Quote of The Day

[andrewducker]

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

Cheers to miss_s_b for passing on the quote and the link to its origin.

Edit:
What I find particularly interesting is that (a)there are people still out there who will use the word 'nigger' without even thinking whether it might be offensive and (b) those people are actually perfectly happy to vote for Barack Obama. Which means that American attitudes towards race are altogether more complex than you might have thought...

Comments

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was about to send you to fivethirtyeight.com but I see that's where it comes from. :)

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

General truth: people who don't learn quickly and who aren't particularly adaptable, will continue to use the language they used as a child, even where those words are considered offensive. They often aren't using them with any offensive or racist intent whatsoever.

Because the chattering classes are used to adapting quickly to all sorts of fashions, in language as in other things, there is a snobbery here; you will see people's slightly outdated language used as a code for 'this person is contemptible' in reportage. It's reasonable to assume that politicians can be expected to keep up to date in this sort of way. But for everyone else? Not really.

[d-c-m.livejournal.com]

Yup. Same thing was said about Jesse Jackson in the 80s. Just proving that it's a funny old world.

[cdave]

Until I got to the edit, I read that as nutter and assumed they were voting for Mccain/Palin.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

The quote doesn't specify the ethnicity of the woman and her husband. We're only assuming they are white.

[darkoshi]

The way that quote is worded, it sounds like it was made up just to illustrate a point. I doubt it actually occurred. "So a ..." is how jokes are often started. And nothing on that page says that it was an actual occurrence.

What gets me about it though, is why does the woman ask her *husband* who *she* is going to vote for?