Comment on Ok, boomer
tomenzgg@midwest.social 19 hours agoUnc’s a term that’s been in use since at least the 90s (but maybe older; I’m not a historian or was alive then); it can sometimes be used disparagingly though, generally, it’s usually an sort of familiar way to refer to someone that’s older. Kind of similar in the way “cuz” doesn’t literally refer to someone who’s your cousin but someone you’re familiar with, who’s like family in the same way a cousin might be (you didn’t grow up with them, didn’t see them all the time, but you’re familiar with them).
So it’s not hard to see how this new definition came about but it is, still, sort of just plucking the word and modifying it to a very different context (the disparaging form was definitely not the predominant form). While this is a phenomenon that is far from new, it’s felt particularly manufactured in the last decade and a half or so (probably due to the ease with which things can become viral in our current Hellscape-form of Internet); a lot of the “slang” that’s hit mainstream awareness has felt almost more like buzzwords than actual slang or even natural language in the way it’s been used. That’s not directly relevant to your question but just something I’ve been thinking about.
Also, thanks for asking, rather than downvoting; it’s (obviously) not everything but there’s a non-negligible segment of Lemmy that just seems to have an emotional tantrum every time race comes up.
luciferofastora@feddit.org 5 hours ago
I think the difficulty here is the assertion that this “unc” stems from black slang rather than a parallel evolution. After “bro” and “cuz” made it into wider adoption, the pattern of taking the first syllable or so off a term for a relative is familiar.
Unrelatedly, the image of the weird uncle spouting bullshit is a cultural meme in at least those parts of the (presumably mostly white) Internet I’ve been exposed to. The subjectively most common forms I see are holiday season complaints about uncles being racist or conspiracy nuts.
That is a very different image of uncles. Combining it with the aforementioned pattern of taking the first syllable to refer to people of a vaguely similar persuasion will lead to a derogatory meaning of “unc” that may well have developed entirely independently of the more respectful sense you mention.
Hence, I’m inclined to believe it’s more of an unfortunate coincidence than a corruption of an originally benevolent term. Either way, it’s unfortunate to have an otherwise positive term associated with something negative, whether by accident or by ignorant misuse.
In some sense, that destruction of community may precede the term. If my reasoning above is correct, the term refers to a type of person one would rather not share a community with.
There’s an odd discussion space around the topic, where even the way you treat it becomes a discussion of its own that I don’t wanna get into right now.
However, one part of it may be that people afford the meaning of words different weights. You comment on how slang becomes trivialised, turning into buzzwords rather than proper language. I’d counter that this seems to be a feature of mainstream communication in general: Words (with some exceptions) are treated more lightly, and as we trust the other to catch the intent of our statement, we also throw them with less care.
That doesn’t mean a word I throw lightly also becomes weightless to others, and I suspect that’s where part of the conflict stems from: When you say “this was taken from black culture”, that feels like an accusation of appropriation and racism. If I adopt a word without any intent of disrespect and then get (or feel) accused of saying something racist, I get defensive because that wasn’t my intent. But the way I said it might still have hurt others, and the fact that I said it carelessly is no help.
I think I first saw that disconnect in the discussion around the N-word: To many white people (including myself), it doesn’t have much weight anymore. We don’t hold the contempt that it used to be an expression of. However, to many black people voicing their thoughts online, it seems to still have the sting of centuries of oppression and disparagement. They don’t – can’t? – separate the intent from the vessel that carried it.
The switch of perspectives isn’t intuitive. But it’s worth learning.
I’m curious to learn and to hear the experiences of others. Whatever thoughts I may have are coloured by my own biases, my upbringing, the social environment I live in. I’d rather ask, converse and risk offending out of ignorance than to assume I know the answer and probably end up offending out of negligence.
Avoiding conflict also avoids the lessons we can learn from it. If we take care to avoid lasting harm, we can “play” conflict and learn to avoid actual conflict in the future.