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Originally Posted by Brian
Awesome story about your cousin, Adam, and nice anti-racist memorabilia!
Valid points about the cards, although I have not seen any other hyphenated cards, like "Roman Catholic-American", "Muslim-American," or "Protestant-American." I have also seen Jewish-American. But what confounded/amused me was to refer to someone as "Hebrew". Maybe it was a sign of the times, and maybe that is how we were referred to, but I thought that language was last used by the Pharaohs! I had thought that its usage in the early part of the century leaned toward the derogatory (but maybe it's just me).
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There were many cards that identified the fighters with hyphenates. Here is "Irish-American" Tommy Loughran:
The only religious call-outs were the Hebrews. There is also this Exhibit wrestling card from the 1930s:
It is the only card in that series that uses a religious label.
Different times and different sensitivities.
Seems to me that we've had a gradual move towards the groups in question setting their own terms of reference, and resetting them over time. Check the cards of the black fighters: "colored" was the phrase of the day. "Hebrew" was one of the polite terms used at the time. Abe Attell was nicknamed "The Little Hebrew". There were a lot more derogatory phrases available to describe "Hebrew" fighters, same as there were for "colored" fighters. It's all contextual. I mean, when I grew up "Negro" was archaic but not impolite--your grandma would use it--but the word of the times was "black". That's what I was taught to use. That held true for about 25-30 years or so. In Spike Lee's
Do The Right Thing (1989), the characters didn't tell each other to "stay African-American", they told each other to "stay black"; that was the term in 1989. About 15-20 years ago, the term "African-American" picked up and my "black" usage was considered archaic and even somewhat demeaning. I switched it up. Recently, it went back to "black" because African-American was too USA centric, and I was told by my Gen Z kid to switch it up again. I am sure Jackie Robinson would have been just fine to be called a "Negro" in 1947; lord knows he was called a lot of other things. In 1977, it was different, and it woud have been mildly offensive. Not punch in the mouth offensive, but more like drunk uncle at Thanksgiving offensive.