https://www.jdsupra.

com/legalnews/racist-language-and-origins-i-didn-t-35616/

● Jimmies
○ There has long been a debate in the Northeast as to whether we call those
sugary ice cream toppings “jimmies” or “sprinkles.” In Philadelphia, where I grew
up, and in Southern New Jersey, were we vacationed every summer, I always
asked for my chocolate custard with “jimmies.” While scholars don’t agree on the
origin of the word, I once again had no idea that “jimmies” could have a negative
origin. Some believe that the brown sprinkles “looked like little Black people”
while others believe “this comes from the Jim Crow laws used to segregate the
South, with jimmies representing those Black people bound by these laws.” No
matter the origin, I have started to refer to those sugary treats as “chocolate
sprinkles” – my preferred choice over rainbow sprinkles.
● Long time, no see / no can do
○ This one is another eye opener for me. It is traced back to a Boston Sunday
Globe article in the late 1800s. The phrase applied to a Native American speaker
with broken English and was meant to stereotype natives as unintelligent.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “this type of isolating construction
would have been unusual for the indigenous languages of North America.”
Rather, it originated as a way for white writers to mock Native American speech,
and that of non-native English speakers from other places like China. By the
1920s, it had become an ordinary part of the American vernacular.
○ “No can do” has similar origins in making fun of non-native English speakers.
● Peanut gallery
○ Used to describe hecklers, individuals sharing unwanted criticism, or younger
people with contrary opinions, “peanut gallery” has roots in the era of vaudeville.
The vaudeville theaters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries referred to the
cheapest seas, which often were occupied by Black and poor people, as the
peanut gallery.
● Tipping point
○ The title of a book, this phrase is used often when describing the point of no
return – that critical moment in time when change becomes inevitable. According
to Merriam-Webster, it was applied to one phenomenon in particular: white flight.
“In the 1950s, as white people abandoned urban areas for the suburbs in huge
numbers, journalists began using the phrase tipping point in relation to the
percentage of minority neighbors it took to trigger this reaction in white city
residents.”
● Urban
○ In his chapter on “Space,” Ibram X. Kendi describes space racism as a powerful
collection of racist policies that lead to resource inequity between racialized
spaces or the elimination of certain racialized spaces, which are substantiated by
racist ideas about racialized spaces. One of those racialized spaces is referred
to as “urban” areas.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/commonly-terms-racist-origins/
story%3Fid%3D71840410
● Fuzzy wuzzy (derogatory term used by late 19th century British soldiers to refer to
members of an East African tribe)
● Eskimo (people do still say this—it’s theorized to come from the French word
“esquimaux,” referring to one who nets snowshoes. All Native American groups in the
Arctic regions were grouped into this category)

- Crack Down
Association with whips. Origin: “Cracks the whip.”
- “Master” in any word/phrase
- Pow Wow
Native American ceremony.
- Spirit Animal
- On the down low
This term has evolved a lot over the past 20 years, but it is rooted
in a very specific subsect of the Black community: Black men who
had secret gay relationships. The term was later used by Black gay
men who rejected white gay culture.
Drink the Kool Aid history
- The phrase originates from events in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, in which
over 900 members of the Peoples Temple movement died. The movement's leader, Jim
Jones, called a mass meeting at the Jonestown pavilion after the murder of U.S.
Congressman Leo Ryan and others in nearby Port Kaituma. Jones proposed "revolutionary
suicide" by way of ingesting a powdered drink mix lethally laced with cyanide and other
drugs which had been prepared by his aides.

AAVE

https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/
1Ioy3CDX_iR75DNJwvz7ftq51EXAvZ99C51HP1V_zPOY/mobilebasic#h.7r4i63cjv1be

https://www.redefy.org/stories/periodt-no-cultural-appropriation

https://www.insider.com/internet-slang-origin-i-oop-meaning-sksk-vsco-girls-stans-2020-1

So-called stan culture and VSCO girl terminology like "tea," "wig," and "periodt" actually
originate in Black gay slang. Adams, who teaches English at Indiana University and has been
studying slang for around 30 years, says "tea," which means gossip, as an example, originated
decades ago in the Black gay community. It's understandable that terms like "tea," and "wig,"
which signifies being shocked (it stems from "wig flew" or "my wig flew off") would enter stan
culture, since there's heavy overlap between the two communities.

"African Americans come up with their language and it gets appropriated away from them, so
then they come up with new language, so African Americans are a never ending stream of
slang input in American English," Adams said. "These terms are part of that story."