I have to say, I love the fact that Westmoreland basically just admitted that “elitist” was being used as a synonym for “uppity.”  So much for that dog whistle.

Five dollars says McCain calls Obama a “mulatto” before this election is over.

MEMBER of an elitist-class INDIVIDUAL??

That’s some serious high-falutin’ set theory shit there, Mister Representative. College boy thinks he’s better than me.

No one “thinks they’re uppity.” Uppity people think they are better. So fail at words as well as fail at not being a racist, Westmoreland.

^ and that, mathpants.

Anyone know if there’s a good history of the word “uppity” online somewhere? I’ve been looking but haven’t had much luck yet. I’m trying to explain it to some folks online and am getting people saying how they’ve never heard it in a racist context, so trying to figure out how to make this clear…

Mike-

Are they from the south? If they are they’re just being thick. If not they have an excuse.

Seriously, though,

the racially-tinged term

there’s nothing “tinged” about it.  Damn weasel words.

One of them was (Georgia!), some others not. I just find it mind boggling.

There is NO way that someone has not heard the word “uppity” in a racial context. That’s what it is. Racial. Being from Tennessee, with relatives in Alabama, I know. There is no other context for that word. Mostly used by my grandfather (R.I.P.) when blacks were moving in to his neighborhood or shopping at the grocery store he managed.

Okay, so won the pool?

who won

If they are from the United States of America, they are almost certainly being disingenuous.

This article explains the history of the term well.

The “disingenuous” folks I was talking about were the people Mike said were telling him they had never heard “uppity” used as a racist slur.

Yeah, same in Virginia, “uppity” is never used in any other context I can think of.

The you can’t find it with a search on just the word uppity, is that it is usually used in conjunction with the “N” word.  Try googling that - lot’s of explanation there.  Even a sample applied to Colin Powell - they do eat their own, don’t they?

Thanks for the Alternet link, Jupiter!

I’ve seen “uppity” in literature (as a young one) not related to race, rather someone who was snobbish. 

as for my adult life- I haven’t seen it since not connected to a racial term.  I agree with Jupiter- they absolutely know what they’re saying.

I love how he starts with Commandment 5 and goes from there.

A bit to inconvenient to mention that “I am the LORD your God…You shall have no other gods before Me” is the first Commandment. That would undermine the whole ridiculous Totally-NOT-Religious “legal foundation of society” BS.

“You shall have no other gods before Me” simply does not go together with “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”, and certainly isn’t the ‘foundation’ of it.

Don’t forget that Steve King also had this other gem of a bigoted quote:

“There probably are not 72 virgins in the hell he (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) is at, and if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas.”

I will say that I’d never heard “uppity” as a racial term until I got to college. That said, it wouldn’t have been too hard to understand what it meant in that sense; I honestly can’t think of any context where it’s a neutral word rather than a really ugly one. “Uppity bitch” is the phrase I’ve heard the most, and in the other places I’ve seen it have all been in novels referring to lower class people who try to mimic the upper class.  I’ve never seen it in reference to one of those upperclass people. They get “snobbish” instead, and the two definately aren’t equal. “Snobbish” means you’re rude; “uppity” always means someone who’s “lesser” is trying to take charge/have nice things. (Think I used enough scare quotes there?)

That entire long paragraph meaning to say that yeah, even if they’re unfamiliar with that specific history of the word, they know what they’re saying.

That Colbert interview is one of the many reasons I no longer accept “sincerity” as a valid defense for being a complete fucking moron. If you’re going to be a wide-eyed Christianist hellbent on theocracy, the absolute least you could do is to have the Ten Commandments on immediate recall.

I love how he starts with Commandment 5 and goes from there.

A bit to inconvenient to mention that “I am the LORD your God…You shall have no other gods before Me” is the first Commandment. That would undermine the whole ridiculous Totally-NOT-Religious “legal foundation of society” BS.

The explanation is even simpler than that: Westmorland didn’t know the Ten Commandments.

The meaning of uppity is unclear?  Read Faulkner.

Yikes!  Even a midwestern conservative like myself knows better than to use that term.

There’s only one way I know of to be a member of an individual. I wonder whose penis Barack and Michelle Obama are.

First return on a Google search on “uppity nigger.”

(Caution: extremely offensive content. DO NOT follow the URL back to its domain, if you want to keep your dinner.)

I’ve just been putting the finishing touches on a book that deals tangentially with blackface minstrelsy of the 1840s- ca. 1920s, and I’m hypersensitized to this stuff. I’ve had to choke back bile many times during this project. <i>Do not<i> ask me about hillbilly fiddler Fiddlin’ John Carson—I will bend your ear a tad about the lynching son of a bitch.

Just thought I’d remind everybody about the reality of what “uppity” implies.

I grew up in a state without blacks, and the word “uppity” was applied to different classes of people, to the same effect.

As in “uppity woman” or “uppity mexicans” or “uppity japs” or “uppity trailer trash”.

All the same, it still implies that one has risen above one’s rightful station in life, often though hard work and the adversity of resistance and levelling mechanisms alike.

*WHOMP*

That would be my jaw hitting the floor.  Not in surprise that a Rethug would say this, but that he actually said it outright instead of using a dogwhistle.

Uppity “n”, either the rudest or lesser rude racial term, or uppity bitch. I can’t recall ever seeing or hearing any other noun used in conjunction with it. So it’s a sexist term as well as racist, and the reason it is those things is it indicates that the person has a “proper place” they think they are above. Never have I encountered any reference to an uppity middle aged white man.

I live in possibly the LEAST racist, most liberal state in the country (HI) and even I know what word comes after ‘uppity’.

I’m picturing a team of Republican spinmeisters whirling around as they hear the first “uppity” escape his lips, diving toward him in slow motion shouting “Nooooooooooo…....” and only tackling him right after the second “uppity”....but too late.

tomonthebay: Even a midwestern conservative like myself knows better than to use that term.

Rephrased: Even I know that you can’t be this obviously racist.  You have to use words like “elitist” instead.

mythago: win!

Actually, the first place I ever heard the word was in Mr Uppity, one of the Mr Men books, when I was about four. My excuse is that I lived on an Army base in Germany until I was six, spent most of the rest of my childhood in northern Virginia, and had scant contact with my deep-South relatives.

(I’m not disagreeing that it’s overwhelmingly used as a racist term! Particularly by the (un)distinguished representative from the great state of Jawja.)

I am from Western New York, and the term “uppity” was almost always followed by, if people were “enlightened”, Colored or Black (except when my mother called me “uppity” - it was also sometimes applied to girls and women who were too smart and opinionated for their own “good”).  This is not just a southern thing at all, which should make Obama supporters VERY nervous when people go into the privacy of the voting booth in November. I think racism, coupled with the so-far winning strategy of the politics of fear and resentment (which are very much intertwined with racism - why aren’t more people hammering at this point?  I was particularly disappointed in Thomas Frank’s first book for not going into this more), will be a much bigger factor in this election than we dare to imagine. Especially, if god forbid, there is an “October Surprise” of some sort or terrorist attack before then.