Is uppity a racist word?

DeletedUser9470

imo the obamas do come across as snobish, which is the word i would use, but then uppity sounds like a word that would be used on kiddies tv.
uppity, tinky winky, dipsy, lalaa, po and noo-noo all have fun in the white house!
maybe Limbaugh got a bit confused as to what he wanted to say?
maybe barak is uppity? idk
for sure Sarkozy is tinky winky!
 
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DeletedUser

Well, all you really have to do is look the word up and you will have your answer.

Yes, uppity is racist, and or elitist. It means acting above ones station in life. At first, as I was thinking about the word, I tried to figure out where the word came from. I thought, hmmm, did it possibly come from the old saying "up in arms"? The answer is no. It seems to have originated in Georgia and it's use was specifically directed towards black people. It also has been used with another word, Biggity, which means too big for your britches.
 

DeletedUser9470

iggyberto said:
Well, all you really have to do is look the word up and you will have your answer.

Yes, uppity is racist, and or elitist. It means acting above ones station in life. At first, as I was thinking about the word, I tried to figure out where the word came from. I thought, hmmm, did it possibly come from the old saying "up in arms"? The answer is no. It seems to have originated in Georgia and it's use was specifically directed towards black people. It also has been used with another word, Biggity, which means too big for your britches.
Click to expand...

so when a person says of another person of the same coloured skin that he/she is uppity then that means that they are believed to be "acting above one's station in life", yet when a person says the same thing of someone who has different coloured skin then that is blatant outright racism?

mmm for me this aint stickin to the shovel.
an insult is the same insult, whoever it be aimed at.
people talk of context but here in this case is nonsense, that 2 protagonists be of different ethnic origins does not constitute a "racist context".
For me the ones who bring the racist idea up whenever 2 different ethnics clash, are the racist ones.

person A is white
person B is black
A called B a noob
ccl: A is racist?
NO!
The one who is racist is precisely the one who concluded A is racist.

The fact that racism becomes the matter of debate in such context is because B isnt smart enough to think of anything else to say.
The fact that the only thing B managed to come up with is a whine about racism demonstrates that it is B himself who is racist, changing the subject and bringing the matter down to race differences.

fact of the matter is, regardless of B Obama's skin colour, he was called "uppity".
should the guy have called him a noob or anything else would the obama lobby have used the racist card?

good example:
for me HS is uppity, and for sure the biggest noob i have ever met. that doesnt make me racist. how could it if i dont know his ethnicity?

to ccl, those who cant deal with language use/abuse/whatever... need to get a life.
I work for people who are of different ethnic origin from myself and we have racist jokes all day long. people who cant deal with it are the ones who are killing the system.
and suddenly we have laws against crap because some noob got all upset about nothing.
and even if there were serious comments made then who cares? the one making the idiotic racist comments is the one who ultimately loses face/dignity/etc.
so laugh at him! instead of crying like babies! get a sense of humour and get a life!
lets keep our freedom of speech ffs!
 
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DeletedUser

Ok, this is how I think about the matter (without being born into American English, so leaving the debate of this particular word to the American-English native speakers).

First things first: We live in a racist world, almost everyone in it is a racist (the exception being most young persons under 2 years or something), this means that we are all extremely aware of the skin-color, other visible body features like hair- and eye- color, and ethnic origin of ourselves and other people and that we act upon that.

Most[1] people, including me, would prefer to not be racist, but we have been conditioned from the beginning to notice and act upon the color[2] of ourselves and other people.

One part of this conditioning are the words that we use when referring to people of different colors

We can think of racism as one of several filters which by we view ourselves and the people around us (other filters being: age, social class, gender, sexuality, physical abilities, etc).

When someone talks about themselves or other people they themselves and us use these filters to understand what has been said, which results in the same word having different meanings depending on the person who used it, the person it was used about and also the rest of the situation it was used in (in other words the context it was used in).

To take an example from a similar ism: sexism, when a heterosexual man is commenting on a soccer game the word 'hot'[3] probably means two very different things if the player in question is male or female. One being a comment on the looks of the player and the other of the skills of the player. I can make this assumption because one thing we learn to do is to value female persons looks and male persons skills.

I understand there might be situations where this assumption is incorrect, but until the world is much less sexist than it is now the assumption is correct much more often than not.

The second thing I would like to add to this conversation is: it is almost always only people who don't agree with the above view that find it important to find the exact place a word, or other means of communication - like images, has on a racist (or similar) scale.

/Edlit

[1] I would prefer to write 'all' instead of 'most', but there is always someone out there not worth arguing with that claims they want to be racist.
[2] I use the world 'color' instead of the more widespread 'race' as I believe it is more progressive towards a world without racism.
[3] Please remember that American English is not my native language so the word I chose might be a bad example, in that case I ask you to think of another word or phrase which gives the result I show.
 

DeletedUser

Apparently you are not using the word as I have defined it. According to my research (and I would hope that maybe you would research the origin of the word too because I will not do your work for you) the word is ABSOLUTELY racist in it's origin. Usually combined with the "n" word, in case you were wondering.
Flash forward to today, when used in a general context, it may lose some of the raciality (not a word but sounds good to me) however, it WAS used in the context of a white person talking about a black person and therefore can TOTALLY be construed as racist! Rush Limbaugh is a bigoted right winger and it should not be a surprise that he would say something racist. Listen to his show sometime and you may lose a few IQ points! Believe him and you are fairly worthless as a free thinking human!
 
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