I mean? Yes. Like they keep certain employees whole.
Might be a less racist way of saying it but it certainly takes a lot more words. Yes. But I would say grandfathered in is probably has at least one foot in the racist camp. Oh the origins are definitely rooted in the racist history of the United States. Yes. And we've talked about this before. Not that America has been any more or less racist than other countries. Oh no. It just happens to be a phraseology we have here and it comes from other history.
And a lot of other countries like to slam America for having slavery for you know I don't know 80 years. Sure. Now I know that slavery was here for a lot longer on this continent but not past the Revolutionary War. So right. Because it wasn't it wasn't our country I guess until then. And speaking about our country here comes another trifecta of words and we'll go I'll tell you all three at the top and then we will go through each one individually and we can make up our own minds on each word.
Okay. We've got three Native American or indigenous phrases. We have spirit animal. We have pow wow. And we have tribe. None of those are racist. So you say now. Well somebody could be derogatory about it but there's pow wows. Where I live. They're called pow wows. They advertise them as pow wows. That they being the people who are running the event on the reservation. But well we're going to talk about each one individually. The first one up and I appreciate your candor Mike.
I think I think your initial thoughts were similar to my initial thoughts. I know that there are a lot of and the first word is spirit animal and I know there's a lot of you know do we call them basic Becky's or whatever that wear the Ugg boots and they get the Starbucks and they say oh my god. Ugg boots are comfortable. Oh my god. I'll defend their choice. This latte is my spirit animal hashtag whatever. Sure. Ugg boots are very comfortable Nate. It's like a barefoot shoe that's warm.
Well you know what I just came around to the Crocs so give me another year. They're so comfortable. I don't wear them out in public a lot. I wear them like so I wear right now I'm wearing winter slippers. They're insulated. They've got a hard plastic bottom or rubber bottom and I love them just to come out in the yard and like run the trash out. You know what I mean. I am wearing Uggs slippers. Okay. So we can all call Mike basic Mike.
Yeah basic Mike. I also and you know this Nate I wear moccasins out in public routinely so which I don't think I was. I don't consider that cultural appropriation. I just I was very slow to come around to the Crocs. I fought it and fought it for years and finally Sarah got me a pair and my brother had some and he let me try his on. I'm like hey these are kind of like summer slippers that aren't you know flip-flops.
They give you a little bit more they stay on your foot a little bit better when you're out in the yard. Sure. But that's not really here or there. We're talking about spirit animals. So kind of the origin of spirit animal came from the Ottoman Empire and the Ottomans. Surprise. Etymology is weird. Like if there's a word like just go look it up. Look up the etymology of the word and some of these origin stories.
If you if you could make a movie about the origin story of some of these phrases and words it would be like wild but probably only stoners would watch it or you know English majors. Sure. Anyway the Ottomans believed humanity to be not just animals but spirit animals which kind of follows Christianity's tenants on that where you know God created man and beast and put man above beast by giving them a soul basically. At least according to Christianity.
So and here's here's what was the biggest deciding factor for me or not deciding factor but kind of based eye-opening thing is what a lot of people call a spirit animal is really a totem in the Native American mythology. The totem or the datum but it's since kind of shifted to the realm of culture cultural appropriation because the Native Americans never called their totem a spirit animal. Sure. So that's kind of where it's been.
I you know I don't know I didn't look I didn't have time because there's so many words on this list I didn't have time to go into each individual little like sub breakdown of everything but that was kind of enough enough for me on the spirit animal like.
I've never heard somebody use spirit animal in a way that was serious so that's always like a no and I and I think you know I think it's hard to say spirit animal is racist although mostly because the Native Americans don't have spirit animal in their in their past like that wasn't that wasn't something we took from them and then made ours but it's something we took from a different different culture and then applied to the Native Americans
so it's probably you know the white settlers incompetence that led that to fall in line or fall in place of totem. Sure and there's a bit of that. You know in a sense I would sum this one up as just plain ignorance you know and it's sad because you kind of you know the Native American culture loses some of their heritage by having a wide swath of non Native American people calling miss miss naming part of their religion or part of their beliefs. Well not all Native tribes have the same beliefs.
No no no and I'm not saying that I'm just saying you know if you if you would make the case I would say it's not racist it's just incompetent you know. Sure. Yeah it's well it's American culture in a nutshell isn't it. Pretty much.
The next one well let's go to powwow first and I'm going to save tribe for last because tribe was the one that kind of lit up for me that was like this can't possibly be racist but we'll save tribe for the last one on this on this little section here and we'll move on to powwow.
So powwow was an Algonquin term meaning medicine man and the English settlers then took that and the medicine men would have meetings of medicine men and the English settlers took those meetings to be called a powwow instead of it being a meeting of powwows. Sure. Right. And eventually that became synonymous with any meeting of any Native Americans anywhere for whatever reason regardless of if they're medicine men present or not. Sure. So that one give me your thoughts on that one.
No the Native Americans now use that term for their meetings so yeah regardless of whatever idiocy that the English settlers who are my people made the Native Americans themselves the different bands have taken the term and used it on their own. So yeah let me give a quick counterpoint or counter argument to what you said. I don't personally I don't disagree at all with what you're saying.
This is simply for a devil's advocacy which is my nonprofit I'm starting up to accept donations that I can then give to my family per our charity episode. But anyway I'm curious if the Native Americans are taking this term because the English settlers or the white people could not be dissuaded from their incorrect usage of it. I mean somebody could make the argument that they would never have called them powwows in today's society had somebody not been so royally stupid at the gate.
Possibly not but I'm just trying to find out if you're not Algonquin I'm guessing that powwow isn't a term that's native to their language. And they all had different languages. And they had very distinct beliefs and you know so that's not you know that's not the argument here. I was just trying to bring another counterpoint in that somebody might say well you know Mike and Nate they never would have had to do that had the white people just listened at the beginning. I wouldn't disagree.
I was saying I don't think it's inherently racist. The people that you know the social justice warriors or the cry bullies that take offense on behalf of some other group or some other person have been largely disproven.
You know if you like there's a little girl who really enjoyed Japanese culture and wanted to have a Japanese themed birthday party and she was white and she was wearing a kimono and some cry bully who happened to be white commented on the picture saying you know crying cultural appropriation and some Japanese person said this is absolutely is not cultural appropriation. We love celebrations of our culture and people and we want people to learn more about our culture and beliefs.
So you know there's a very fine line. This is my opinion and it's not shared by all but cultures that are confident in their own traditions don't mind when outsiders participate because it doesn't negatively affect anything. So if anything it grows their people's awareness of what they're doing and their business opportunities. It's like the Mung Festival. You know the Mung Festival they want everybody to come to the Mung Festival regardless of who you are.
As long as you're there to spend money. And this little girl wasn't in makeup to make herself appear Japanese. She was simply wearing Japanese styled clothing. So it's different than the fraternity boys dressing up for their Halloween costumes in blackface. I mean I think and this goes to the same thing we were talking about earlier is sometimes it just comes down to intent. Like it's not inherently racist but the intent certainly could be. Right.
Yeah. Me wearing moccasins is not I don't intend that to be racist. They're just comfortable to wear. Yeah. There's a reason why companies still make moccasins. Right. Yeah. There's handmade moccasins you can buy right here in Minnesota. I know Maine they have a company that makes them still. So people are buying them. A lot of people. Yes. So this next one then is Tribe. And this one I struggled with on why it would even be here outside of like I know they call them Native American tribes.
But tribe derives from Latin and refers to a group of people larger than a lineage or a clan but smaller than a chiefdom nation or state. And tribe was common in kind of I don't know what do you call those people anthropologists until about the 1950s or 1960s where people started saying tribe is racist. But much like ghetto the origin wasn't really racist. I mean people have been tribal. Humanity has been tribal since the very beginning. You know what I mean clans and tribes. Absolutely.
Bands, clans. Bands whatever. And so getting kind of the breakdown that it's a unit of measurement. Yes. You know like to me that that scream is not racist. I agree. I mean just like anything else depending on the context you could I don't know how you would spin it to be racist but I'm sure it could be. I mean some of these people don't have anything better to do than to figure out how tribe is racist. Right. Well I've never tried to use the term tribe as racist personally.
No. No. I understand. It's a descriptor. It's a unit of measurement. It's a certain number of people bigger than this number of people and smaller than that number of people. It's like saying measuring in feet and inches is racist because they used only black people feet or something. You know like they would cut a foot off of a black person and then that was their unit of measurement. That is not the real history of the foot. No it's not. That is okay. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not.
That's you know like if that had been the origin of foot sure then I could see foot being racist but this one just doesn't make any sense to me. No. No. Is the term potluck racist then? That one wasn't on the wasn't on the list and I don't think you should give these people more ideas of words of ban. Okay. Because that definitely has origins in Native American society in the northwest. So anyway I apologize. No no no. It's a very fine line we walk here.
I don't think that it's racist but that's okay. I don't think it's racist either because it's not intended as a racist term. A lot of things aren't about intent really. You know what I mean? Yeah. Is luau is that racist? You know when a bunch of white people want to put on Hawaiian shirts and grill hot dogs in the backyard. I've been to a luau. It was fun.
Yeah things are supposed to be fun and your culture is supposed to be celebrated so stop saying everything's racist or cultural appropriation. A lot of times it's not. It's just people that want to do nice fun things. Yeah the people holding the luau made lots of money and I got to eat that horrible poi. Okay I've never had that. It's terrible. Better or worse than lutefisk? I'd rather eat lutefisk. I'm not gonna lie but that's the garbage food from where I'm from.
I'd rather drink what the hell is it called? Acquavite or whatever. All right ready for the next word Mike. Yes. I think unless you're way faster than I am I think we'll have a little bit of time after these words kind of like decompress from this really intense brain burn of going through the etymology of all these words but we'll see. The next word is savage. Savage. I've heard that term used in a racist way for sure. It's actually in a lot of John Wayne movies. Oh yeah for sure.
Savage is like barbarian. Modern version of barbarian. Well let's get down to the etymological brass tacks. If I'm using that correctly I don't know. Etymology is a weird word. So savage originates 1300 meaning wild or untamed. And in my research of this one I came across a modern day person from Ireland who said that the Irish use savage and deadly interchangeably to mean brilliant. Like that was savage or that was deadly you know like to mean brilliant.
Sure. It's not really neither here nor there but you know other cultures use different words differently than we do. Right. It's like bitching. But somebody said that allegedly this word savage is the equivalent to the n-word for indigenous people. Was it a white woman with dyed blonde hair? I do not know. Or pink hair or purple hair or bright blue hair. Sure. I always think of frosted blonde tips. Oh yeah.
The next thing was that it really what I found online was that it really depended on if you're using it to describe people versus non-people things. You know like that. Right. Like are you describing actions? Like a mountain lion attack was savage. Right. A murder was savage. Yeah. Yes. Or barbarous. Somebody's acting barbarous. Somebody's acting savage. I think this one probably didn't originate as a racist term. And I'm guessing that.
But that it has been used very racially maybe even more so than our spooky word. So maybe I know there's a term around here called the jack pine savages and that is referring to white people. Okay. Specifically. Yes. So this one's kind of on the fence then. You know we don't know. It could be. It couldn't be. It really comes down to intent. It's context for sure. It's like spooky. That is context.
If your buddy like tears into a I don't know Arby's roast beef and flings the food everywhere and is growling and snarling and stuff like he savagely attacked that roast beef. You know like that doesn't seem racist to me. Anyway that's probably enough on that one. Okay the next one is one that I had heard previously be called racist. And it's a word that I have used in the past. But only because I didn't know anything about it. Okay. And that is.
Now the word that's the bigger offender in my mind is gypped. But apparently gypsy is also racist. Allegedly. Okay. Well I know that gypsies are the Roma. But they also have a couple other groups of people that are gypsies other than Roma. Roma is the biggest group. Yeah. There's like four or five of them in Europe. There's like Irish travelers and there's other groups that would be considered gypsies. And gypped. Yes. Because gypsies are thieves. That's the prejudicial thought.
Yes. So it I guess first made an appearance in an 1899 dictionary as an abbreviation the term gyps now as an abbreviation of gypsy referring to sly unscrupulous people. Sure. So I guess you know that one because it's it's not the term that the Roma chose for themselves and the Roma and other peoples. Yes. And other peoples. And and the fact that gypped has such a negative connotation and is really derivative of the term gypsy. You know where I could see maybe gypsy not being racist.
But it's kind of the same as Eskimo. Right. They're not Eskimos and the Native Americans aren't Indians. And those are have fallen out of favor I think in a large amongst white people. They're part of our favor. Yeah. I mean there's still a lot of people who call the Indian nations you know or Indian. Yeah. Yeah. Native Americans. Yeah. I'm just trying to say you know people that are a little more educated have no no issue calling you know Native Americans or Inuits or indigenous people.
You know that's not a huge. Sure. I've heard some people who are opposed to the term indigenous people too. There's certainly a group of Native Americans who are against the term indigenous people. Yeah. They want to be referred to as the band or the group the people's group that they are not. Yeah. I mean and I think there's something also to be said for not wanting to be called indigenous when all of life originated out of Africa and nobody outside of Africa is truly indigenous.
You know Native Americans migrated here from Russia basically or you know they some of them don't believe so. Some people do. I don't know if it's actually been proven or not. I know there's been a few. Yeah I know there's been a few stories where people have found human remains encased in tree sap or amber somewhere that predates the Native American tribes.
So I think for the Native Americans to willingly accept indigenous would be dangerous if a population of people were found to be living here before they got here or if they were to be proven that they weren't indigenous. Right well I know that. It could be a sticky situation is all I'm saying. Down in South America they've done genetic testing and they've found that Native tribes there, the Amazonians have some Polynesian and some Chinese as well.
So there's like the island hopper theory of expansion. I don't know if you ever heard of that. I've heard about it just in passing I haven't really looked into it. Yeah there's growing evidence that potentially people were coming across the island chains and landed and settled as well. And we know that in like Labrador and stuff they have European genetics there that predates colonization.
But we also know that they were, I think the Irish and the Icelanders were coming to North America long before settlement, white settlement. So that's not surprising either. Anyway. So that's that one. The next few here get a little more interesting because these ones all kind of fall under the ableist terminology rather than racist. So we're kind of shifting a little bit here. The next term is first world problem. So this term first appeared in 1979 in J.K. Payne's built environment.
And I think he was an economist. All these words that I never say play in my way. Playing with my pronunciation here. But then so that was 1979. Then in 2005 it gained traction as a popular meme to define things that people will complain about but really shouldn't because at least here we live a lot better or more comfortably than a lot of other places in the world. Like slow internet. My internet is slow. Hashtag first world problem.
Well, I mean, there's a point to that too, because we spent an awful lot of money to have fast internet and it's never been built even though we spent the money to build it. I'm going to take this a step further because I needed to know more, like just having it be in an economy paper and a meme wasn't enough for me to determine if this truly was ableist or not. The term first world, first world country originated during the Cold War. I knew this.
And there's a first world, second world and third world. And I have what all of those mean. And I know and I had known about first world and third world just in the general sense of first world rich, third world poor. But there's actual affiliations to these. So the first world was USA, the UK, NATO countries and Japan. Yes. And this was at the time of the Cold War. The second world was the USSR, countries of the Warsaw Pact and China.
Yes. And third world was India, Yugoslavia and any other neutral nation. Yes, I knew that. But now the term first world means any country with little political or economic risk. So I've heard the term, you know, developed nation as well. Yes. Kind of. So, you know, if you have a infrastructure and utilities and a democracy that functions relatively most of the time, I guess, then it's first world country. So I don't know.
I mean, this seems like a descriptor doesn't seem like a racist or ableist thing. It is a descriptor. And the people that get offended, and I've heard this argument before, the people who get offended about that, they don't take into consideration that parts of this country are not equal to other parts. There are parts of the United States that do not have access to basic utilities that do not. I mean, they just don't. This is true. It's pretty shitty. Yeah. West Virginia.
There are parts of West Virginia that are pretty shitty. There's parts of the Western states that are remote. Well, and the Southwest is some of the poorest places you'll see. And the deep South too. Standing Rock Indian Reservation is fucking horrible as far as economic development and poverty. Yes. Yes. And there are parts, which made news a couple of years ago, I'm sure everybody has heard the word, but most people have not been there. I have. And it is not nice in parts for sure. All right.
So we're going to delve a little bit more into some ableist terms or potentially ableist terms. This next one may shock and surprise you. But first a word from our sponsors. Just kidding. We don't have them. So the next one's a trifecta as well. Brainstorm, blindsided, and blindspot for being ableist. Now I thought for sure the brainstorm thing couldn't possibly be ableist. However, this will shock you and amaze you. And I'm surprised Kearney didn't make the list. Kearney, yeah.
Kearney is definitely not an appropriate term, even though people use it. Because they have small hands and smell of cabbage? It is dirty. Dirty and untrustworthy. For anyone not familiar with Austin Powers, I was simply quoting the Austin Powers movie with the little hands and cabbage thing. Oh my God. Anyway. Brainstorm originated in the 19th century to mean sudden neurological or mental disturbance. So instead of a, I don't know what you would call it today.
It's certainly not what we call it today, but like a mental affliction. Like a psychotic episode. Yes. Something like that. But that's what it originated as. And in the 1940s, Alex Osborne used it in his kind of business class or business philosophy or whatever to mean, you know, to generate ideas. You put a lot of brains together and you brainstorm ideas. And I'm sure most people have heard it meant as that.
But people that, but he was basically co-opting or stealing this term that meant a mental disorder or a mental problem and turn it into something else. So other people preferred the term thought shower instead of brainstorm. And I feel kind of the same way about thought shower as you do. Because to me it's like, oh, that's how I clean my brain after I've thought some really dirty things. I just had a shower. Yeah. Now you're telling me I need another one. What the hell?
Okay. Well, you know, I mean, I guess I, whenever it comes to the like the blind spot and the, well we'll, we'll get into those just a little bit. But you know what, we'll, I think brainstorm now certainly is not used in an ableist manner. And only those people who looked up to find out that it was initially in the 1800s used to describe a mental affliction would be offended by it. Yeah. People who are people who have first world problems are potentially potentially. So blind, blindsided.
And I just kind of, I didn't really look up blind spot because we use it in cars like the driver's blind spot. But understand like, you know, there are people that are blind. So is it wrong to call something a blind spot? I don't know. I mean, I mean, it literally means to not be able to see. So again, it's a description. That's what the term means. So blindsided originated in the 1600s and the original sense didn't mean sightless. It meant confused.
Sure. So I, you know, I feel like these ones here are kind of grasping at straws. I agree because our language develops, you know, the only one that has a little bit of legs to stand on would be brainstorm. I mean, you know, just the origin. But as we all know, terms, definitions change over time and over cultures. Faggot in the beginning meant a bundle of small sticks. And in the UK, they still smoke fags even to this day, you know, as a cigarette.
Now certainly there's other usages for that term today, which are very, very racist or offensive, I would say, not racist, but offensive, derogatory. But that's not how they originated. But I'm still not going to go out and use those terms where it's not culturally or societally appropriate. Right. It's like the term gay. Yeah. Yeah. Which I heard people call somebody happy to mean homosexuals. Old people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually old people. Yeah. He's a happy guy.
Yeah. Or like the light in the loafers. Yeah. Oh, yes. So you know, these ones, I don't know. I mean, you can make up your mind if you don't like those terms, then I guess just don't use them. I don't think blindsided or blindspot. I don't really have any issue with those. And I mean, to be fair... Unless we're going to change the definition of blind. Yeah, and I'm not a blind person, so I couldn't tell you if it would offend me if I were blind. I'm guessing we're supposed to say unsighted.
Yeah, but unsighted spot makes me think of like dirty things. And then I need a thought shower again. Thought shower reminds me of like some dystopian novel. Hey, I thought of your unsighted spot. I need a thought shower. Could you show me your unsighted spot, please? A thought shower sounds like something they do to you in a dentist chair. Yeah, or like at the end of A Clockwork Orange. Right. That's exactly what I was thinking of. Yeah. That's exactly what I was thinking of.
And then the next one, these next two, they go hand in hand. And you used this earlier in the episode. Oh. So here we go. The two words are dumb and lame. Yeah. So earlier in the episode, Mike said, that's dumb. I thought I might have used the word lame. And I quickly said, that is dumb. And then I remembered that word was later on our list. And I said, well, let's talk about that later. Yep. That's somebody who can't speak, right? So let's get into the show.
Dumb originated in 1200, in the 1200s. And it meant unable or refraining from speaking. So you wouldn't necessarily have to be mute or have a physical condition not allowing you to speak. Dumb could just mean you're biting your tongue. You're holding back comment. In 1823, dumb started to mean ignorant. And most of the things that we associate with it now. So I guess the problem is that dumb is a bad way to refer to somebody who can't speak. And I would agree. I wouldn't. It's an old timey word.
Yes. Yeah. Like archaic. Yeah. But I don't think using dumb in the sense that we use it today, because usually when we say that person's dumb, we don't mean that they can't speak and we're not making fun of a medical condition. We're meaning that they're ignorant or uneducated or so on and so forth. So it's just like the words we just talked about. You know what I mean? A bundle of sticks or a cigarette. And then lame came from Middle English and meaning crippled.
And what a good segue because the next word on the list is crippled. So I didn't do additional research for lame here because it simply means crippled. Right. Or at least its origins did. And now it means something that's boring or what have you. So would the term lame pills be offensive? I don't know. Do they or do they not get you high? That's the question. All right. So cripple. Again, cripple is just a descriptive word that is describing something unpleasant.
Yes. So there's been a big, big push recent times to instead of and you know what wasn't on this list by this company was retarded. And cripple and those kind of go similarly. And I think the big push has been differently abled. Okay. But crippled came from Middle English meaning impaired physical abilities. But before then, it originally meant to crawl, bend or crouch. I suppose as you would if you had like an infirm leg or injured leg or something or back or you know.
So it definitely could be kind of ableist I suppose. Have you ever read script or listened to somebody read script in Middle English? Because you can like you and I being modern English users can read it. But when it's pronounced, it's almost impossible to tell. Not impossible. Okay. It's 50% you understand what they're saying. You get the gist of it. And Shakespeare was old English, right? No, no, he was modern. He was the very beginning of modern English. Yeah, yeah. You listened or.
Because I know, I know, you know, like the, the Y E O L D E the whatever it says, ye old shop. Well, the, the Y E is pronounced the like that's how it's pronounced. It's just the old. Yep. You know, you don't say ye oldie. That's just you're reading it phonetically when, you know, linguistically it's the Y was T and H back in, back in the day. Yes. Just like F's and S's were written the same. Yeah. In a lot of script.
I do know, I do know the only reason we, we tell people goodbye when we're leaving is because some fucker somewhere and fucker is gender neutral and in no way offensive or derogatory. Some old fucker abbreviated God be with ye to basically goodbye, like God by. Great. And so now we say goodbye instead of God be with you. It's like happy holidays, right?
Yeah. Um, and now that brings us to our last, last word here and it is fitting because some of you may have been listening to this podcast and may have even been thinking this word at us without even knowing you yourself might be ableist. Okay. Uh, so our last word for the episode is tone deaf. Tone deaf. So tone deaf in modern, uh, modern language is somebody who basically doesn't read their audience and proceeds to say something very ridiculous to, you know, to be said for that audience.
We had a, we had a guest speaker in for one of our work meetings and we're all underpaid and overworked and he was, he started out his, with a, with a personal story to try and bring us readers in and to try and relate or not us readers, but to try and relate to us. And he said, well, I was at my second home and I lost my car key to my, to my, uh, uh, what was it? It was some expensive car. Maserati, just calling a Maserati. Okay. It is Maserati. And he was like, I lost the key.
And so now here I am, I'm about to be stranded at my second home. Well, none of us, most of us don't even have a first home. I mean, we do cause we got lucky, but like most of our generation can't afford to get out of the rent cycle. Um, and, uh, he's like, well, instead of paying $800, which is a small sum of money in my mind for somebody who has a second home.
So he's like, because, because the car dealership wouldn't give me a free replacement key and wanted me to pay $800, I simply went out and bought a Tesla. And that was his story to relate to us. So that is the instance of tone deaf in modern modern society where he didn't really know who he was talking to. I don't know. I don't know. And we really lit up the, uh, the, uh, the supervisors and managers after that.
And for a lot of meetings beyond that, we were like, well, I was about to be stranded at my second home, but thankfully I bought a Tesla and got out of there. Um, and, you know, and like, we all had a good laugh and all the managers like, oh my God, we're so sorry. You guys, we had no idea. Um, you know, and of course they, they, they bought this guy's book and sent it to all of us as like a gift, you know, prior to him talking to us.
And, and then all of us went and promptly, you know, threw it away or sold it to half price books or something. Um, cause I'm not going to read that. Like you don't, you don't know how to relate to people and, uh, bring it to the book shop and get trade credit. Yeah. I'll get $5 out of it, which is more than what I got out of your speech. That's awesome. Uh, so, but that's like, that's a modern example of tone deaf and, uh, but tone deaf first came into use in the 1890s.
And all I could really find out about tone deaf was, uh, amusea. It's a, it's a musical disorder where you literally can't tell tones or pitch. So, um, but this one is, is just simply because the term, the word deaf is involved in this modern modern saying and therefore could be ableist. Have you ever watched the George Carlin special where he talks about the softening of language? Uh, no, I haven't. Oh, you should watch it. I do enjoy some George Carlin though.
I've been thinking about it this whole time. Uh, he went off about how now we call it, uh, PTSD, the acronym before that it was post traumatic stress disorder. Before that it was shell shock, right? Shell shock is a lot more dramatic and to the point that post-traumatic stress disorder. And now we don't even say that we just use the acronym. Yeah. You know, because even saying the post-traumatic stress disorder is too traumatic.
Well and, and, and, you know, our corporate overlords, um, have a huge like boner for acronyms. Like everything's an acronym and I myself am acronym adverse or what I tell my managers is I'm an AA. Um, yes. And I always get funny looks. I don't know why. Um, but I, and then I tell them, oh, that means I'm acronym adverse, uh, because it doesn't save any time to give me alphabet soup and then wait for me to ask what it is you just said.
Like that doesn't save me time at work sending emails that are only acronyms. And then somebody who's not in the loop will get sent this email because we need their input for something. And then I will have to create a new email saying exactly the same thing, just without the acronyms. Cause it'll be three sentences of acronym, acronym, acronym, and acronym, acronym, acronym, you know what I mean? It's like one, one, one, one, one over and over. So are you really saving time?
Mike is what I'm asking. Could you not save time as long as I don't have to get involved with people who aren't directly involved with what I'm doing. Yeah. But I would say that you have to read your audience. And if you think it's something that's going to be forwarded on, like if I, like, you know, my, my role is, is fairly technical at times. And even the two main systems that we use have acronyms. You know, people instead of, instead of saying Salesforce, they'll just type SF.
But I know not everybody works in Salesforce in our company and I'd rather just type it out because it doesn't take that much more time because I'm typing. I'm not, I'm not handwriting it. And then I don't have to go back and have somebody feel, feel dumb to use another offensive term for having to ask what that is. Cause they didn't know or having to waste time getting to the answer, getting what I need out of them by having to explain an acronym.
So I'm anti-acronym in my life as much as I can be. I should be more anti-acronym. I know that I recently had a, wasn't even an altercation. And I was just like, they noticed that it was off because I created a configuration file for other people, for myself and other people wanted it to save time. And it was just STD, which is the standard configuration file. It's the STD.config. Hey, did you, that's not very nice. Did you get Mike's STD? No, no, I'm waiting for it.
I'm, he's going to set, he's going to give it to me tonight. Exactly. He's like, well, you know, STD is good enough for me. It wasn't STI. Mike's easy to please. Yeah, exactly. Change it to whatever you want once you get it. Yeah. If you don't want to call it crabs, call it whatever you want, baby. But I get asked to share a lot of things that I create on the laptop, you know, and I need to get better at naming them stuff. People can understand.
Yep. Well, that's, I mean, that's okay because they're coming into your kind of like your personal workflow. Right. Yeah. But I've said, I've sent emails that have three different files called log, log sheets. And it's like, they're not the same thing though. I try and name things, my files as descriptively as possible. I mean, I take a lot of photos with my DSLR, which is a digital something, something, a digital single lens reflex, I believe.
But DSLR camera is kind of almost common, common speaking now, I guess. And now they don't have DSLRs, they have all mirrorless cameras that actually don't have a shutter. But I don't, I don't rename all the, all the image files, but I put every image file into a folder that tells me, you know, I have, I have like the year. So I, on my photo, in my photo folder on my computer, it's like 2020, 2021, 2022.
And then within there, it'll say, you know, Halloween or spooky season or Thanksgiving or, you know, like, I'll just name it. So I know what it was. And then all the files are like, whatever the camera decides to name them. Right. So that's how log sheets, that's how log sheets became a thing. Because they were all on different files, folders, and the folders had completely descriptive names and they were not, yeah, obviously nothing to do with any of the other ones, but I knew what they were.
Yes. And that's all that matters. Right. So yeah, that's it for the words. I thought that would be fun. Fun for you. I told Sarah what I, what I was going to do for the episode and she was like, Oh, Mike's going to love that. It is, and you know, I, and it was fun for me, you know, it's fun to learn. And some of the ones, you know, decidedly in my mind, weren't racist or ableist or derogatory and some were that I thought initially weren't. So. A lot of them are just the softening of our society.
Yeah. Not wanting to recognize the brutality inherent to living on this planet. Yeah. Because people can live very soft lives. Yeah. If they just so desire, they can live a very soft life.
And you know, and we talked a little bit about this on one of our other, one of our other episodes where slaves don't want to be called slaves or, you know, people don't want you to call slave slaves because it's kind of demeaning and they would rather than be called enslaved people because that's really what they were. And that, and that one makes sense to me. Like that makes sense. And to me, like enslaved people is almost harsher than slaves.
You know, that's, that's more in line with the truth of what happened. You know, it wasn't that person's choice. So I think, I think that might be an instance where it's actually unsoftening it. Right. Well, it's, it's calling like the Slavic countries. Is that racist? I don't know. It depends on if they're comfortable with their culture or not.
Well, I mean, those people probably don't think so, but they're called Slavic countries because that's where Northern Europeans got their fucking slaves. So they were just slave regions. Okay. Well, that's news to me. I did not know that. Oh yeah. That's why they're called the Slavic countries because they would go on rating parties. Europeans from the Western and Northern regions would go on rating parties to Eastern Europe and steal people and make them slaves. So is Yugoslavia racist?
That doesn't, that country doesn't exist anymore though, does it? No, it doesn't. No, I guess you don't have to worry about that. Czechoslovakia, does Czechoslovakia still exist? I'm not sure on that one. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just about done with my cigar. This one's been very good all the way through. Yeah, I have about an inch left and I would say it's pretty close to being done. It's starting to get hot. Yeah, it's getting hot. And it's been excellent. It's been very good.
Not a lot of flavor change. No, here's the question then, and we probably should have smoked this one right after the other flathead, the 660. Which one do you like better? I like them both. I like them both too. It's hard to say without having smoked them back to back. Right. They're both great. When I go to like a big event and I'm bringing a box of cigars that a lot of people are going to pick out of, I always bring some 660s if I have them. Or some form of flathead in the box.
You never had this one before. I've never had this one before. How many others are there? The flatheads, the whole line of cigars, different sizes and shapes. Okay. Yep, yep. Interesting. So far, what I've had is good. I've had more than just the 660 and the 554. Don't ask me the numbers. I can't remember. But yeah, I liked both of them. This one was really good. Maybe you took something away from the etymology lesson that we tried to put together for you. It is what it is.
A lot of connotation versus denotation. Yeah. And also... Intent. Intent with this speaker. Right. A lot of people just want to weaken, soften language. I shouldn't say weaken. Soften language. Yeah. And look at the context. If the people using these words, and they're using a lot of these words, and they're wearing white robes and have Confederate flags flying, it's probably racist. Right. Oh yeah. For sure. If you've got your aunt's potluck, it's probably not racist. Right. I don't know.
It depends on how many... It's a potluck for your own dish. Probably not. It depends on how many brews the uncle has had. Then it might turn racist. But anyway, that's all we have this episode. Thanks for listening. Be safe. Have fun.