I can kind of see the vague, unfortunate-association aspect as being worth a furrowed brow, but it's hard to really see this all as being proportionate.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @BootlegGirl and
Does moving it from “tilling the fields” (specific task that is called that and done on farms, afaik can’t be rephrased much if at all) to “work in the fields” (generic) allow “farmer or ag worker” to be conceptualized as ever in question, is that the enablement work being done?
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Replying to @chrysopoetics @BootlegGirl and
I think the association is just "the fields" but it's also not a particularly strong one. "Cotton fields" would be much more direct.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @chrysopoetics and
Literally every intentionally anti-Black agriculture joke I've ever heard told by white people, and unfortunately bc of my extended family I've heard a few, has referenced that particular crop
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @mssilverstein and
Yeah and specifically referring not to the sowing but to the harvest, which was the worst job because there was no easy way to automate it Which is why they censored the slur based on this out of old Bugs Bunny cartoons
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl and
"wait one cotton-picking minute!" has the meaning it does because a minute picking cotton is a long fucking minute
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Replying to @perdricof @BootlegGirl and
There's been a lot of debate over whether "cotton-picking" as a general adjective meaning "bad" or "unpleasant" is itself a racial slur ("cotton-picker" referring to a person obviously is)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
But the general awareness of the shittiness of this work created a whole vocabulary in the South "Chopping the high cotton" means having a good day or an easy life -- when all the cotton bolls left are the ones on top you can just cut down with a scythe
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
"In low cotton" is having a bad day or being in difficult circumstances, by contrast
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof and
(We don't know exactly what it means to be "cotton-eyed", but the song "Cotton-Eyed Joe" did clearly come from enslaved Black people in the South before white people picked it up, which is why it's unfortunate that song went viral when some Swedish people recorded it)
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(Most likely it's a dig against Joe for being cross-eyed/nearsighted from having spent his whole life picking cotton, which is why it's uncomfortable)
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