• starik@lemmy.zip
      132·
      15 hours ago

      Sadly, it’s not. The other three churn out books riddled with the n-word daily.

      • getFrog@piefed.socialEnglish
        7·
        14 hours ago

        I’m a JavaScript girl, I only know about null and undefined. But my guess would be N/A, just by method of elimination?

        ∞: They said the N-word, but if we ask “did they say the N-word yesterday?” and go back a day if the answer is no, we will be iterating forever.
        Overflow: They said the N-word sometime before Jan 1st 1970.
        NaN: Days since the last time they said the N-word: “yes”

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
          2·
          13 hours ago

          There are actually two interpretations of N/A:

          • N/A (not available): There is lost media so it can’t be evaluated.
          • N/A (not applicable): The show is in sign language so evaluating that is outside the scope of this string-matching program.

          Meanwhile, undefined seems to mean the value has not yet been evaluated. Maybe null is really the best.

        • BlackRoseAmongThorns@slrpnk.net
          2·
          12 hours ago

          All these special values are from the spec for floating point numbers, integers don’t have them, in JS specifically all numbers are floats.

          An Option<int> does a good of showing intent.

        • WesternInfidels@feddit.onlineEnglish
          881·
          1 day 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.

          • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
            8·
            14 hours 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.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
            652·
            22 hours 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.

              • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                4·
                10 hours ago

                I wonder if straight people were ever convicted of buggery with he opposite sex? I wouldn’t be surprised if “buggery” existed solely to persecute homosexuals back then.

                (I was gonna say “non-straight” or “queer” but “homosexuals” read in 30’s English accent sounded funnier to me in my head)

                • the_crotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  4·
                  9 hours ago

                  Found one example in the Wikipedia article about the buggery act of 1533, though it seems like he deserved it. I’m not clear if he was actually convicted.

                  In July 1540, Walter Hungerford, 1st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury, was charged with treason for harbouring a known member of the Pilgrimage of Grace movement. He was also accused of buggery, as he was suspected of raping his own daughter. Hungerford was beheaded at Tower Hill,[6] on 28 July 1540, the same day as Thomas Cromwell.

                • JcbAzPx@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  3·
                  10 hours ago

                  Sodomy used to be a common add on charge in sexual assault cases. I don’t know if it was ever used outside that context other than to harass gay people. I assume buggery was used the same way.

              • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
                2·
                16 hours ago

                I had always heard that it originally meant a stick to be used for kindling and was adapted to smoking once the tobacco trade was a thing. Probably complete horseshit because no internet when I was a kid, but I never bothered to look it up.

                • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
                  7·
                  15 hours ago

                  A faggot originally meant a bundle of sticks or twigs, and they were used to light fires, but I don’t think this has any relation to “fag” as in cigarette. Etymonline says of the latter:

                  British slang for “cigarette” (originally, especially, the butt of a smoked cigarette), 1888, probably from fag “loose piece, last remnant of cloth” (late 14c., as in fag-end “extreme end, loose piece,” 1610s)

                  That meaning of faggot, interestingly, comes from the same root as the Roman symbol “fasces” which is a bundle of sticks from which we get the modern word fascism.

                  Another fun fact: there’s a traditional British dish called faggots which are a kind of meatball made from offal, somewhat similar to haggis but uncased.

            • DamienGramatacus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              81·
              16 hours ago

              Weren’t idiot, moron and imbecile medical terms specifically used by white scientists to describe black people back in the good old eugenics days of the 1920’s America? Language changes sure but it often has very racist roots.

            • gerryflap@feddit.nl
              10·
              21 hours ago

              Exactly. I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring again, and it takes some getting used to that “queer” is used in a completely different way than nowadays.

              • samus12345@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                2·
                11 hours ago

                I must be old, since the original meaning is still what comes to mind first when I hear it in a non-LGBTQ context.

              • the_crotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                3·
                13 hours ago

                Queer is a strange one for me, growing up it was a straight up offensive slur for gay people but now the LGBTQ community has embraced it hard enough to give it its own letter.

                • zjti8eit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  2·
                  11 hours ago

                  I thought Q was for questioning.

                  Maybe i’m too old, but when I was a kid it just meant different, like the family down the street is rather queer, or we played a game where someobody in the classroom would change one thing, like take off their sweater and when you opened your eyes you had to identify which kid was queer

            • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
              3·
              21 hours ago

              Enid Blyton used it a surprising amount. But she was also considered old-fashioned and racist by critics at the time, so…

          • Scrollone@feddit.it
            231·
            23 hours 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.

          • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
            181·
            23 hours 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.

          • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
            3·
            12 hours 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.

          • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            20·
            23 hours 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).

            • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
              401·
              1 day ago

              Exactly … according to old-timey racists in the 1950s … this is what they imagined about black people

            • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              1 day ago

              I mean I’m terrible with names but like, skin tones vary. Go back three generations and my great grandparents look very different from each other, only one of them is all that white but godsdammit they are the whitest shade of white that ever whited white. Albinos put on sunglasses when I walk by, I inherited it somehow from gamgam. You’d think it would have been recessive not dominant but here we are. I blame all the cheese we eat, gamgam loved cheese like I love cheese.

              My point was there’s this gorgeous actress/model (I think she was a bond girl) who has an amazingly dark skin tone.

          • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
            483·
            1 day ago

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

            • arrow74@lemmy.zip
              26·
              24 hours ago

              I can promise you that the vast majority of white Americans had seen a black person in the 1950s.

                • arrow74@lemmy.zip
                  9·
                  23 hours ago

                  With the war and influx of American GIs in Britain, not to mention their colonies, I stand by my statement for Britain as well.

                  What helps in the case of the UK is a larger percentage of their population lives in cities than the US too. Just by the math living in urban areas you’re just going to see more people and more people from outside your community will be come in.

                • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
                  5·
                  21 hours ago

                  I don’t think minstrel shows with black face were common in Britain?

                  It’s more likely that white British people took it as “much darker than the skin we’re assuming for people” which is enough to make the simile work.

              • Atomic@sh.itjust.works
                54·
                20 hours ago

                I know it’s difficult to grasp the idea that the world is larger than just the US. But you’ll just have to try.

                • arrow74@lemmy.zip
                  8·
                  20 hours ago

                  I mean let’s be real minstrel shows are explicitly a western concept, and were huge in the US. Go down another comment and I addressed the UK as well, but really that’s going to apply anywhere Americans were during WW2 as well.

                  Anywhere that minstrel shows were popular by the 1950s most of those people would have at least seen a black person. America or otherwise.

          • Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.caEnglish
            71·
            1 day 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

          • TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website
            9·
            18 hours ago

            They « were » in theatre and movie production at the time. Black American weren’t allowed to play a role so they used white male with charcoal and shoe shine

            Fun fact they were some black actor that did black face as a kind of protestation IIRC

        • Kairos@lemmy.today
          9·
          1 day ago

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

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    1 day ago

    The intent and impact of the word was a lot different back then, certainly so outside of the US, but still, using a subset of humanity as a stand-in for an adjective is pretty grim stuff. Shows how little was thought of them. Like if the characters had instead become white from a flour mill explosion, it’s unlikely they’d have been described as being “as white as scampering little crackers”.

  • Return_of_Chippy@lemmy.world
    26·
    1 day ago

    I’d imagine anyone involved with that decision is dead today. Granted thats around 75 years ago. Still a crazy stat though. Mr. Roger’s TILL I DIE.

  • turtlesareneat@piefed.caEnglish
    12·
    1 day ago

    There was that Barney coloring book that advocated for blood orgies but they caught it and recalled it fairly quick

  • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    54·
    23 hours ago

    Are we not saying “as black as nigger’s” again? I thought that kind of stuff was back on the menu. I’m getting tired of having to restrict my bigotry. How am I supposed to keep up with who I’m better than if it keeps changing like this.

    • snoons@lemmy.caEnglish
      39·
      1 day ago

      Eh, pretty sure it’s referring to books published around 1945, after WWII (273242 days is ~75 years) so of course it’s going to contain inherently racist shit. I don’t think one should hate a whole series because it wasn’t talking about civil rights and equality in an era where those barely existed unless you were a white man. Heck, if Thomas & Friends was talking about that it probably would’ve been banned.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
      272·
      1 day ago

      And you didn’t already hate them for the dark and depressing messages they made by saying if your friends or family get old and unable to take care of themselves, the best way to deal with them is to seal them in a concrete tomb still alive, and let them die in there as they cry out in horror?

      That part never struck a chord with you?