Despite those who are willing to believe (or spread the tale) that the word picnic<\/em> 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<\/a> like<\/a> that<\/a>, at<\/a> all<\/a>. Really<\/a>. Truly<\/a>. Honestly<\/a>. Stop<\/a> it<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n 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<\/em> 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?<\/p>\n Nonsense.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n I’ll even go a step further: even if that’s what the origin<\/em> of the word really was, I’d say use it anyway<\/em>. I mean, how wonderful that a word that once<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n But regardless, that’s not its origin. So there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-language","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4937,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/12\/01\/whats_in_a_name.html","url_meta":{"origin":9353,"position":0},"title":"What’s in a name?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 1-Dec-03 10:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A University of Virginia Medical Center employee is in hot water over use of the N-word. The N-word (delicately referred to as a \"racial epithet\") is, in the interest of...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27170,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/20\/outing-abortion-doctors-and-patients-most-likely.html","url_meta":{"origin":9353,"position":1},"title":"Outing abortion doctors (and patients, most likely)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 20-Mar-12 2:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Really? Really? It seems that every day we get various Republican-led state legislatures trying to one-up each other on restricting through cost \/ unpleasantness \/ inconvenience access to abortion. 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Unfortunately, Jackson, who's...","rel":"","context":"In "Media Moguls"","block_context":{"text":"Media Moguls","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-moguls"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2492,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/14\/the_n_word.html","url_meta":{"origin":9353,"position":3},"title":"The N Word","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Jun-02 6:47am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm fascinated by language -- by how we use it, by how it shapes us, by how we shape it. 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And, in reality, yes -- there...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}