How to Be Tolerant of Others’ Offensiveness

“Wait just a cotton-picking minute.”

I was born and raised in the Deep South. I’ve heard and used that expression my entire life. Only recently, as of a few months ago, I learned that this expression was offensive due to its connection with slavery. And while I don’t argue the validity of this, honestly, it is something that I had no awareness of. Some people won’t believe that, but it’s the truth. They will ask, “How could you not have known?” Or “Well, you should have known.” But, see, I’ve heard people of all colors and races use it, and no one I know has knowingly associated it with a slavery relic. Partially, this may be due to the passage of time and younger generations having a larger gap between that period in history and now. Another, and I suspect this is a cause for many people, is that after the abolishment of slavery, during the sharecropping era, people of various races picked cotton. It was a poor person’s trade that became common work throughout the South.

Picking cotton is a slow and tedious task. A cotton-picking minute basic means “slow down” or to take time to reconsider. Cotton for a long time was the most popular and abundant crop grown in the South. Would it mean the same thing to say “orange-picking minute” or “tobacco-picking minute?” It wouldn’t be a “sugar cane picking” minute because the sugar can is chopped and not picked. I suppose it could be a “sugar-chopping” minute. Tobacco is kind of picked but only after the entire plant is cut from the ground. Both sugar cane and tobacco were also plantation crops and would have ties to slavery and sharecropping.

I believe—and this is only my opinion and I’m subject to being wrong—the term cotton-picking became popular due to the process/method of picking cotton as opposed to who was doing the picking.

Now, I’m not taking the position that people shouldn’t be offended by this term. However, what I am saying is that there is a large portion of people who do not know that they should be or are expected to be offended by it. When I initially heard that this term was considered offensive, I began polling coworkers to ask if any of them had heard of this. Out of the sixty people asked, zero people had any idea the term had been relegated to being offensive. I was like what, “Are we living under a rock?” How did the rest of the world know and we didn’t—the very people who live in an area where slavery and racism were/are so prominent?

One coworker expressed it this way. “It sounds like the administration of this place. They don’t work in the trenches. They work off in some fancy offices away from the commonfolk, make a bunch of changes that they want but don’t affect them, and then don’t pass the memo that the changes have been made. Then, the rest of us are strung up for not knowing, and the administration will take no responsibility for not sharing. We shouldn’t be expected to do what no one tells us. It’s not a resistance on our part. It’s not that we are too set in our ways, stubborn, or stupid to understand. We’re not clairvoyant. Children do not learn to read without being first being taught the alphabet. A parent who doesn’t teach their child the alphabet but hands them a copy of War and Peace to read is knowing setting that child up for failure, confusion, and embarrassment. It is a type of neglect and a means of suppression. By not sharing this information, it makes the people still using this term scapegoat—people to pass judgment upon as being bigoted and racist when it is simply a matter of being not informed.”

I began asking myself if other terms had made the naughty list that I didn’t know about. Turns out the answer to that is yes—The Global North and The Global South. I only learned of this one while listening to a video rant. One of the people used the now politically incorrect term “Third World County,” and it all hit the fan. The other commentaries began ripping her a new one. I didn’t know what was going on. Then, I thought maybe the person was just a weirdo who was overreacting. (Sorry. I didn’t know.) I started searching on the internet, and sure enough The Global North and Global South were a thing. So, I shared it at work the next day, and all of my coworkers stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. They’d not heard it, either. Again, I questioned if we were living under a rock.

These experiences made me realize something. Not every person who says something offensive is saying it to be offensive. The “Well, you should have known” response doesn’t work. You can’t know what you don’t know. “That’s no excuse because everyone has access to the internet.” Again, you don’t know what you don’t know. If a person doesn’t know there’s an issue, how does he/she know to search the internet for an answer? Furthermore, just because it is on the internet does not mean it is accurate information. How about instead of blasting someone for offensive language without considering if they are intentionally doing so, educating them so they can do better?

Here’s another one: falling off the back of a turnip truck. I was blindsided that this expression is now considered offensive as well. Would it be less offensive if it was a potato truck or a pumpkin truck? What bothered me most about this term is that the person who was ranting about it is older than me and insisted this expression has been mainstream offensive for more than twenty years.

How often do we consider the origins of the words and terms we use?

Here’s a final example from a worker in the healthcare field. She explained that in report writing employees are not allowed to refer to persons they serve as “clients” or write that they are “ambulatory” or “verbal.” Instead, they must write that the person moves through his/her environment by walking and communicates using spoken language.” While this substitution seems inconsequential in the larger scheme of things, many substitutions of multiple terms throughout a document can cause reports to become lengthy, bulky, and convoluted. However, the reason the words “ambulatory” and “verbal” were stricken from report use is because apparently many years ago, persons who were diagnosed with intellectual disabilities who were ambulatory and verbal were referred to as “walkie-talkies.” Somewhere in history, this had occurred. However, current employees (as well as previous ones) had never heard of this. However, the one person who was in a position of power and dictated an administrative change without communicating the reason behind the change.

What difference does that make, one may ask? Well, while the report writing has changed and has been changed for over ten years, the language of staff when speaking has not. When speaking with each other, the terms “client,” “ambulatory,” and “verbal” remain frequently used. People often will not change their behavior unless they have a reason to change. If smoking hadn’t been determined by the Surgeon General, FDA, and other medical experts to be hazardous to one’s health, would smoking as a recreational activity decreased? As a reference, take a look at movies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s and observe how many glamorized smoking. Today, there are warnings on movies that contain smoking content. Information was shared, and attitudes changed as a result. And that is what entire point of this article.

If society expects language to change, then there needs to be more of an effort to explain the specific changes to be made and the reason for those changes. It is not acceptable to expect people just to “know” the answer. What may appear to be “obvious” may not be.

The expiration date on milk is a “best used by” date. It is an estimation and not a definitive. It does not mean that milk will automatically spoil on the date listed on the carton. I once had milk to spoil days before the expiration date. Because I only considered the date, I didn’t sniff the milk before adding it to the cereal. The result was a mouthful of nasty. Having that experience taught me to change my behavior—to always sniff my milk before using it. Had I not had that experience, I likely would have continued only considering the expiration date as a measurement to use. Language is not much different. As time changes, it appears language has expiration dates of acceptability. If this date isn’t highlighted, people will continue using it without thought.

That’s all I got. Now, it’s your turn to sound off. What did you think? What is your take on the subject? Do you agree or disagree? Did you find this information helpful or informative? Did you learn anything new, or did it change your opinion? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section. Also, let me know if you would like me to cover more of these types of topics or dive deeper into this one. If you like this post, please click the like button and share it. Your feedback allows me to know the content that you want to read. If you’re not following me on Creole Bayou blog, what are you waiting for? There’s always room at the bayou.

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When a college hockey player needs the help of an attractive older attorney, he gets more than he bargained for when trying to sort out the troubles in his career. Falling in love was never part of either man’s plan, especially as Corrigan’s and Sacha’s lives should never have collided. Now they’re left questioning if they’re standing in the way of the other’s future goals, or if there’s room for redirection.

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Author Bio

Genevive Chamblee resides in the Bayou country where sweet tea and SEC football reign supreme. She is known for being witty (or so she thinks), getting lost anywhere beyond her front yard (the back is pushing it as she’s very geographically challenged), falling in love with shelter animals (and she adopts them), asking off-the-beaten-path questions that make one go “hmm,” and preparing home-cooked Creole meals that are as spicy as her writing. Genevive specializes in spinning steamy, romantic tales with humorous flair, diverse characters, and quirky views of love and human behavior. She also is not afraid to delve into darker romances as well.