Saturday, July 11, 2009

Is "Indian Giver" racist?

I've got something on my mind.

Well, I was watching Curb your Enthusiasm yesterday. It's a show with Larry David. The uh, guy behind Seinfeld. Tall bald guy with glasses. Jewish. Not sure if you've seen it. But uh, it's pretty funny. And well, there was this one scene where his manager Jeff Greene said something about an "Indian giver", and how that was a terrible racist term. And that really confused me, since I'd never thought of it as a racist term before. Because if you think about it, "Indian giver" is really just describing the terrible actions of whites who gave the Indians some land and then took it away later. Right? Isn't that what the "Indian giver" refers to?

So I'm not sure how that's actually racist. It's not really reflecting poorly on the Indians. It seems much more logical that it would be a white person, rather then an Indian, who would be offended by that. Because it's not like it's the Indians who gave land to the whites and then took it away. Maybe it's actually referring to the settlers who gave malaria blankets to the Indians? So an "Indian giver" was someone who gave blankets?

Or actually, I believe it was smallpox. They were smallpox blankets. That's pretty nasty. The uh, pus getting stained on the blankets, dripping yellow and smelling... ugh, it's not a pretty image. Or is pus clear? Does smallpox make the pus yellowish instead of a clear liquid? Has anyone had smallpox recently? I dunno, I'd imagine not. I know they cured polio back in the day. Cause of FDR. Though he still died at the end of WW2. So that didn't help. But they did cure polio. And smallpox is similar to polio in that pox and polio both start with "po". So that's somethng. Yea, you're right, they probably did cure smallpox.

Clean blankets at Indian casinos these days.

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