Paranoia can kill debate on words that bear marks of racism – 01/03/2023 – Sérgio Rodrigues

The phrase “make lemonade out of lemons” should be avoided. Under the shell of innocence hides the juice of an odious racist expression: in the Brazilian Northeast of the 18th and 19th centuries, “limão” was the nickname of the enslaved youth who, haughty and “bitter”, did not bow to the arbitrary will of the overseer. “To make lemonade” was to put it on the trunk to be whipped until it doubled over.

How many readers have suspected that the above paragraph is a pure lie, a crazy invention that the columnist has just taken from a hidden region of his anatomy?

Not many, judging by the success made in recent years by similarly fanciful versions that try to paste the blemish of racism on expressions like “on the thighs” and words like “nightstand”.

How about this other story? The expression “to fill the stomach”, which means to eat until one’s fill, refers to a nefarious practice: the enslaved worker in the mines only gained the right to eat after he managed to fill a hole in the wall called the stomach with gold. Wow.

The lemon potoca is more credible. In real life, bucho is a 14th-century word meaning stomach, belly, which is enough to explain the expression “fill the belly” with glorious simplicity.

However, it has been more difficult to disprove this story since last month, when one of the participants of Big Brother Brasil, MC Guimê, called the attention of another resident of the house, a certain Cara de Sapato, for using the expression.

As is usually the case in such cases, it is assumed that the offended party is right. What moves the column to enter this minefield is not so much the impulse to expose chaos, although a truer knowledge of the etymology is healthy for the environment.

The idea is to understand what these etymological fake news, which everything indicates are manufactured with deliberation and method, are saying about the way we communicate.

Anyone who wants to research why “in the thighs” and “nightstand” are innocent will find good sources on the internet, including a long article that I published in Ilustríssima in November 2021.

You will also find, and more easily, examples of the joyful indignation with which these lies are denounced by ultraconservatives committed to banning any debate about the marks left in the language by centuries of prejudice.

I, who after deliberating with my buttons decided to cut out of the notebook, years ago, verbs such as to judge (openly anti-Semitic) and to denigrate (which has nothing racial in its origin, but seems to have a lot, which is enough for me), no I want to ban anything. Quite the opposite.

I believe that language, like the social pact as a whole, is founded on relationships of trust. That these relationships are shaken in our society is evident. Then to work to sculpt them even more…

Part of a broader reassessment of the iniquitous social quirks left by centuries of violent history, the debate about the vileness that words can embody –and thus, even unintentionally, perpetuate– is too serious and important to be dominated by a rationale paranoid and delusional.

No, it is not correct to say that “hunger blue” is the symbol expression of an inhumane campaign, popular in the second half of the last century, so that the public would never feed the Smurfs, leaving them to die of starvation.

Asserting the falsehood of the false should interest everyone who likes the truth.

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