this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
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All this means is that the Thomas franchise has existed long enough to be publishing books since when that word was still in common parlance. I'm sure if you looked at anything from that era, it wouldn't take long to find something that appears problematic through a modern lens.
Believe it or not, it was not "normal" to use slurs in children's books in 1952.
There are Marvel comics from the 1940's with characters straight out of ministrel shows and they still don't use the word. Would you like to guess why?
Edit: not that it stopped Dr Seuss a couple times in the 30's, mind you, but he reserved it for comics and not his children's books, those only got racist caricatures.
The word carried somewhat less of a charge in the UK at the time, where black people were relatively uncommon until waves of labour migration from the Caribbean in the 1950s, than in the US, where it was freighted with the weight of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow laws and such. Agatha Christie could call a book “10 Little N_s”, alluding to a children’s rhyme. This was an age in which the children who casually sang that rhyme probably had golliwog dolls.
Sure, absolutely no history of slavery and colonialism in the UK. There definitely aren't a dozen Kipling stories where he calls anyone not a WASP by the term.
While Britain participated in the slave trade, they went out of their way to not do so in Britain; the slaveholders kept their slaves abroad and out of sight, in places where the laws of civilisation which rule such institutions to be obscene are waived. (Sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean were one such place.) And it was impolite to inquire too hard about the sources of fortunes that built stately homes.
The difference being that when the N-word was uttered in Britain, it was belittling and condescending in an exoticising way, like a colonial-era picture book of funny foreigners in their traditional costumes. In America, however, it had a more immediate edge of aggression and violence, implying an other that’s here rather than far away, and firmly below the speaker in the established racial hierarchy, and who must be kept there using tools including designating them as a (N-word).
The garbage eurotrash will spread to pretend they aren't and haven't been virulent racists is pretty amazing.
IT's eXotiCisiNg NoT a ToOl oF oUr RacIaL ImpEriAl HeiRARchY
Meanwhile, at the absolute kindest Br*tish imperial racists are being:
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_burden.htm
You're bringing up fucking Kipling of all people, the one poet everyone knows for being mega into colonialism. That's like me pointing at the Grateful Dead while saying Americans need to lay off the acid.
One of England's favorite poets until public displays of explicit racism were no longer de rigueur.
He's a perfectly valid example of the feelings of the nation at that time.
One of the favourite English poets amongst a certain grouping of people
Amongst the people with influence who set the curriculum in England for a very long time. He wasn't some fringe artist with unusual views.
It's a cherry-picked example if I ever saw one, I could just as well go and point at Wilberforce to underline early 19th century attitudes to slavery and I'd be making the same error as this.
You cannot use the term "cherry-picked" to refer to a man who is such a prominent cultural icon. His art captured the essence of an era.
It's even more valid when taken in light of more recent wars of colonial aggression involving the UK in which the terminology and lies used mirror the justifications of the 19th century. The behavior and attitude of the UK government towards former colonies when it comes to the topic of reparations and the belated return of stolen artifacts is no different now as it was when the enslaved peoples of the West Indies were granted their "freedom"
Kipling has been subject of debate since the height of his career. it would be inaccurate to claim he represented unchallenged universal attitudes.
Who said anything about "universal"?
The views of the Anglican church have been debated for centuries that doesn't negate their power and influence. Theirs was very much the voice of the establishment, ala Kipling.
Nor can you select the worst examples of someone else's country to defend America's conduct on patriotic grounds which is blatantly what's happening here.
There's a massive Americentrism problem in the wider West that both the US left and right wingers absolutely hate being challenged, they are exactly alike on this issue as far as I am concerned.
Who here is defending America?
Reminding the world that Britain has done a lot of evil and exposing how contemporary Brits justify said evil acts does not equate to defending America.
Some of us can walk and chew gum simultaneously. Cute deflection though.
Come on, this whole thread is basically Americans shitting on Britons because Britons don't generally put American PoV goggles on when discussing racism.
Are you fucking stupid?
Are you physically incapable of taking your Amerigoggles off for a millisecond?
They really are delusional.
The denial and defense of their racist antics is amazing to see in real time.
Those were exceedingly good stories though!
I just checked my copy of the book. Even though it was first published in 1939, my copy was still published under the original titlein 1963.
It was altered in the 70s, around the same time the Thomas book was altered.
Well, now I am going to have to go home and check my copy of Thomas. Because I totally remember that line.
Setting aside the incorrect notion that there weren't black people in England until the 50s, the story in question was published in 1951 and remained in print into the 1970s.
"relatevily uncommon" != "there weren't"
Yes, and Black soldiers took part in D-Day seven years prior.
It heavily depends which books you look in.
pretty sure that racism in the days of yore was still racist (please remember who decided what was appropriate in common parlance back then)
And nobody denied that. The statement was "racism was normal in those days", and not "the n-word wasn't racist in those days".
it was as normal as it is now. so what’s your point?
You're not allowed to criticize or point out Southern Klans members because it was the style of the time.
Lemmy's just becoming worse and worse these days.
Again, nobody said that. You keep just making shit up.
nobody is making shit up except the propagandists who spoon feed us this idea that we are so much more enlightened now we were in the olden days. i mean, look around you.
...are you okay? automatically assuming the worst possible meaning of ambiguous statements doesn't seem healthy.
what about this: "pointing the klansmen out to people back then was harder because the average person was more racist."
I grow more and more tired of humanity being a constant idiot parade but that's nothing new.
Just because you refuse to understand that acceptance of a word, no matter how foul, was entirely dependant on the region it was used doesn't mean Lemmy or anyone else is accepting it. People here just understand that Britain in the 1950s was far different in cultural acceptance than the US in 1950.
Just like the USA using "That's gay" as a casual insult as late as the mid 2000s is now considered inappropriate today. I'm queer and I know Brits who still say "pass me a fag". Guess who isn't upset about hearing that because I'm not a moron.
they do say that if you always expect the worst you're never disappointed... but it definitely won't make you happy.
"If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole."
or, of course, it could be that you're just so much better than everyone else, right?
There are things in the world to legitimately be outraged about if you want to be outraged. You don't need to force yourself to be angry at shit like this.
the hays code didn't apply to colloquial speech, it applied to movies.
The Hayes Code didn’t apply to books at all, it was movie specific. I assumed they were talking about the dominant culture at the time.
it just cracks me up because if you look for Hays violating shit, it's everywhere back then. If they wanted to sing about sex, they sang about food.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None (Agatha Christie, 1939)