“PICNIC” & its true origins Spread the word and help stop another lynching of a perfectly guiltless word – and the family tradition it refers to. Tell your friends and colleagues that picnic is not a racist word. You might think that this is a joke or a parody. Unfortunately, its not. People with influence over what students learn are maintaining that picnic is an offensive word, and that the origin of the picnic is in a happy outing to eat out on a lawn while watching a lynching (the term supposedly being from pick a nic – nic, in this account, is another version of the n-word – to string up). This is completely false, as anyone who cares to open an etymological dictionary – The first usage of the word is traced to the 1692 edition of Tony Willis, Origines de la Langue Française, which mentions pique-nique as being of recent origin; it marks the first appearance of the word in print. The term was used to describe a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. The concept of a picnic long retained the connotation of a meal to which everyone contributed something. Whether, picnic is actually based on the verb piquer, which means pick or peck, with the rhyming nique meaning thing of little importance. Upon receiving many inquiries about a chain letter, they contacted the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Alonzo Smith, a research fellow in African-American Studies at the Smithsonian, replied with a detailed debunking, including the following comments: To attempt to tie lynchings to family outings, where food was served, is to misunderstand the real nature of these events. Rather, they were outbreaks of mass white hysteria, and attempts by groups of Whites to terrorize and brutalize the entire Black communities where they occurred. Often, they were motivated by alleged acts of violence by Blacks against Whites, alleged disrespect and other breaches of Southern racial etiquette, and on many occasions, victims were chosen at random. Although women and children were frequently present, it is more accurate to view these events as collective psychotic behavior, rather than family outings. (Dr. Alonzo Smith in Take Our Word for It, 15 March 1999) The lynching of African Americans by whites is an undeniable horror, but to forward what was probably someones feeble attempt at humor as though it were real only serves to diminish the seriousness of the matter.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 18:38:52 +0000
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