| Sunday, January 13, 2002 |
23:07 - Hello? Anybody read any Steinbeck lately?
|
(top)  |
Okay, this is something that's been bugging me ever since I got online.
People are using the word "Okie" as though it were a perfectly innocent word, a cutesy variation on "Okay". But to many people, particularly people from Oklahoma-- or to anybody who's ever known or read anything about them in the past seventy years-- that word is a very offensive, pejorative term. Sort of like "Redneck" or "Yid".
Maybe I should be happy that our language has effectively lost a potential word of cultural derision from its vocabulary. But I can't help but think that the people who say "Hey, let's go to the movies!" "Okies!" would choose different wording if they'd ever read any of the literature that was specifically written so that that period of American history should not be forgotten.
|
|
