“Monday” is only the latest in a long line of covert racial slurs. In a 2004 paper called “Dining while Black: Racial Rituals and the Black American Restaurant Experience,” the sociologists Danielle Dirks and Stephen K. Rice analyzed “backstage race talk” among white restaurant servers. The most popular code word for black customers, they found, is “Canadians,” typically explained by the stereotype of both Canadians and blacks being bad tippers. Other covert terms for blacks noted by Dirks and Rice include “cousins,” and—for maximal misdirection—“white people.”

— How did ‘Monday’ become a racist slur? How did ‘Monday’ become a racist slur? - Ideas - The Boston Globe

12:46 pm  •  27 July 2012  •  2 notes