Noah Johnson
Wicomico Church, VA
While sitting around the dinner table with my mom and grandparents, we began to talk about the Race Card Project, which led into many interesting conversations, one regarding the evolution of racial slurs.
We talked first about the racial slurs that I am familiar with as a teenager, and then I realized my shock at the racial slurs that my mom’s generation was accustomed to hearing. Yet, my mom shared the outrage that she used to feel when my grandparents’ generation used specific racial slurs that were commonly heard in the 1960s. Finally, the most interesting part of the story arrived when the family began to tell me that my great-grandparents used to call their black neighbors, “colored.” Also, the Chinese family who owned the local Chinese restaurant and got their fresh vegetables from my great-grandparents’ farm were referred to as “the orientals.” I couldn’t imagine this, but my mom and my grandparents explained that their generation thought very little of this type of language, and more so, was somewhat confused when my mom would politely ask them to PLEASE STOP. It is interesting to me that the level of shock and awe with racial slurs has evolved just as the language has evolved with a changing society.
