"Under legislation to update China’s noise pollution ordinances, to be sent to lawmakers next week, dance enthusiasts will face limits on the volume of their music and times that they are allowed to occupy public spaces....The practice had its origins in collective public dances during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, and later in the economic overhauls of the 1990s that left many city dwellers jobless and in need of low-cost entertainment.... Over the years, their presence has become increasingly polarizing as reports of conflicts between dancers and noise-sensitive residents have become more common. In 2013, a sleep-deprived 56-year-old man fired a shotgun into the air and loosed a Tibetan mastiff on a group of dancers. In Wuhan that same year, dancers were reportedly pelted with feces thrown by angry neighbors.... The coming restrictions, the first on a national level after years of attempts by local governments to regulate the dancing, were welcomed online. 'Rejoicing!!!' one user wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, in response to the news. 'The law should stop people taking their joy from other people’s pain,' another posted."
By the way, I was surprised to see the expression "the jig is up" in a headline at The Washington Post. There is a folk belief — mentioned here, for example — that "jig" refers to black people and therefore that "the jig is up" refers to the lynching of black men. I remember a popular novel of some years back — I can't remember which one — which made humor out of the phrase in the context of a black astronaut. There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult, though it clearly refers to a type of dance, but I'd avoid using it where it doesn't specifically apply. The Chinese women in the article were not dancing a jig, and their predicament isn't funny, so I'd resist the low-quality humor of "the jig is up."
'Jig' is almost certainly derived from the popular Irish/English 16th century dance which, if you believe Wikipedia, is probably derived from the French/Italian words 'to jump'.
I believe "Whoopi Goldberg" was once used as an antisemitic trope in a 1910 comic, so I refuse to use her name in normal conversation. I don't want to upset Jewish people. So I just call her Redneck Rita.
I've seen groups of Chinse women doing their exercises in the AM, although they use all kinds of music. Mostly chinese but also nice Pop music. It seems very pleasent and they don't do it too loud, so I've never heard anyone complain.
See also Falun Gong, Epoch Times. This has been happening for years.
There is no relation to American lynching. Which ended 100 years ago and included more white and especially Italian immigrants as victims, and more black lynchers than is polite to mention.
Why also is it so incredibly difficult for Americans, and especially academicians, to so much as mention the horrific mass homicide and death camps and political suppression and murders committed by the Chinese Communists right now and ever since they took power? To even mention it, instead of playing word games?
Had a guy take offense at an apron I used to have with Jig - a - Loo on the front of it. Of course, Jig-a-loo was a lubricant used on "jigs" or fixtures for holding parts, to aid in the release of parts from the fixture. But people do like to virtue signal and see racism where none exists. And the moment you allow them to define words for you is the moment your freedom starts to erode.
That granny in blue really has some moves. Nice to see all that flexibility. But enough with the 'race consciousness' stuff. That's a topic that would definitely benefit from a little benign neglect right about now.
Dance a jig, hang a necklace, jab the spine, perhaps a scalpel across the neck are common methods of public and private abortion rites over the ages, and is still practiced in darkness and under a veil in some of the less civilized nations.
There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult
Really? No question? I don’t see any reason to believe any of those people on Quora know what they’re talking about. They sound like the same ding dongs who argue that “gyp” is short for gypsy, or who think that “history” is “his story” smushed together.
I know a number of jigs and none of them are short for jigaboo.
I'm pretty sure that if it takes a paragraph to explain why something is a racial slur - it's not a racial slur. Racial slurs only have impact if/when their commonly understood as a racial slur.
Yeah, I'm surprised WaPo allowed "the jig is up". Must have been an approved version of word usage.
I'm also surprised that the CCP would allow loud musical dances that are not Party approved and...apparently these were born out of the Cultural Revolution so either they are approved or they'll have to figure out a way to denounce this dancing. Depends on which side has the actual political connections and how hight those connections reside in the political body.
This morning I listened to a Bari Weiss (Honestly) podcast from Dec. 1 about Desmond Shum, author of "Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China". A nice tale of people disappearing if they are not doing, saying, or thinking approved actions, speech, or thought. I suspect someone in this dance debate may be getting an offer they cannot refuse from the National Thuggery that is the Chinese government.
I'm pretty sure that if it takes a paragraph to explain why something is a racial slur - it's not a racial slur. Racial slurs only have impact if/when their commonly understood as a racial slur.
"The jig is up" has passed into common speech at this point, and what it might have referred to in earlier times is irrelevant. Compare "tar baby." Languages just do this, grabbing stuff from anywhere and making them universal expressions. If you start going down that road you find only insanity, as thousands of phrases have origins people don't know and wouldn't approve of if they did. This gets worse because there are also rumored origins that are easily disproven but persist, such as "rule of thumb," and now we are supposed to respect even that, because someone thinks it refers to beating women, even though it doesn't.
As I can't get fired from being retired, I guess I am privileged to just say "the hell with it" and say what I want, while other people who have families to support have to be more paranoid. But I can at least continue to create space for them by using normal phrases unashamedly.
"There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult, though it clearly refers to a type of dance, but I'd avoid using it where it doesn't specifically apply."
No question? What exactly is a "racist insult"? Do you mean a "racial insult"? A term that someone finds insulting simply because it refers to his race? Like if someone calls me "white"? Ooh, that pisses me off. When are you jiggers gonna stop whiting me? Ah, whatever. Jiggers gonna jig.
Isn't that how Falun Gong got their start? Dancing in parks?
Now they are major participants in the organ donation business. Almost as big as the Uighurs. How many Falun Gong kidneys and Uighur livers do you suppose LeBron owns?
Of course a jig is a mineral processing machine that shakes and washes material by an upward motion, or a fishing rig, or a frame for guiding a machine tool to the work piece. I think the racist aspect comes from the __aboo version which seems to be an insulting reference to a primitive people or their way of speaking.
There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult, though it clearly refers to a type of dance, but I'd avoid using it where it doesn't specifically apply.
Hopefully, we will soon have the technology for Thought Police. Meanwhile, we are fortunate to have so many volunteer Language Police.
Why don’t they have a silent rave? Everyone wears headphone tuned to the same songs. They do it here in some hipster bars.
I have never heard “the jig is up” referred to as a racist saying. That is really stretching it since a jig is a Celtic dance. What does it have to do with black people? During Elizabethan times the word jig become slang for a practical joke or trick. “The jig is up” would mean the joke or misbehavior was found out. Which is always how I have understood the saying.
The Chinese Communist Party also forbade the silent group meditation of Falun Gong participants. Being completely silent and not moving, or moving with accompanying music, both are groups of people not under the control of the CCP for a few moments in time, which the CCP sees as a threat to their kleptocratic, autocratic, totalitarian government.\
There are about 90,000,000 members of the CCP. I'm sure China has more than that many streetlight posts and enough rope or wire to change that to zero.
Remember, leftists in the West (US and Europe) see the ChiCom's as the model they want to emulate across all aspects of society.
They don't even bother hiding it anymore.....the only thing lefties in the US hide is anything that alludes to Taiwan being independent of the lefties beloved ChiComs, where viruses come from, ChiCom slaves, selling of slave body parts and organs, ChiCom's purchasing of the Bidens thru corrupt money/cocaine/underage girl activities, penetration of all our institutions, etc.
Other than that, the lefties (like Howard) sure do take "principled" stands against the ChiCom's.......(wink wink)
The only "popular novel" I know of regarding a "black astronaut" is Lucifer's Hammer, and I do not remember anyone using "the jig is up." Though I do remember a character wondering if astronaut tastes like chicken.
I support noise pollution mitigation, and have no problem throwing feces @ scofflaws. Noise pollution is harming us NOW, not hundreds of years from now.
I’m not saying everyone who uses the phrase is being knowingly racist, just that it’s unsophisticated not to catch yourself, see the problem, and rewrite.
It’s like “chink in the armor.” Defensible, but smart people avoid the phrase.
Exactly. If you are, say, making a violin, or for that matter any model airplane wing with curved parts in it, you are using a jig. I am saddened to see that this perfectly good word (good for the dance as well) is being taken out of circulation altogether b/c some people just can't keep their minds away from "jigaboo." And I don't mean the racists, but the racist-sniffers.
First, isn't a lot of that dancing or shimmying Tai chi?
Second, isn't using a dismissive phrase like that about crackdowns in a dictatorial state inherently reprehensible?
I'm pretty sure the phrase as used here isn't directed at African-Americans. I do wonder whether etymologically the phrase wasn't originally an anti-Irish slur.
That is really stretching it since a jig is a Celtic dance. What does it have to do with black people?
Black hole... black whore h/t NAACP for-profit!
That said, in diversity philosophy, it's "people of black", or the more inclusive "people of color", a color bloc, a racist designation, who rap around the fire, and hang necklaces (a la Xhosa vs Zulu) as a purely "secular" fashion forward statement.
Ann Althouse said... "I’m not saying everyone who uses the phrase is being knowingly racist, just that it’s unsophisticated not to catch yourself, see the problem, and rewrite."
I know there are races. Does that make me "knowingly racist"?
IT may have been S I Hayakawa who recounted meeting a lovely older couple during his travels, who let him stay at their home for a while. They referred to him as "the little Nip." This would have been in the 1920's, maybe?
He said they didn't have another term to use, and changed when he gave them something more polite, but I don't recall what that was.
I have noticed that Rich people behave differently than the rest of us. Does that make me a "Richist"? Plus, I've noticed that the Poors aren't really like the rest of us either. Am I a "Poorist"? Or maybe I'm just guilty of noticing that there is a connection between people's behavior and their economic circumstances. I'm an "Economist".
"In 2013, a sleep-deprived 56-year-old man fired a shotgun into the air and loosed a Tibetan mastiff on a group of dancers." Sounds like a US inner city incident.
There are several versions of the Emma Goldman quote. The one I remember doesn't have "to it" in there. The Revolution isn't a tune you dance to. Your dance comes from you and becomes part of the Revolution.
The quote sounds more like the 1970s than a revolutionary who lived 50 years before. Indeed, the sentiment comes from Goldman, but there's no evidence that she actually said or wrote any of the variants. What she wrote was:
the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.
The only racist connotations associated with the phrase "the jig is up" are those fabricated by the same people who lied to us about the origin of the word "picnic."
https://knowyourphrase.com/jig-is-up
Well-adjusted people should not censor themselves in order to placate lying bullies.
One jigs when fishing with a rod and reel. Hopefully the colorful fish aren't offended.
As to use of words that offend because of the listener's intention to be offended using their own ignorance as an excuse: eff those people.
The chink in the wall between Pyramus and Thisbe was a chink. Were it a crack, the sexual connotations of that work in idiomatic English arguably would be worse, considering the context of the lover's story. When the argument used to prevent a word's use use is that it is a homonym, you got no argument. From Slate: "Yes, I know that phrase (chink in armor) has no racial connotations, but it uses the same exact word as the racial slur, for God’s sake." May God keep and protect such idiots, far away from us all.
Err, "jig" refers to an old Irish/English type of dancing and I have never in my life heard it referred to in any context to do with "lynching black people." (I study 19th c and early 20th c pop culture.) I'd be suspicious of anyone using that line of reasoning to begin with considering that lynching used to be a popular form of execution for people of any race. Your link to a ten-year-old obscure blog post parroting something THEY heard isn't much of a source, to put it mildly.
I just completed a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. What a surprise that, instead of the flower vase I anticipated it was a Confederate flag held by a Klansman.
Ann, My, your blog attracts a lot of “unsophisticated” people. In my experience the distinction between sophistication and sophistry is not just in the eye of the beholder.
I don't disagree with this statement but, in my experience, the use of the full term was fairly rare. I can attest that "jig" (usually in the plural) was not uncommonly used to refer to people who were then normally called in polite terms "Negroes" (now blacks, Afro-Americans, etc.) on the South Side of Chicago during the 1960s. Along with the word that must never be said.
But the "jig is up" stuff seems like horseshit to me, and, I believe, is total, made-up horseshit. I was fully familiar with that phrase growing up, as well as the use of the term "jig," and never made that connection, which doesn't even make any sense to me.
In my experience, neither of the two words, in and of themselves, had any hateful connotation back in the day. Unless accompanied by other words (e.g., "stupid" in connection with the N-word), they were just terms used to identify certain people, as my recently deceased brother-in-law did into his 80s. Though my mother, sisters, etc., were probably unlikely to use those words.
Though Althouse is of roughly the same age as I am (just about three years older), she seems to have grown up in a much more sheltered environment than those of us who grew up where dealing with racial interactions and confrontations were a day-to-day issue.
>>Dago in rain, dago in snow, but when dago flat, dago wop wop wop.
This one made me laugh. I don't remember the exact context, but "dago wop wop wop" is a phrase I certainly remember from my no doubt deplorable youth (and now deplorable old age). While we lived in what was primarily an Irish neighborhood (we were not Irish), we also had plenty of "dagoes" (and old guys wearing "dago tees") on our block, in the neighborhood, and in the parish school, along with Germans, Slavs (you know I resisted using that other word), whatever. And even those "publics" who sent their kids to public school.
I highly recommend "What Parish Are You From" by Eileen McMahon for, first, an overview of the Catholic settlement of Chicago and then the disastrous failure of integration on the South Side, despite the best intentions of a lot of people. The focus of the latter is on St. Sabina, now home of the (I will refrain from commenting) Fr. Pfleger, a church that is roughly a mile from where I grew up.
Just to be clear, we're talking here about Englewood/West Englewood, currently the murder capital of Chicago, though recent development in the Loop, near North Side, etc., are disturbing, to say the least. God help me, I'll be heading out there for about a week on Thursday.
@gpm Though living in Atlanta now for most of my life, I'm "from" Queen of the Universe and St. Linus. I know and recall your experiences. I once was severely chastised in law school for referring to my dago tee. Where I grew up the phrase was neither pejorative nor controversial (newspaper ads marketed them for 3 for a $3), so I was a bit taken aback and upset by the experience. I called my Italian buddy Nicky to share the story, and his (kidding, mostly) response was. "Want me to take of them for you?"
It is a shame what has happened to St. Sabina's. My friend Pat Hickey and lots of other guys from the "old neighborhood" have worked wonders for the neighborhood's current youth through their extraordinary support of Leo High School.
Thanks for the McMahon book tip. Will order it today.
@gpm And my recollection of "dago wop wop wop" had something to do with a joke regarding how Italian tires go. Told to me by my buddy Vincie of course. Being Czech and Croatian I always felt a bit unimportant since there were no jokes about me. Though my Dad used to carry an "Out of Town Czech Acceptance Card." We were tribal those days for sure, but not with the manufactured sophisticated animus we see today.
Memphis didn't have much in the way of ethnic neighborhoods per se, but different streets and blocks were sometimes ethnic in the Northern sense.
Catholics here sorted into German, Irish, and Italian more or less, but intermarried quickly and of course since WWII most of those early distinctions have vanished across the board. A few Greeks and Lebanese, very few Slavic gentiles; since the 60s of course a lot of non-Europeans immigrating here.
Terms like "mick," "dago," and "wop" were known but hadn't enough force to bother with either way. "Kraut" and "Jap" were ubiquitous (our dads had kicked their asses) but not all that malicious. As a budding expert I encountered the term "kike" in my reading and dropped it into some conversations to see what happened, and nobody knew what it meant--not even the morons who went on about Jews all the time.
A lot of older W/white people referred to B/black people as "Nigras," with an air of moving with the times.
Lynching was used against and by people of all races in the absence of established legal systems. In the 19th Century, such frontiers still included large portions of states such as Florida and Georgia.
The largest mass lynching in America was of Italians.
Nascent legal systems often sentenced people to life, then let them go after a number of months or years.
There are numerous instances of black communities lynching black men and even bi-racial crowds lynching whites or blacks accused of rape, especially rape of children, or murder, or both.
But by the rise of Jim Crow, lynching was primarily white-on-black.
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82 comments:
Arg! Too much language policing!
'Jig' is almost certainly derived from the popular Irish/English 16th century dance which, if you believe Wikipedia, is probably derived from the French/Italian words 'to jump'.
Of all the people in society, aging women have the highest likelihood of being (or having been) Karens. So this is just sleeping in the bed they made.
I am sure that people who disagree with this new policy feel free to voice their displeasure.
But clearly nobody could possibly disagree with a new government ordinance such as this.
The support is overwhelming.
Did they mean 'gigue'?
I believe "Whoopi Goldberg" was once used as an antisemitic trope in a 1910 comic, so I refuse to use her name in normal conversation. I don't want to upset Jewish people. So I just call her Redneck Rita.
I've seen groups of Chinse women doing their exercises in the AM, although they use all kinds of music. Mostly chinese but also nice Pop music. It seems very pleasent and they don't do it too loud, so I've never heard anyone complain.
Leave the dancing grannies alone Xi and your CCP stooges. Authoritarianism is so dull.
"but I'd avoid using it where it doesn't specifically apply."
Not to worry. The Perpetually Offended will find something else to complain about.
How the heck does someone feel free to blast away with a shotgun in China? And how did the shotgun get there? They're illegal!
How did I live this long before learning that jig is not almost always preceded by the qualifier Irish?
See also Falun Gong, Epoch Times. This has been happening for years.
There is no relation to American lynching. Which ended 100 years ago and included more white and especially Italian immigrants as victims, and more black lynchers than is polite to mention.
Why also is it so incredibly difficult for Americans, and especially academicians, to so much as mention the horrific mass homicide and death camps and political suppression and murders committed by the Chinese Communists right now and ever since they took power? To even mention it, instead of playing word games?
Had a guy take offense at an apron I used to have with Jig - a - Loo on the front of it. Of course, Jig-a-loo was a lubricant used on "jigs" or fixtures for holding parts, to aid in the release of parts from the fixture. But people do like to virtue signal and see racism where none exists. And the moment you allow them to define words for you is the moment your freedom starts to erode.
That granny in blue really has some moves. Nice to see all that flexibility. But enough with the 'race consciousness' stuff. That's a topic that would definitely benefit from a little benign neglect right about now.
Dance a jig, hang a necklace, jab the spine, perhaps a scalpel across the neck are common methods of public and private abortion rites over the ages, and is still practiced in darkness and under a veil in some of the less civilized nations.
If you capture all the eggs, you could get 400 babies per woman. Mostly fathered by the guys running the recovery program probably.
Dancing Granny got da moves. Check that hip action. That's how you keep a body young.
There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult
Really? No question? I don’t see any reason to believe any of those people on Quora know what they’re talking about. They sound like the same ding dongs who argue that “gyp” is short for gypsy, or who think that “history” is “his story” smushed together.
I know a number of jigs and none of them are short for jigaboo.
I'm pretty sure that if it takes a paragraph to explain why something is a racial slur - it's not a racial slur. Racial slurs only have impact if/when their commonly understood as a racial slur.
Yeah, I'm surprised WaPo allowed "the jig is up". Must have been an approved version of word usage.
I'm also surprised that the CCP would allow loud musical dances that are not Party approved and...apparently these were born out of the Cultural Revolution so either they are approved or they'll have to figure out a way to denounce this dancing. Depends on which side has the actual political connections and how hight those connections reside in the political body.
This morning I listened to a Bari Weiss (Honestly) podcast from Dec. 1 about Desmond Shum, author of "Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China". A nice tale of people disappearing if they are not doing, saying, or thinking approved actions, speech, or thought. I suspect someone in this dance debate may be getting an offer they cannot refuse from the National Thuggery that is the Chinese government.
On the side, that grandma has some moves.
I'm pretty sure that if it takes a paragraph to explain why something is a racial slur - it's not a racial slur. Racial slurs only have impact if/when their commonly understood as a racial slur.
"The jig is up" has passed into common speech at this point, and what it might have referred to in earlier times is irrelevant. Compare "tar baby." Languages just do this, grabbing stuff from anywhere and making them universal expressions. If you start going down that road you find only insanity, as thousands of phrases have origins people don't know and wouldn't approve of if they did. This gets worse because there are also rumored origins that are easily disproven but persist, such as "rule of thumb," and now we are supposed to respect even that, because someone thinks it refers to beating women, even though it doesn't.
As I can't get fired from being retired, I guess I am privileged to just say "the hell with it" and say what I want, while other people who have families to support have to be more paranoid. But I can at least continue to create space for them by using normal phrases unashamedly.
Was it a Tibetan mastiff, or was it a bear?
https://nine.com.au/entertainment/viral/tibetan-mastiff-puppy-grows-into-black-bear/50dbcb20-8c53-46c3-b4a3-41d61a7c631c
"There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult, though it clearly refers to a type of dance, but I'd avoid using it where it doesn't specifically apply."
No question? What exactly is a "racist insult"? Do you mean a "racial insult"? A term that someone finds insulting simply because it refers to his race? Like if someone calls me "white"? Ooh, that pisses me off. When are you jiggers gonna stop whiting me? Ah, whatever. Jiggers gonna jig.
Isn't that how Falun Gong got their start? Dancing in parks?
Now they are major participants in the organ donation business. Almost as big as the Uighurs. How many Falun Gong kidneys and Uighur livers do you suppose LeBron owns?
It's nice to see that Madonna hasn't lost flexibility.
Well in Waukesha Wisconsin a few weeks ago, a recently released felon took matters into his own hands and drove through a group of dancing grannies.
Of course a jig is a mineral processing machine that shakes and washes material by an upward motion, or a fishing rig, or a frame for guiding a machine tool to the work piece. I think the racist aspect comes from the __aboo version which seems to be an insulting reference to a primitive people or their way of speaking.
Xi is underestimating the value of keeping these grannies and aunties happy. I look forward to seeing his support erode.
IIRC the full word is "jigaboo".
Henceforth to be referred to as the "j-word".
Thank God we had Kevin Bacon in our hour of need.
There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult, though it clearly refers to a type of dance, but I'd avoid using it where it doesn't specifically apply.
Hopefully, we will soon have the technology for Thought Police. Meanwhile, we are fortunate to have so many volunteer Language Police.
Why don’t they have a silent rave? Everyone wears headphone tuned to the same songs. They do it here in some hipster bars.
I have never heard “the jig is up” referred to as a racist saying. That is really stretching it since a jig is a Celtic dance. What does it have to do with black people? During Elizabethan times the word jig become slang for a practical joke or trick. “The jig is up” would mean the joke or misbehavior was found out. Which is always how I have understood the saying.
I sure don't want to hear public music coming from outside my residence while I'm sleeping. Granny angle seems irrelevant.
The Chinese Communist Party also forbade the silent group meditation of Falun Gong participants. Being completely silent and not moving, or moving with accompanying music, both are groups of people not under the control of the CCP for a few moments in time, which the CCP sees as a threat to their kleptocratic, autocratic, totalitarian government.\
There are about 90,000,000 members of the CCP. I'm sure China has more than that many streetlight posts and enough rope or wire to change that to zero.
Remember, leftists in the West (US and Europe) see the ChiCom's as the model they want to emulate across all aspects of society.
They don't even bother hiding it anymore.....the only thing lefties in the US hide is anything that alludes to Taiwan being independent of the lefties beloved ChiComs, where viruses come from, ChiCom slaves, selling of slave body parts and organs, ChiCom's purchasing of the Bidens thru corrupt money/cocaine/underage girl activities, penetration of all our institutions, etc.
Other than that, the lefties (like Howard) sure do take "principled" stands against the ChiCom's.......(wink wink)
There's no question that "jig" can be used as a racist insult, though it clearly refers to a type of dance,
The word also refers to devices which assist tools.
I would guess that the word jigaboo is no longer used in the Halls of Congress.
No fun for you!!!
The only "popular novel" I know of regarding a "black astronaut" is Lucifer's Hammer, and I do not remember anyone using "the jig is up." Though I do remember a character wondering if astronaut tastes like chicken.
I support noise pollution mitigation, and have no problem throwing feces @ scofflaws. Noise pollution is harming us NOW, not hundreds of years from now.
Long, long ago, I was a toolmaker. Among other things, I made jigs and fixtures. I didn't consider them racist but they were tools.
I’m not saying everyone who uses the phrase is being knowingly racist, just that it’s unsophisticated not to catch yourself, see the problem, and rewrite.
It’s like “chink in the armor.” Defensible, but smart people avoid the phrase.
My earlier comment not here.
Did they mean 'gigue'?
There's a wonderful word that needs to be used to describe people who see racism in the word "jig". Or even "chink" for that matter.
That word is "niggardly".
gspencer,
Exactly. If you are, say, making a violin, or for that matter any model airplane wing with curved parts in it, you are using a jig. I am saddened to see that this perfectly good word (good for the dance as well) is being taken out of circulation altogether b/c some people just can't keep their minds away from "jigaboo." And I don't mean the racists, but the racist-sniffers.
@michelle
There wasn’t a black astronaut character, just telling a terrible joke that began, what did they say when the first black astronaut went into space?
First, isn't a lot of that dancing or shimmying Tai chi?
Second, isn't using a dismissive phrase like that about crackdowns in a dictatorial state inherently reprehensible?
I'm pretty sure the phrase as used here isn't directed at African-Americans. I do wonder whether etymologically the phrase wasn't originally an anti-Irish slur.
It’s like “chink in the armor.” Defensible, but smart people avoid the phrase.
I would consider myself smart, and I do not avoid that phrase. I would suggest timid rather than smart.
That is really stretching it since a jig is a Celtic dance. What does it have to do with black people?
Black hole... black whore h/t NAACP for-profit!
That said, in diversity philosophy, it's "people of black", or the more inclusive "people of color", a color bloc, a racist designation, who rap around the fire, and hang necklaces (a la Xhosa vs Zulu) as a purely "secular" fashion forward statement.
"It’s like “chink in the armor.” Defensible, but smart people avoid the phrase."
Smart people let their writing be dictated by the perpetually offended? I would have thought otherwise.
Talk of the evil chi Coms always makes me think of Nancy Pelosi
I don't know about this whole chink 'thing.
Chink / chinking is a material and process to seal joints between logs in a log cabin.
There's actually a company called Perma-Chink.
Ann Althouse said...
"I’m not saying everyone who uses the phrase is being knowingly racist, just that it’s unsophisticated not to catch yourself, see the problem, and rewrite."
I know there are races. Does that make me "knowingly racist"?
Bloggers gonna blog.
Jiggs and Maggie - first a comic book, then a film series.
Starring Two Negroes: John Yule and Renie Riano. They've been cancelled since they made fun of black people.
Hint for the DUMB commenters. If you go to dinner with Althouse don't ask for a Jigger of whiskey, she may faint or attack you.
My bad. I can't see, I see.
IT may have been S I Hayakawa who recounted meeting a lovely older couple during his travels, who let him stay at their home for a while. They referred to him as "the little Nip." This would have been in the 1920's, maybe?
He said they didn't have another term to use, and changed when he gave them something more polite, but I don't recall what that was.
M said...
I have never heard “the jig is up” referred to as a racist saying. That is really stretching it since a jig is a Celtic dance.
*****************
The term " the jig is up" was used to describe being discovered doing something illicit or criminal.
Merriam-Webster:
—used to say that a dishonest plan or activity has been discovered and will not be allowed to continue
Rude ethnic humor?
How about: "What sound does an Alitalia Airlines helicopter make?
Guinea Guinea Guinea, Whop wop wop wop...........
I denounce myself, so don't bother.
I have noticed that Rich people behave differently than the rest of us. Does that make me a "Richist"? Plus, I've noticed that the Poors aren't really like the rest of us either. Am I a "Poorist"?
Or maybe I'm just guilty of noticing that there is a connection between people's behavior and their economic circumstances. I'm an "Economist".
"In 2013, a sleep-deprived 56-year-old man fired a shotgun into the air and loosed a Tibetan mastiff on a group of dancers."
Sounds like a US inner city incident.
There are several versions of the Emma Goldman quote. The one I remember doesn't have "to it" in there. The Revolution isn't a tune you dance to. Your dance comes from you and becomes part of the Revolution.
The quote sounds more like the 1970s than a revolutionary who lived 50 years before. Indeed, the sentiment comes from Goldman, but there's no evidence that she actually said or wrote any of the variants. What she wrote was:
the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.
"It’s like “chink in the armor.” Defensible, but woke people avoid the phrase."
FTFY
There wasn’t a black astronaut character, just telling a terrible joke that began, what did they say when the first black astronaut went into space?
Negro Space Program
https://youtu.be/T6xJzAYYrX8
Old white woman taking offense for the jigs who couldn't care less.
Oops...make that old, smart and sophisticated white woman.
"It’s like “chink in the armor.” Defensible, but smart people avoid the phrase."
Smart = willingness to subjugate your language to others' neurosis?
All the words offend me. Please be smart and don't use any of them.
Jig. Jig. Jigger.
Words have meanings and you can avoid them at your own risk and self-worth.
Uh oh, Althouse is teaching CRT.
The only racist connotations associated with the phrase "the jig is up" are those fabricated by the same people who lied to us about the origin of the word "picnic."
https://knowyourphrase.com/jig-is-up
Well-adjusted people should not censor themselves in order to placate lying bullies.
@Ann --
Your use of the word "sophisticated does true justice to its ancient origins.
One jigs when fishing with a rod and reel. Hopefully the colorful fish aren't offended.
As to use of words that offend because of the listener's intention to be offended using their own ignorance as an excuse: eff those people.
The chink in the wall between Pyramus and Thisbe was a chink. Were it a crack, the sexual connotations of that work in idiomatic English arguably would be worse, considering the context of the lover's story. When the argument used to prevent a word's use use is that it is a homonym, you got no argument. From Slate: "Yes, I know that phrase (chink in armor) has no racial connotations, but it uses the same exact word as the racial slur, for God’s sake." May God keep and protect such idiots, far away from us all.
Err, "jig" refers to an old Irish/English type of dancing and I have never in my life heard it referred to in any context to do with "lynching black people." (I study 19th c and early 20th c pop culture.) I'd be suspicious of anyone using that line of reasoning to begin with considering that lynching used to be a popular form of execution for people of any race. Your link to a ten-year-old obscure blog post parroting something THEY heard isn't much of a source, to put it mildly.
To market, to market to buy a fat pig.
Home again, home again j*****y j*g.
I just completed a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. What a surprise that, instead of the flower vase I anticipated it was a Confederate flag held by a Klansman.
I have tossed all my fishing jigs into the trash bin.
Must not offend the trout.
And thus, dear Professor, the desire to be polite under shifting terms becomes farce.
Ann,
My, your blog attracts a lot of “unsophisticated” people.
In my experience the distinction between sophistication and sophistry is not just in the eye of the beholder.
effinayright---
Italian Tires.
Dago in rain, dago in snow, but when dago flat, dago wop wop wop.
H/t my late MIL, nee Catanzaro.
>>IIRC the full word is "jigaboo".
I don't disagree with this statement but, in my experience, the use of the full term was fairly rare. I can attest that "jig" (usually in the plural) was not uncommonly used to refer to people who were then normally called in polite terms "Negroes" (now blacks, Afro-Americans, etc.) on the South Side of Chicago during the 1960s. Along with the word that must never be said.
But the "jig is up" stuff seems like horseshit to me, and, I believe, is total, made-up horseshit. I was fully familiar with that phrase growing up, as well as the use of the term "jig," and never made that connection, which doesn't even make any sense to me.
In my experience, neither of the two words, in and of themselves, had any hateful connotation back in the day. Unless accompanied by other words (e.g., "stupid" in connection with the N-word), they were just terms used to identify certain people, as my recently deceased brother-in-law did into his 80s. Though my mother, sisters, etc., were probably unlikely to use those words.
Though Althouse is of roughly the same age as I am (just about three years older), she seems to have grown up in a much more sheltered environment than those of us who grew up where dealing with racial interactions and confrontations were a day-to-day issue.
--gpm
>>Dago in rain, dago in snow, but when dago flat, dago wop wop wop.
This one made me laugh. I don't remember the exact context, but "dago wop wop wop" is a phrase I certainly remember from my no doubt deplorable youth (and now deplorable old age). While we lived in what was primarily an Irish neighborhood (we were not Irish), we also had plenty of "dagoes" (and old guys wearing "dago tees") on our block, in the neighborhood, and in the parish school, along with Germans, Slavs (you know I resisted using that other word), whatever. And even those "publics" who sent their kids to public school.
I highly recommend "What Parish Are You From" by Eileen McMahon for, first, an overview of the Catholic settlement of Chicago and then the disastrous failure of integration on the South Side, despite the best intentions of a lot of people. The focus of the latter is on St. Sabina, now home of the (I will refrain from commenting) Fr. Pfleger, a church that is roughly a mile from where I grew up.
Just to be clear, we're talking here about Englewood/West Englewood, currently the murder capital of Chicago, though recent development in the Loop, near North Side, etc., are disturbing, to say the least. God help me, I'll be heading out there for about a week on Thursday.
--gpm
@gpm
Though living in Atlanta now for most of my life, I'm "from" Queen of the Universe and St. Linus. I know and recall your experiences. I once was severely chastised in law school for referring to my dago tee. Where I grew up the phrase was neither pejorative nor controversial (newspaper ads marketed them for 3 for a $3), so I was a bit taken aback and upset by the experience. I called my Italian buddy Nicky to share the story, and his (kidding, mostly) response was. "Want me to take of them for you?"
It is a shame what has happened to St. Sabina's. My friend Pat Hickey and lots of other guys from the "old neighborhood" have worked wonders for the neighborhood's current youth through their extraordinary support of Leo High School.
Thanks for the McMahon book tip. Will order it today.
@gpm
And my recollection of "dago wop wop wop" had something to do with a joke regarding how Italian tires go. Told to me by my buddy Vincie of course. Being Czech and Croatian I always felt a bit unimportant since there were no jokes about me. Though my Dad used to carry an "Out of Town Czech Acceptance Card." We were tribal those days for sure, but not with the manufactured sophisticated animus we see today.
Memphis didn't have much in the way of ethnic neighborhoods per se, but different streets and blocks were sometimes ethnic in the Northern sense.
Catholics here sorted into German, Irish, and Italian more or less, but intermarried quickly and of course since WWII most of those early distinctions have vanished across the board. A few Greeks and Lebanese, very few Slavic gentiles; since the 60s of course a lot of non-Europeans immigrating here.
Terms like "mick," "dago," and "wop" were known but hadn't enough force to bother with either way. "Kraut" and "Jap" were ubiquitous (our dads had kicked their asses) but not all that malicious. As a budding expert I encountered the term "kike" in my reading and dropped it into some conversations to see what happened, and nobody knew what it meant--not even the morons who went on about Jews all the time.
A lot of older W/white people referred to B/black people as "Nigras," with an air of moving with the times.
Lea S.
Lynching was used against and by people of all races in the absence of established legal systems. In the 19th Century, such frontiers still included large portions of states such as Florida and Georgia.
The largest mass lynching in America was of Italians.
Nascent legal systems often sentenced people to life, then let them go after a number of months or years.
There are numerous instances of black communities lynching black men and even bi-racial crowds lynching whites or blacks accused of rape, especially rape of children, or murder, or both.
But by the rise of Jim Crow, lynching was primarily white-on-black.
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