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cowboydan@quokk.au ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• Triumph@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  p64 of the document, p60 of the book

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  • ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    For the lazy who don’t want to look it up

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    • WesternInfidels@feddit.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It feels so out of the blue, so unnecessary. Like the writer had been bored. It’s difficult to imagine that this didn’t jolt readers out of the story, even at the time.

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      • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Languages change. Moron, idiot and imbecile used to be medical terms. Gay used to simply mean happy and excited. A fag used to be a term for a cigarette.

        I really doubt it would have appeared in a mainstream children’s book if it were seen as at all offensive.

        Words like “bugger” and “damn” used to be extremely offensive curses. Now they’re often used as very mild expressions of annoyance to avoid using the serious ones.

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      • Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I mean… there’s also a famous Agatha Christie’s book that used to have the N-word in its title.

        We’re viewing these things with our modern eyes. But they didn’t have this kind of sensibility those days. It probably felt like using any other word: normal.

        I wonder if our grandchildren will feel the same way about something we say normally today.

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      • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I doubt whether the vast majority of British readers would’ve been jolted by it - at the time of first publication. It was a word that had been in everyday parlance that got attached to dark “things” as a describer.

        Here’s the thing though, go forward maybe 15 years again and you have the 1964 Smethwick constituency election. The winner had a, uhh, memorable slogan: “If you want a n***** for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

        It’s worth noting that the “n*****s” in question were, most likely, gonna be from the Punjab. Go figure.

        So, yeah, in less than a generation the word in question went from everyday speech with no overt pejorative meaning to the explicitly racist word it is today. It morphed.

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      • zjti8eit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It was England, which never treated the n-world quite like those ungrateful colonials.

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      • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I mean it is from 1951. I’ve seen a lot worse by people who meant it.

        It’s 4 years before Emmett Till was murdered for example.

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      • Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I wonder if Carlin ever tried sneaking that past the censors.

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    • Gullible@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I genuinely don’t even understand what this means. Black people aren’t charcoal black.

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      • OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Black people aren’t charcoal black.

        According to old-timey racists, they are.

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      • ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        In the 1950s … to average white people who might have never seen a black person before … they would imagine this

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      • Midnight1938@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Remember the meme about the guy being immune to BnW filter?

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      • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        If you have never actually seen a person with dark skin that’s how you might imagine one. Or so I did when I was a kid, growing up in a bunghole village in the impenetrable forests up in northern europe where the darkest skin I’d seen was that greek girl (not very dark at all).

        My friend is also charcoal black, so that’s definitely a possibility too, human skin is amazing, it can be black-blueish, chocolate, white or red (me in the summer).

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      • Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I’m just spitballing here but maybe back in the 1950s and earlier there wasn’t as much mixed race couples or children from those interracial marriages? Like today we have so many shades of “black” that maybe wasn’t as popular nearly 100 years ago.

        Just a random thought

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      • rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        While skin tones can vary, and in sun drenched parts of Africa, tones can get so dark brown that they look charcoal in appearance, It was just the book being written by a white man, for white kids, in an country where 99% were white that caused them to make the unwarranted comparison.

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    • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Outdated but not offensive, a lot better than it could have been.

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    • LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I’m too lazy even for this. I need a red circle and perhaps some Family Guy to get my attention.

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      • Oka@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Last word

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• OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Came for the n-word, stayed for the story. Those silly trains.

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• wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  That author was definitely a Diesel.

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  • baatliwala@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Bullet Train mention 🚆🚄🚩

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    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I was hoping someone would get it since I hadn’t seen it referenced yet

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• Chozo@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Well done, Henry.

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• zjti8eit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  well then, I assumed it was negros, I was wrong.

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