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| Hearsay: |
Fear of a “Canadian” planet? Though I hesitate to link to anything in the National Post, Canada’s right wing rag of sputtering irrelevance, this is too interesting to pass up: apparently in the American south, “Canadian” is becoming a coded form of ethnic slur used against blacks. Bizarre. Can anyone corroborate this? And anyone know why? The underground railroad? Tendency to vote liberal? Maestro Fresh Wes?
The bigger mystery is how “Canadian” came to be code for black. An online directory of racial slurs defines Canadian as a “masked replacement” for black.
Last August, a blogger in Cincinnati going by the name CincyBlurg reported that a black friend from the southeastern U.S. had recently discovered that she was being called a Canadian. “She told me a story of when she was working in a shop in the South and she overheard some of her customers complaining that they were always waited on by a Canadian at that place. She didn’t understand what they were talking about and assumed they must be talking about someone else,” the blogger wrote.
“After this happened several times with different patrons, she mentioned it to one of her co-workers. He told her that ‘Canadian’ was the new derogatory term that racist Southerners were using to describe persons they would have previously referred to [with the N-word.]”
(Thanks to Jeet, who comments here)
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January 25th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
So, I guess you really are mixed-race! Actually, I have NEVER heard of this
and I’m from Cincinnati. I’ll ask some of my white relatives and get back
to you on this!
January 25th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I’m from GA and I’ve never heard of this. I don’t hang out with racist, though. I’ll ask around, too. Crazy.
Mindy
January 25th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I’m in Atlanta, firmly in the Southeast, and I’ve never heard of this. I’m calling Bullshit.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Just got this on my blog:
“I can offer input about this; when I worked in the restaurant industry, many waiters and waitresses as well as hosts referred to Black customers as “Canadians” as a way to talk about them without saying “Black.” They’d use the term in the context of, “Oh no, I just got sat with a 4-top of Canadians!” Of course, it is widely known that many waitpeople complain that Black customers don’t tip adequately, or don’t tip at all.
I have heard this in three different restaurant environments in two different states, one in the south and one in NYC.
I’m not condoning the use of this term, I think it’s really stupid, but I can say that chances are, if you ask someone who’s waited tables, they probably know of it.”
I waited tables and bartended all during college and never heard of this. I knew that Black
people were bad tippers, but had not heard of the Canadian insult. Are Canadians bad tippers?
January 25th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
In my experience, Canadians tip less well than Americans, but much better than Limey, Aussies or Kiwis. Generally speaking of course. I’ve never noticed a correlation between black people and bad tips, but then I work on the railroad and a fairly big percentage of our black travellers are former railroaders.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
I’ve heard this used in GA. It wasn’t derogatory but rather a substitute for the word “black” as mentioned by AskThisBlackWoman (comment 4). The person I’ve heard it from the most is a flaming liberal but he’s pretty paranoid about discussions of race in the corporate workplace.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Thanks, Kym. I spent a good 7 or 8 years bartending and waiting tables, sometimes full time, sometimes as a second (or even third) job, and I have no recollection of people distinguishing between tippers by race. Maybe that’s a Canadian thing. Though, we also don’t have the range of tippable occupations up here that you do down there. A grocery store clerk can have a tip jar out down there. I wouldn’t be surprised to see bank tellers with tip jars. It’s like everyone has one.
My guess is the term “Canadian” is, in fact, just a convenient and sly way (and probably thought humorous, in the age of Simpsons/Family Guy irony) to maintain an openly racist system between like-minded bigots-who-wouldn’t-consider-themselves-such working in public environments that won’t stand for the most obvious and overt epithets or discrimiation.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
1. I worked at numerous restaurants in 4 states. The stereotype is that both Canadians and African Americans are poor tippers. As with all stereotypes this is sometimes true and mostly not.
2. I also lived in NW South Carolina and in the small towns Canadians are not well liked. They are all ‘liberals’ and we didn’t support the Iraq war. Everything about Canada was suspect, from health care to gun control. I was approached by army recruiters while I lived there (while in a bookstore actually), and when I told them I was Canadian they told me Canadians weren’t all bad, and that I could still join up. Never heard it used as a code word though.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
@6, you’re kidding yourself if you think it’s not derogatory.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
The solution is simple. When in the Southland, Canadian snowbirds must tip 15 per cent when they visit a Denny’s or a Burger King. And they have to eat grits too. Only thus can we improve our national image.
January 26th, 2008 at 9:07 am
what? you dont believe the guy when he said that he thought that the people he was referring to were actually canadian??? maybe i’m naive. (insert sarcastic tone of voice, pls)
January 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Franklin, I’m afraid the proper tipping percentage has risen to 18 per cent. Inflation and all that. Tipping 15 per cent these days will get you called Canadian for being… uh, Canadian.
January 27th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
What about the fact that Canadians pay wait staff minimum wage so that tips don’t make up the same percentage of take home pay?
January 27th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I think it’s more in the sense of others being outsiders, aliens. That neighbourhood Little Canada: might as well have been on the North Pole.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Hello, J.S.
A 15 per cent tip is quite enough for good restaurant service. (Fifteen per cent calculated before the taxes are added.) Any waiter or waitress who demands 18 per cent is guilty of extortion and deserves to hear Mr. Pink’s monologue about tipping at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs.
January 28th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I’ve been recently working in a call centre where we have been talking to
Americans, and believe it or not, some Americans think that Canadians
do not even speak English — I had one woman call up and say ‘I heard
y’all up in Canada there — and you DON”T SPEAK ENGLISH!’ And I replied,
‘no we don’t,not since we put the Queen of England on our bank notes’.
A few other Americans have been refusing to talk to other call centre people
because they have discovered that the centre is in Canada, and we allow
multilinguals in the country, I guess.
In addition, the ability to speak English is associated with being an
American as well. Some people say ‘Thank God you speak English’, to
which I reply: ‘my first language is Hindi and I was raised in England,
I speak eight languages, but I have learned English in the past two years’ –
and then they reply that my accent sounds ‘normal’ –
I have heard both white and black Americans say this about Canadians,
by the way. I have also heard Americans express shock at the fact that
we do not carry guns, we provide medicinal marijuna, we have gay marriage,
and we allow children to make their own sexual decisions when they start to
actually have sex.
My opinion is, however, that I would rather be a stoned, promiscuous
peace-loving gay Canadian than a gun-wielding, alcoholic, heterosexual
celibate American anyday –
January 28th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Well, that was helpful.
January 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Somebody did write to me today, on the original subject matter, with:
“Funny thing is that this whole “Canadian” thing is as old as the hills, and it’s not consistently used in the south, and sometimes they used to say “eskimos” or “eggplants.” Funny that it’s only recently trickled up there.”
January 28th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Don’t quote me on this, but what I heard via hearsay is that anyone wearing a “What would Jesus Do?” T-shirt is the worst tipper.
And Lou Reed, according to an old issue of CREEM.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
After doing some saking around, I found out this is a real thing. It is indeed “white boy code”, as someone I know put it for the N word. I should know stuff like this, actually. I grew up in a small town that still had the klan around, so I sort of like to know stuff like this… Sort of like keeping an eye on the enemy as it were… It’s also been ages since I’ve been around restaurant work.
I sympathize with Susan’s laments about the dumbness and sometimes backwardness of Americans. but we aren’t all like that, I promise.
And Tim, I think being in Atlanta is not the same as being in the rest of the south. Remember that our city is now home to a large population of people from all over the world who came with jobs or for school (I’m actually quite proud of my department at GSU- the history department which is expanding and trying to emphasize the world history aspect of our curriculum). In fact, I think there was an article in the Creative Loafing not too long ago about Atlanta not really being part of the rest of the state (do you read the Loaf?). Atlanta is pretty cosmopolitan, that I think we forget that the rest of the state is pretty rural by comparison- once outside probably the metro area, which now encompasses a large swath of north GA at this point (nearly to my old stomping grounds in Rome…).
What an interesting discussion!
Mindy