More Words, Deeper Hole

After Gruenwald was alerted to the problem of calling a black man a buck, in the comic a black guy shows up and yells at Bucky (not any of the white dudes running the show), who then goes and complains to the higher-ups until he gets rebranded.

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Hmmm. I don't think there was a good way to do the scene.

If the black guy yelled at Bucky, as readers we say, "Hey, in-story the name was given to him." If the black guy yelled at the white higher-ups first, we're denying him a chance to be responsible for his own actions.

Not knowing the sequence, I hope that there was at least a panel where the African-American sidekick says, "I didn't know about the connotation, or I would have fought the name" or equivalent.

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Though it's a little hard to believe that Battlestar would have never come across the term "buck", which still gets some play (especially in the term "buck wild").

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Okay, I buy that. The implication is that Battlestar didn't think deeply about it, bought the explanation he was given, and this guy is pointing out the connotations. And Battlestar then goes and petitions for the name change, which gives him some agency.

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ghostwes.livejournal.com

I would have to go digging through boxes and boxes of old comics to verify, but I believe the offensive nature of the name was brought up by a reader of colour in an earlier issue's comments page and this then prompted a back and forth discussion with Gruenwald over the next few issues.

Gruenwald was quite shocked and ashamed that he had inadvertently used an offensive term and did his best within the story and letters column to both correct the mistake and also bring it to the attention of people who were also ignorant of the name's history.

I really did get the impression at the time that Gruenwald really did want to put things right. Setting aside the fact that he couldn't go back in time and redo things, I think the way he tried to correct his mistake was both clever and classy.

Of course, I was also about eight years old, so my memory might be betraying me here.

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Not that I am an indicator, but I have pretty much never heard the term "buck wild."

For that matter, only because I have friends who write (well, wrote...I don't know if they still do) do I have any knowledge of a negative connotation for the word "buck." Yes, it gets used in certain fetish circles, and every time I have encountered it, it was used to describe an African-American male, but I did not associate it with race, I...geez, how to say this?...I associated it with his role in the story. That being (obliquely) said, I can see that the use was consistent with a racial connection, I just didn't know about it.

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What I meant to say was, "write porn". Sheesh. So careful to step around the land mine that I missed important words in the sentence.

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Well, there's a regional aspect to it—the Southern US has some slurs that are more common down there (a whole taxonomy of them!) and there are even some slurs unique to the North. But "buck" is one of the more significant ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Buck

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Yeah. I am not in the Southern US and have missed out on many colourful terms.

But as the father of a dark-complected boy, it behooves me to know about these things.

For what it's worth, it's only now, at 12, that race seems to have entered his argumentative artillery: half the time when I put restrictions on him, he responds with, "It's because I'm black, isn't it?"

At which I try to refrain from sighing and point out that we knew he was black when we adopted him. The restriction is in place either because of me as a person and parent, or because of him as a person and son.

(Okay--I make sure we fly to Florida or Arizona if we're going to either of those places. Driving there might expose us to things I generally don't want to deal with on vacation.)

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seiberwing.livejournal.com

Given the fact that that specific line's been used in comedy a lot, he might just be repeating something he saw on TV.

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Possible. I hadn't thought of it.

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dbdatvic.livejournal.com

You can probably only pull this off once, but have you tried saying "Well ... we weren't going to tell you this until you were older, son. But you're not black. You're actually ... Korean." (or whatever other ethnicity looks amusing, though he probably wouldn't get "Polish"), and maintaining a straight face for the crucial two or three seconds until his inner "WHAAAAAAT?" is complete?

--Dave, this one was not listed in Cruel Tricks To Play On Small Children

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Nah--too close to the sequence in Easy A, which he watched with us.

That sequence made me a Stanley Tucci fan. That movie made me a Patricia Clarkson fan (though she had intrigued me on Strombo).

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derekl1963.livejournal.com

"Buck" significant? Hardly. I grew up in the South and the only places I've encountered it is in GWTW and conversations like this.

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Well, if some random Internet person says it isn't significant, who is anyone else to say otherwise?

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derekl1963.livejournal.com

Well, since some random internet person said it was significant in the place - what would be your point?

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And you objected based on your experience as a random Internet person, so you clearly think mere experience is sufficient to make declarations and have no grounds to object.

Amazingly enough though, it actually isn't all that hard to find people calling black men "big black buck[s]", even in the media, more recently than Gone With The Wind.

Edited Date: 2011-12-23 02:49 am (UTC)

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erikagillian.livejournal.com

I believe they used it in Blazing Saddles, one of my main sources for What Not to Say. Along with that song from Hair. I grew up in Berkeley, I never heard them in person.

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mmcirvin.livejournal.com

I have heard "buck wild", and was also quite familiar with the racially offensive use of "buck", but never connected the two until now.

In five seconds of Googling, I also can't find any source for an etymology of "buck wild" supporting the connection, but that may be because I can't find much in the way of believable etymology of the phrase at all.

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mmcirvin.livejournal.com

...However, I wouldn't be surprised by a connection.

Similarly, it never once occurred to me that "long time, no see" was a racist attempt at pseudo-Chinese phrasing until I saw this pointed out about a week ago.

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It is sad but true that if you are on the non-oppressed side (I certainly am, and I assume that you are not Asian), there are many small slights and moderately racist actions that seem beneath notice, just because they don't affect you.

I fight against it, but far too much still gets by me.

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caprinus.livejournal.com

How is 好耐冇見 or 好久不見 pseudo-Chinese? Do you mean pseudo-English?

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agent-mimi.livejournal.com

Growing up in Southern Missouri in the 1970s, I heard the term "buck wild" a lot, but I can't recall it ever registering with me as a racist slur. In fact, I remember neighbors across the street using it all the time for a variety of things; "that squirrel went buck wild in our bird feeder" kinds of stuff.

"Black buck" was fairly common and obviously used as an insult, at least where I lived, while at the same time on TV and in movies I was seeing it used in satire as an example of clueless, outdated racism.

This is all anecdata of little or no significance, mind. But what else is LiveJournal for?

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I actually thought "buck wild" was considered to stem from offensive stereotypes of Native American Indian men, not from black men.

Am I going to have to go down to the basement and dig out my Dictionary of American Regional English now?

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Why can't it be offensive to both of them?

I can certainly imagine an offensive term for aboriginals that got transferred to black men a hundred years later.

It's uncommon, I know, because humans are so creative at creating terms and attaching offensiveness to them, but sometimes an existing term is used, with offensiveness pre-attached! It's kind of a win, a conservation of prejudice, if you will.

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caprinus.livejournal.com

Not to buck at this, but I think you have put the cart before the buck. Surely, the metaphor is offensive to anyone it is applied to in as far as it is held to be derived from the disagreeable characteristics of the non-metaphorical animal the word first signifies. If one finds the sexual prowess of a he-goat vulgar, then it is vulgar to call a black man a buck, or, as it were, a stud or a stallion; if one finds the wildness and rebeliousness of a male onager or deer objectionable, then it is objectionable to call an American Indian a buck, though here there might also be an influence of buckskin (during the Revolutionary War this being the (positive) slang for Continental troops, who wore leathers the Indians either traded them or taught them how to tan to a texture superior to that available from Europe). There is no need to spin these "citation needed" just-so stories about how a singular offensive usage hopped and skipped from one race to another. I am sure you can certainly imagine an offensive term for aboriginals getting transferred to black men a hundred years later (than what?), and a great deal besides, but it is neither here nor there. What is given is sufficient: the variety of male animals referred to as "bucks" have good qualities and bad qualities, and the bad qualities are always the ones the powerless get stuck with by the powerful, without any historical prestidigitation of meaning needed. Else, what further gyrations would you propose to explain how these buckish slurs then jumped the Atlantic to stick to disagreeable English fellows who were decidedly white (and probably had buck teeth)?

BUCK. A blind horse; also a gay debauchee.
[...]
A BUCK OF THE FIRST HEAD. One who in debauchery
surpasses the rest of his companions, a blood or choice
spirit. There are in London divers lodges or societies of
Bucks, formed in imitation of the Free Masons: one was
held at the Rose, in Monkwell-street, about the year
1705. The president is styled the Grand Buck. A buck
sometimes signifies a cuckold.
BUCK'S FACE. A cuckold.
BUCK FITCH. A lecherous old fellow.

(from 1811 Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue).

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Yes, this is a good point, too. Regency bucks were former pinks of the ton, after all!

Now I am thinking about the "Mohocks"...

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erikagillian.livejournal.com

There's even a Heyer called Regency Buck. Which, amazingly, you can buy new in hardback for $16.11. I always assumed it meant a corinthian, but that's just a vague association, I don't really remember the book.

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Certainly. I wasn't trying to create a just-so story, but rather indicating that if I, with my meagre imagination, could make it probable in my head, then the real world, with its vast abilities to surprise, could certainly manage something to the same effect--a slur that applies to two groups.

I thought the term for a male goat was a billy, hence billy goat. (I knew but have forgotten the term for a female. Jenny, perhaps?)

I had no idea of all those meanings for buck. I would have stated the verb, maybe the deer or rabbit, and probably stopped there.

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Different offensive stereotype.

My memory is that the phrase "buck wild" was originally meant to convey "acting like a drunken Native American Indian man."

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chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com

I thought that "buck wild" referred to the behavior of actual male deer in rut?

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So, when Method Man, for example, raps:

Niggaz want the ruckas?
so bust it
at me son now bust it
Stylez I get buck wild
method man on some shit
Fuck'n niggaz foul son I'm sick
Insane crazy drivin' miss daisy
How the fuck am I?
now I got mine I'm swayze

You think he's talking about male deers in rut?

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scott-sanford.livejournal.com

His dialect is sufficiently different from mine that I don't know what he's talking about.

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Are you looking for a fight?
Prepare yourself, you may have found one.
Throw the first punch!
I am an enthusiastic brawler!
I will keep beating you, even after you surrender, like a madman.
But I am not a madman. I am actually quite stylish.
Come collect your beating; I will make it look easy.

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scott-sanford.livejournal.com

Thank you.

I suppose the market for rap videos with subtitles would be very limited...

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seawasp

Like many things, it depends. But overall I think if it's at all feasible to do so the name should be changed. One could for instance see "Superman" as racially charged (Nietzche and all), but changing THAT name... just not happening. Speedball is different -- *I* wasn't aware of that usage, and it's not racial or otherwise a direct slur, and if I were a superhero and told that this was one meaning of the name, I'd shrug and say, "eh. So what? I like the name and I'll make it work for me."

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scifantasy.livejournal.com

Metatextually, of course, Superman was deliberate.

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dewline.livejournal.com

In Speedball's case...well, there's that brand name of artist's pen involved, too...and given that Robbie Baldwin's father worked in the local DA's office as a prosecuting attorney, you'd think he'd have gotten his alias changed ASAP too.

No?

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james-nicoll.livejournal.com

Didn't Robbie's dad think Speedball was a bad un? The name cannot have helped.

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seawasp

I think the difference between the name of a pen and the name of a person, even a Nom De Guerre, is wide enough that there'd be no case unless Speedball's power was drawing people to death.

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ritaxis.livejournal.com

Speedball is also the brand name for the pen system most favored by calligraphers when I was a child.

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The superheroes "Parker," "Flair," and "BIC" are coming out this year. Parker is apparently going to cross over with Spiderman, and there will be some name-ownership issue.

The character "Papermate" is not a superhero at all, but an Internet porn star.

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fridgepunk.livejournal.com

SNOWFLAME FEELS NO PAIN!

Seriously, DC had a superhero who was MADE OF COCAINE during the same period Speedball was invented... and speedball is called Penance and is powered by cutting these days... so.

OT: did you change the skin of your lj on purpose?

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davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com

Actually he got over the Penance phase a couple of years ago.

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