Despite those who are willing to believe (or spread the tale) that the word picnic comes from an old Southern (or Oklahoman) white term for “Pick a Nigger” — an outing where white families would bring a lunch and, for entertainment, lynch a black man — the word’s origin is nothing like that, at all. Really. Truly. Honestly. Stop it.
This particular post doesn’t come out of the blue. This was, evidently, a very real objection raised by someone at Margie’s office to a departmental picnic.
The question that Margie raised over dinner was, even if such a myth is debunked, should one avoid the word anyway because it is considered offensive by those who either haven’t heard the truth or who believe it’s all a sinister conspiracy of racists making up 17th Century French and 19th Century English sources?
Nonsense.
Sensitivity is one thing. Bowing to irrationality is another. Not using the word “picnic” around someone who associates it with the runaway fuel truck that plowed in the park when he was a child and killed his parents in a horrible, grisly accident and therefore bursts into tears whenever the word is used, is being polite, if indulgent. Kow-towing to folk etymology, easily debunked, is not.
I’ll even go a step further: even if that’s what the origin of the word really was, I’d say use it anyway. I mean, how wonderful that a word that once meant such an awful, reprehensible, terrible thing is now associated, by the vast majority, with something pleasant and positive and grand, something that has no relation in mindset to lynching parties and racial oppression.
But regardless, that’s not its origin. So there.
Oh. My. Word.
I never use anything that even remotely sounds like the ‘n’ word for the same reason I don’t juggle live badgers. Working on a university campus I am acutely aware that only students and tenured professors have freedom of speech.
But this is just… idiotic. “Picnic?”
Ooooh! You said a bad word!
Hear, hear! It always amazes me how gullible people are, how easily offended and how willing they are to pass on false information. I always research such claims when I run across them and try to educate those that pass such misinformation on to me of how easy it is to check your facts these days. Even if the origin of the word “picnic” was true, it’s not the meaning now, so Margie should tell the lady at her office to get over herself.
I was once told that the label on a bottle of Snapple Ice Tea was, in fact, racist.
The label had a drawing of the Boston Tea Party, explained as a slave trading ship, and the letter K (indicating that the beverage was Kosher), which was explained as a KKK sign.
Sometimes I wonder about my fellow man.
Well, no wonder people are offended…”picnic” is a French word!?! Quel horreur!
And I bet they didn’t see the irony in that at all, did they?
I have to share the official Management Conclusion to the issue at Margie’s office.
John 8:32