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ENGLISH
PORTUGUESE LINGUISTICS & CULTURE |
Autor: | pat |
E-mail: | não-disponível |
Data: | 05/MAI/2003 2:02 PM |
Assunto: | Re: African American Vernacular English (AAVE) |
Mensagem: | Oh yes, most white southerners would be outraged by my suggestion; even today some persist in taking strange comfort from that silly idea: "at least I'm not a nigger". You must admit that the way the upper-class in America manipulated the human tendency towards racism to obscure the reality of classism was a thing of genius. In 1776 a myth was propogated: "all white men in America are equal". Of course the privileged new this to be absurd from the beginning - it was the working class whites who wanted desperately to believe it. All they needed was something to distract their attention from the reality. In the North that thing was the free blacks, the deep South was less important because the poor whites were outnumbered and powerless in any case. Lower class whites were eager to focus their attention on somebody actually lower than themselves, and not worry about the bothersome question of why the upper-class had most of the wealth and power. It worked like a charm and still does. |