Originally published at: Dr. Oz talking about his New Jersey roots in 2019 | Boing Boing
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carpetbagger is apparently racist, so you might want to choose another word.
I was unaware of that until relatively recently.
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I know the term was always pejorative but I never heard it was racist. I’m into etymology and have used the term myself so would like to stop if that’s warranted. I think it’s a bit different to say the term is “rooted in racism” and mostly originally used by defeated Southern civil war deadenders/racists like this article does but I’m happy to be corrected:
If it’s simply an insult however it definitely applies to Oz.
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As I’ve said elsewhere, the term was used initially to describe formerly enslaved people coming back south to help other formerly enslaved people, setting up schools, medical care, etc. It also applied with white northerners, but the people who were doing much of the practical work of reconstruction WERE in fact, Black Americans. So not racist in the same way as other words, but most certainly loaded with assumptions that Black americans who were born and raised in the south, but escaped slavery and then came back to help rebuild THEIR home, weren’t “real” southerners. It’s just another way to say that Black people aren’t “real” Americans, generally speaking.
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In a quick google search, I do not find anything about it being used as a racist pejorative but rather a description of northerners who were portrayed as profiteering in the south under the name of reconstruction.
I’d be glad to see more information but this is the first I’ve heard it described as a racist term and Google is not turning up anything that supports this beyond carpetbagger used to described northerners who typically were on the side of black people’s rights post civil war but this seems to be coinicidental while the focus was on the perceived presence to cheat good white southern folks out of stuff post war.
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Maybe you’re right, but it’s very much a term that’s associated with the lost cause mythos, which we know are built on lies about what happened during reconstruction. Much of the people who came south to do the rebuilding WERE in fact Black Americans (as DuBois showed in his works on the era, and that has been re-affirmed more recently by historians like Eric Foner). It was certainly deployed to dismiss the agency of Black men and women working for the Freedman’s bureau and as part of the GOP. Labeling them “outsiders” by calling them carpetbaggers or victims of carpetbaggers was a means of saying that “they did not belong” in the south. Note that white businessmen who came south and upheld the racial caste system were not considered to be carpetbaggers.
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the irony here is I only found out it was potentially racist when my comment right here on boingboing was removed for using it in this thread
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Great concept – Showing how oz is a craven politician wanna-be by running for senate in a neighboring state.
However, some needs to tell the guy in the video that yelling your point into your iPad makes you look like an annoying opinionated dweeb.
(I’m an annoying opinionated dweeb at times so I know what I’m talking about)
Here’s how you do a video trashing Dr Oz:
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I don’t think it is ironic. What I just reviewed in that deleted thread shows you used the term incorrectly.
I have used this to reference the most commonly understood definition of carpet bagger. I have welcomed learning that it has a different meaning or that the meaning I find for it when searching the internet is missing important background I have never heard this as a racist term. It certainly was used BY racists to define “people who came south to help reconstruction,” but those people were, in my understanding, black and white. The racist southerners who didn’t want black people freed, let alone treated anything resembling equally, called them carpetbaggers and jacklegs. Jackleg is targeting people by race afaik.
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I think the way “Carpetbaggers” were introduced in Gone with the Wind really encapsulates the way the phrase was popularly used here:
Hard to see that take as anything other than racist in nature.
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I prefer the terms “political interloper” or “parachute candidate” for that reason.
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We may now go back to the topic of Dr. Oz’s candidacy in Pennsylvania, this has been discussed into the ground and isn’t really going any place new.
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Oz drools, Fetterman rules…
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While not adressing his inauthenticity as a Pennsylvanian, this adresses his inauthenticity as a doctor giving advice, profiting by recommending companies he owned shares in.
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