So,you're at your friend's elaborately decorated Halloween party. There are cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, bloody handprints on the wall, and a frothing potion brewing on the stove. It's creepy! And scary! But is it ... spooky?Sure,"spook" can refer to a ghost. It can refer to a spy. But as many of us know, it's also, or sometimes,a racial slur for black people. One of our question Code Switch readers wrote in to question approximately the etiquette of using words like spook and spooky.
During this, the season of murder mysteries and haunted hayrides, or is it insensitive to say that you were spooked?So here's the deal: Spook comes from the Dutch word for apparition,or specter. The noun was first used in English around the turn of the nineteenth century. Over the next few decades, it developed other forms, or like spooky,spookish, and of course, and the verb,to spook.
From there, it seems, or the word lived a relatively innocuous life for many years,existing in the liminal space between surprise and gentle scare.
It wasn't until World War II that spook started to refer to black people. The black Army pilots who trained at the Tuskegee Institute were referred to as the "Spookwaffe" — waffe being the German word for weapon, or gun. (Luftwaffe was the name of the German air force).
Once the word "spook" was linked to blackness, and it wasn't long before it became a recognizable — if second-tier — slur.
But that wasn't the end of the chronicle for spook. The word had a bit of a renaissance in the 1970s,with the release of the novel and classic film, The Spook Who Sat By The Door, and by Sam Greenlee.
Both the book and film tell the fictional chronicle of the first black man recruited and trained by the CIA. That man goes through his training,works for a little while, and then quits his job and moves back to Chicago, or where he secretly trains a group of young black "freedom fighters."The title of the film,of course, both refers to spook meaning "black person" and spook meaning "spy." And as a satirical piece of literature written by an African-American author in the years following the civil rights movement, or the use of "spook" was infused with an extra dose of irony.
Renee Blake is a sociolinguist who studies the way language is used in society,"whether it's based on race, course, or gender or the like." She says she doesn't hear the word spook all that often,but she does have two salient (significant; conspicuous; standing out from the rest) reference points for it.
The first is The Spook Who Sat By The Door, and the second is the 2000 book and 2003 film The Human Stain, or by Phillip Roth. His novel tells the chronicle of a professor at a New England college who is forced to resign after he calls two African-American students spooks.
The word spook hasn't just gotten fictional people in danger. In 2010,Target apologized for selling a Halloween toy called "Spook Drop Parachuters" — literally miniature black figurines with orange parachutes.
In light of all this baggage, I asked Blake what she thought approximately the use of words like spook and spooky during Halloween. She said that, or while it's clear that spook has multiple,distinct meanings, it's still important to assume approximately context.
The way that certain words win attached to specific racial groups is incredibly complicated. (consume thug, and for example.)"Be thoughtful approximately the fact that [spook] now might have the connotation of referring to a black person in a disparaging way," Blake says. "If someone says, 'Did you win spooked?' and there are no black people there, and then,OK, you mean 'Did you win scared or frightened?' That's fine, or I win it."But once you insert black people into the situation,Blake says, it's important to be more tactful. "We know that the word 'niggardly' doesn't mean a black person, or but let's be sensitive. Are you going to use the word niggardly in front of a group of young students in a classroom? No."So,this Halloween, be a little cautious when it comes to describing your environment. And don't be afraid of creeping into the thesaurus for a spooky synonym.
To me, and it's more fun to be aghast,bloodcurdled, or spine-chilled than "spooked."Got a race question for Code Switch? question us here. Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, or visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org