I first heard "jew him down" from a man whose mother was a Jew. He also introduced me to a host of other words and phrases, like "jew-vision" for spotting the penny or other coin on the sidewalk and stopping to pick it up.
Which brings me to my next comment. Someone said that the dominant culture is the one that exhibits racism. No, it's not. All cultures do. It's my observation and education that the more oppressed a subculture is, the more it internalizes the negative viewpoints directed against them and incorporates the racism into itself. And so you get the complex dynamics of black culture today. A little reading into black feminist writings is really an eye-opener!
And talking of non-dominant cultures, the one I come from still makes fun of the Osages for being ... well, it's stupid really, but it boils down to just thinking they're bad people. And no one should ever trust a Pawnee! Racism exists in all nooks and crannies of human interaction and it's my theory that it's just the easiest form of disliking people who look like strangers. Your family will always be the ones you know best and unless you're adopted, they will share your race and ethnicity. So the foundation of not liking those you don't know will be racism against those races that look most identifiably different from you, who are the most "strange" and have the most different customs. After all, the foundation of trust is predictability - not that someone will do something beneficial or helpful, but simply that you can predict what it is that they will do. You can trust your enemy to take certain actions inimical to you and yet it remains "trust".
Someone else posted about it being bad to make generalizations. Actually - not really. It's only bad if you use those generalizations improperly. It's a generalization to say that both Great Danes and Chihuahuas are dogs. Or to say that both Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson are black men. It only becomes "bad" when you start extending to the group qualities that all individuals do not have.
As for that, there's a thin line to be walked. It's fine to say "Most Southerners have a distinct accent peculiar to the South", but wrong to say "All Southerners have that accent". So one might say "A lot of Minnesotans are superficially nice but underneath jerkwads" and be okay, but not okay to say "All Minnesotans are ..." On the other hand, I read the guy's original posting about Minnesotans and I read into it an implied "most" which was not there. Neither was the "all". He should have specified.
Speaking of implications... it's been implied that conversations about the regional differences that set St. Paul apart from the rest of the US are not proper fodder for this forum. Is that so, or am I reading something into it which is not really there?
Mary Baker on the East Side.
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