Pretty sure 75 years is prior to the other three existing, so Thomas & Friends has technically gone longer without dropping an N-bomb.
All this means is that the Thomas franchise has existed long enough to be publishing books since when that word was still in common parlance. I’m sure if you looked at anything from that era, it wouldn’t take long to find something that appears problematic through a modern lens.
Believe it or not, it was not “normal” to use slurs in children’s books in 1952.
There are Marvel comics from the 1940’s with characters straight out of ministrel shows and they still don’t use the word. Would you like to guess why?
Edit: not that it stopped Dr Seuss a couple times in the 30’s, mind you, but he reserved it for comics and not his children’s books, those only got racist caricatures.
The word carried somewhat less of a charge in the UK at the time, where black people were relatively uncommon until waves of labour migration from the Caribbean in the 1950s, than in the US, where it was freighted with the weight of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws and such. Agatha Christie could call a book “10 Little N_s”, alluding to a children’s rhyme. This was an age in which the children who casually sang that rhyme probably had golliwog dolls.
Sure, absolutely no history of slavery and colonialism in the UK. There definitely aren’t a dozen Kipling stories where he calls anyone not a WASP by the term.
While Britain participated in the slave trade, they went out of their way to not do so in Britain; the slaveholders kept their slaves abroad and out of sight, in places where the laws of civilisation which rule such institutions to be obscene are waived. (Sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean were one such place.) And it was impolite to inquire too hard about the sources of fortunes that built stately homes.
The difference being that when the N-word was uttered in Britain, it was belittling and condescending in an exoticising way, like a colonial-era picture book of funny foreigners in their traditional costumes. In America, however, it had a more immediate edge of aggression and violence, implying an other that’s here rather than far away, and firmly below the speaker in the established racial hierarchy, and who must be kept there using tools including designating them as a (N-word).
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The garbage eurotrash will spread to pretend they aren’t and haven’t been virulent racists is pretty amazing.
IT’s eXotiCisiNg NoT a ToOl oF oUr RacIaL ImpEriAl HeiRARchY
Meanwhile, at the absolute kindest Br*tish imperial racists are being:
You’re bringing up fucking Kipling of all people, the one poet everyone knows for being mega into colonialism. That’s like me pointing at the Grateful Dead while saying Americans need to lay off the acid.
One of England’s favorite poets until public displays of explicit racism were no longer de rigueur.
He’s a perfectly valid example of the feelings of the nation at that time.
Are you fucking stupid?
They really are delusional.
The denial and defense of their racist antics is amazing to see in real time.
Those were exceedingly good stories though!
I just checked my copy of the book. Even though it was first published in 1939, my copy was still published under the original titlein 1963.
It was altered in the 70s, around the same time the Thomas book was altered.
Well, now I am going to have to go home and check my copy of Thomas. Because I totally remember that line.
Setting aside the incorrect notion that there weren’t black people in England until the 50s, the story in question was published in 1951 and remained in print into the 1970s.
“relatevily uncommon” != “there weren’t”
Yes, and Black soldiers took part in D-Day seven years prior.
Believe it or not, it was not “normal” to use slurs in children’s books in 1952.
It heavily depends which books you look in.
pretty sure that racism in the days of yore was still racist (please remember who decided what was appropriate in common parlance back then)
And nobody denied that. The statement was “racism was normal in those days”, and not “the n-word wasn’t racist in those days”.
it was as normal as it is now. so what’s your point?
You’re not allowed to criticize or point out Southern Klans members because it was the style of the time.
Lemmy’s just becoming worse and worse these days.
Again, nobody said that. You keep just making shit up.
nobody is making shit up except the propagandists who spoon feed us this idea that we are so much more enlightened now we were in the olden days. i mean, look around you.
There are things in the world to legitimately be outraged about if you want to be outraged. You don’t need to force yourself to be angry at shit like this.
the hays code didn’t apply to colloquial speech, it applied to movies.
The Hayes Code didn’t apply to books at all, it was movie specific. I assumed they were talking about the dominant culture at the time.
it just cracks me up because if you look for Hays violating shit, it’s everywhere back then. If they wanted to sing about sex, they sang about food.
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See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None (Agatha Christie, 1939)
Context: https://www.scribd.com/document/899239966/Henry-the-Green-Engine-1951-Scanned-by-ThatERTLGuy#page=64 page 60 of the book, 64 of the document.
Written version in case someone doesn’t want to click on random links:
The Guard’s flag waved, his whistle blew, and they were off. Soon in the distance they saw the bridge. There were the boys and they all had stones. “Are you ready, Henry?” said this Driver. “Sneeze hard when I tell you.” “Now!” he said, and turned the handle. “Atisha Atisha Atishooooooh!” Smoke and steam and ashes spouted from his funnel. They went all over the bridge, and all over the boys who ran away as black as ####.
fuck censorship. historical context is important when referencing historical facts. society must be reminded of why language like this is no longer acceptable in order to keep it unacceptable, lest we forget.
JFC
he doesn’t even look sorry
“Hey baby, wanna hear a slur?”
“shitwhistle” (it’s a slur among sentient trains)
You hear that, Bobandy? That shrill sound in the distance? That’s a shitwhistle heralding the arrival of the shit train. Carrying countless shitcars each filled with tons and tons of shitcargo. Should be here any moment, Bobandy, but first a little drinky poo!
He knew
The boys were ready with stones to throw at the locomotive.
My god this was probably a real problem in 19th/early 20th century England though. Fucking kids can be fucking assholes lol
Every story in the books was based on an actual event.
That’s no reason to throw the gamer word at them. Actually, it’s more messed up because it was a bunch of lily white English kids chucking rocks. Should’ve called them crackers as he passed instead.
Fucking chavs
Henry wasn’t sorry, it was on purpose. He was celebrated. I have read the entirety of The Railway Series to my daughter twice (I do substitute in “coal” for the aforementioned slur). There is some crazy shit in there. Engine body horror.
Let’s not forget that unfortunate Spongebob scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNsWbK4OkZw
So, are George Carlin and Ringo Starr racists?! /s
Probably, they grew up in a time when it was harder to know better but it’s still racism when most of society does it.
(75 years i.e. 1951)
Don’t even get started with Tintin.
I don’t think Tintin is publishing anything today… Or recently. Not anything new, anyways.
I convinced a girl to watch “Battle Of Briton (1969)” with me one time. I forgot to warn her about the dog. She was shocked to say the least.
Does the Nword have the same cultural significance in the UK?
You’re thinking of Dambusters.
And it was still derogatory, but not as weaponised as the US. More like how they used the lesser N word.
wtf is the lesser N word can we just write them in quotes? It’s not like Voldemort.
Looks over shoulder
Whispers: “numpty”
Runs away
Lmao that sounds like a python library
Ooh, so close. There is a NumPy lib.
Oh god, worse than I could possible have imagined D:
Yeah this always irks me about english/the anglosphere, people act like mentioning a word is the same as directing it at someone as an insult
It’s hammered into a lot of people’s heads that the word is very mean, and not just “insult” but “remember, people like you used to be considered animals and treated like property, subject to difficult to fathom attrocities”.
It doesn’t need to be directed to be a reminder. While reference is likewise a reminder, it’s at least couched in terms that convey the speaker understands it has weight beyond “insult”.
Couple that with saying it as a white person can carry significant reputation damage.Since these lessons are usually imparted in childhood implicitly, and it doesn’t come up often enough to drive introspection for most people, it just lingers as “don’t say words that hurt people and make everyone dislike you”.
They still use “bugger” in the UK, which is basically the same thing but for gay people.
For years I thought “bugger” just means “to annoy” or something like that, so I would say things like “This buggers me” or “You don’t have to get so buggered about it.”
Boy am I embarrassed…
Kind of? Like you could call a child a “little bugger” and that would just be calling them annoying rather than an arse fucker
Once I used it like that at work, everyone was surprised, and so I looked it up after. I’m actually dead now. This is my ghost typing.
Well, there was one episode of South Park about people who annoy you…
I’ve never encountered that word used with a homophobic intent, as far as I could tell. If you wanted to express that thought in my youth, other words beginning with B would be far more common. Naturally I found them as odious then as I would now.
Doesn’t matter, the word is rooted in homophobic intent.
So is “gay”. Language evolves. Being a linguistic originalist would be a hard and eccentric hill to die on.
What? Gay always meant happy, jolly etc. it was repurposed and gets weird if used by its original meaning. My good man, how queer! Just means ‘quite odd’, sounds very old fashioned, but never ever meant anything else. What a gay day!
Gay meant happy. Then it was used as a perjorative to infantilise homosexuals in part to justify medical and judicial intervention. It was later reclaimed and has its current usage.
Being a linguistic originalist would be a hard and eccentric hill to die on.
Well good I’m glad the UK has abandoned that principle, it was getting a bit pretentious.
Okay, I need more context to this. N-word in any of these franchises feels something so far off.
Boys on a bridge threw rocks at a train, smashing windows. Next time the train made sure to cover them in soot so they were “black as n—“.
Some youths were throwing rocks at trains going under a bridge, so one of the engines purged soot from its chimney as it went under the bridge as revenge, covering the youths in sticky black stuff.
That word was unfortunately rather common in the past:
What the filter is that?
I thought vertical videos and word by word transcripts was aweful, now they add shitty filters?
Forreal, this clip is completely unwatchable. I took psychic damage ticks for every second I look at that garbage
They’ve been doing that for a while to work around copyright claims. And as someone with less than perfect hearing, I always appreciate transcripts/subtitles.
I love subtitles, just not the word-by-word ones. Give me full phrases dammit!