Theater Sep 16, 2009 at 1:56 pm

Comments

1
Interesting linguistic deconstruction. But your editor was right. Until reading this Slog post, I had never heard the word before, and would have been clueless reading it in your article.

It sounds like a regional term, and other than transplants from the south, probably a lot of Seattleites haven't heard of it either.
2
The only time I remember hearing it was in the Richard Pryer/Chevy Chase word association sketch on SNL way back when.
3
So, how were you using it in the review?
4
Can the world "ofay" really carry the same weight as the word "nigger" when most white people aren't aware of the word's existence? The word nigger carries a huge amount of cultural and historical weight, people screamed it (and probably still scream it) before committing horrific acts of brutality and murder against African-Americans. I don't remember reading about mobs of black folk screaming out "ofay" before attacking whites. There is no parralel slur to the word nigger when you look at it in it's proper historical, social and current context.

That being said this is an interesting etymological riff on an obscure bit of regional slang but I concur with @ 1 your editor made the right call.
5
It has the advantage of rhyming with many other words.
6
Paging Mudede.........
7
I think I first read it in a Robert B. Parker book -- Hawk used it to Spenser. I had to look it up and found the same etymological back and forth you did.
8
Just because the Stranger isn't a hardcover book doesn't mean people need to sheltered from possibly unfamiliar words. It's not like the days of yore when you'd have to make a special trip to the library to consult the foot-thick unabridged dictionary. And I assume that most Stranger readers are smarter (and more curious) than your average bear.
9
Fo shizzle, my ofizzle.
10
I'm fairly sure I first came to know this word through the work of Chester Himes. Looked it up. Same.
11
rob! is a homophobe (@8)!!!

Who is he to imply that Bears (a very legitimate sub-species of teh gays) are not too bright!

P.S. Sorry for being facetious.
12
There is no "white parallel" to the word "nigger".
13
Somehow I've stumbled through life thinking it was from the Pig Latin.
14
@11, I'll respond to your nefarious calumny as soon as I complete the deglutition of the ursine ejaculate currently obstructing my epiglottis.
15
God, I'm old. I thought everyone knew this word. It was common currency in a certain kind of black literature from at least the 30s. Anybody who's read anything about jazz would know it, or any Lenny Bruce, or Richard Pryor.

I don't think in usual parlance it's quite as offensive as you make it out to be. Or rather, it may be when used between blacks, but it's not unusual for it to be used jokingly by black and white jazz musicians, for instance.
16
@ 12. You're totally correct. That was a dumb oversimplification.
17
Your editor shouldn't be making things too easy for your readers--editors often do that, and they shouldn't underestimate us--but you should also write aware that basically no one knows the term "ofay" in these parts; obscurity doesn't readily enhance clarity.
18
Fer chrissake, it takes three seconds to google it, what's the problem? Last week we were all excited about "saving" a bunch of obscure and mostly bogus Latinate words with no resonance whatsoever on some webpage, just because they're neat, but today a guy wants to use a not-very-obscure and culturally powerful and significant word, and he's failing to "enhance clarity"?

How very ofay of you.
19
Most of us with Southern roots who happen to know at least a few African-Americans know the word ofay. Frankly, I'd rather be called ofay than cracker (if I must be called one or the other).
20
i think cracker is more insulting, because i resent being lumped with rural southern whites. honky is just funny.
21
"you mean you got you a ofay with no monay?"
-samuel l. jackson to wesley snipes in jungle fever.

but yes, also, the richard pryor-chevy chase word association sketch from season one of Saturday Night Live. Also Lenny Bruce at Berkeley. Also some Louis Armstrong song. Also some Cab Calloway song. Also The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Also tons of other things. A bit archaic but a great word.
22
Great article, now that you've discussed ofay, what about

"Iko.

Iko.

Iko iko anay.

Jackamo fin da-aa-aa-aa nay --

jackamo fin danay."

??
23
I use "oil of ofay" nightly...helps with the blemishes on my ancestry.
24
I immediately thought of the Pryor/Chase sketch but I had always thought he was saying 'opaque' or 'old faith' or something I was too young to get at the time. But it always bothered me so I finally googled it and got ofay. Yay for SNL making me learn! Also, yeah, seriously, it takes about 2 seconds to find. Boo to the editors.
25
I've been called honkie, peckerwood, and honkie motherfucker. but never Au Fait.
26
I (a white girl) was sometimes called ofay in my Berkeley childhood in the early 60s, always by the black friends of my best friend (who was also black, and whose people came from Alabama). But did you all know that honky comes from the Wolof xonxe (pronounced honky), meaning Arab slave trader? True.
27
A friend and I wanted to do a hiphop show on our college radio station in 1992. As we were both white, we thought it'd be funny to call the show "Two Ofays." But the music director either couldn't decifer our handwriting to read the strange word, or edited us, so when the program guide came out our show bore the wretched title "Two of Us."
28
Oddly enough, I am aware of that word, despite growing up in Seattle.
9, FTW
26, There is exactly one Google Hit for Wolof xonxe, without quotes (your comment!). That is totally awesome/obscure, do you have any more info on this?
29
I didn't know "ofay" was a disparaging term for whites. As a white person who loves the black music of jazz and blues, my only familiarity with the term was from Louis Jordan's song "Ofay and Oxford Gray," (1945) which was an early plea for desegregation. Jordan seems to indicate that it was simply jive-talk for "white person," similar to Cab Calloway's substitution of "frail" for "girl" in "Minnie The Moocher": "She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale." The lyric in Jordan's song goes: "If you hep to the jive, then you know ofay means white, and Oxford gray means colored, they say, and believe me, together they're all right. Piano keys are black and white. They make the harmony and that is right. So don't be square and don't delay the blending of ofay and Oxford gray." Surely Louis Jordan here is promoting racial harmony and not using "ofay" as an insult to whites as the "n-word" is an insult to blacks. However, all current definitions agree with Brendan Kiley in his above article. What happened? Has the meaning of the word drifted over the last 70 years?
30
I learned the word "offay" from a record dealer on Haight St., in 1958. Negative connotation seemed to be minimal.
I assumed it was derived from a dialectic pronunciation of "fair", as in "fair-skinned.""

Page Brownton
31
More likely derives from Arabic for shadow or ghost. Nobody knows it because we live in a society built on twenty minute cultural consciousness. Ofay has much less power than goy. I know of no pejorative designation that carries the power of "nigger" -- in part because the word itself became so institutionalized in black culture. Such designations do not generally become a powerful descriptor inside the culture against which it has been used. Mexican Hispanics seldom refer to themselves a greasers or beaners. Nigger also has significant historical and geographical under-pinnings -- the river Nigger was a significant slave trade conduit and numerous slave trade "factories" going back to the 16 -17 hundreds were established in and around that area -- Nigger. In this, there appears to be a pronunciation corruption from the written word (from, example, bills of lading and investment and insurance contracts -- the slave trade was a legitimate trade in those days, financed by investors and insured by speculators) to the spoken word. As well, its continued and common use over several centuries in the "King's/Queen's English, in as much as all persons of color (any color except northern European white) were often referred to as niggers. We Americans might call individuals from the middle east and sub-continent "pakis," "rag heads" etc., but the British, then, used "nigger" for all. Cracker or red-neck (viz, If you keep a car up on blocks in your front yard, you might be a red-neck.) have more general cultural impact than ofay. Gringo, perhaps, originally, a reference to a song popular with U.S. troops during the Mexican War -- "Green Grows the Grass" -- has achieved a certain level of "fun" in the movies and literature. Ofay, over the years, has found some work in generalized Black humor and comedy -- especially film -- but it has not established itself, in the general culture as a hard-hitting or bitting racial epithet. In any event, directing a racial epithet against white skinned people is a waste of time -- it slides like water off a duck's back.
32
IMHO, black people's co-opting of the word "nigger" as a term of fraternity, essentially neutering the word as much as is possible, is a far more powerful thing than trying in vain to come up with an equivalent term of hatred for white people such as "peckerwood" and "ofay".

Also, in what way is it "too bad" that most people aren't familiar with a term of racial hatred, in this case "ofay"?
33
IMHO, black people's co-opting of the word "nigger" as a term of fraternity, essentially neutering the word as much as is possible, is a far more powerful thing than trying in vain to come up with an equivalent term of hatred for white people such as "peckerwood" and "ofay".

Also, in what way is it "too bad" that most people aren't familiar with a term of racial hatred, in this case "ofay"?
34
I know it from the Richard Pryor/Chevy Chase routine.
35
Glad you posted this discussion. The word turns up a lot in quotations in Ricky Riccardi's recent book on Louis Armstrong ("What A Wonderful World"), and I'd never seen it before (suburban northern white), and your and the others' remarks are lots better than the minimal dictionary entries.
36
In the 50s in Detroit and jazz circles generally, ofay meant a white person who moved seamlessly among blacks. "An ofay cat" was someone who had no prejudice.
37
Love the way "editors" of today "protect" us poor illiterate slobs from "unusual" vocab. Really ads to the paucity of familiar language. How else are folks vocabularies expanded. "Sensitive "editor? I'd say "clueless."

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