Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 23:50:40 -0600 From: Chip Morton <tech_info@threespace.com> To: FreeBSD Chat <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: jive (was RE: was this really necessary?) Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20030225234336.01a452b8@threespace.com> In-Reply-To: <IPEDKJGCDFHOPEFKLIDHMENCCCAA.paul@iconoplex.co.uk> References: <Pine.BSF.4.53.0302231441040.44163@olmec>
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Paul, I personally have to thank you for this bit of history. While I certainly had the feeling that the authors of this program were engaging in the worst kind of racial stereotyping, I couldn't manage to quite find any proof until I had the references to the Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception. They produced the following excerpts in my searches: ..... Using the jive program is the electronic equivalent of appearing in blackface - a crude, minstrel show in cyberspace: "Some nigga' name Co'rupt, havin' been real active befo'e, duzn't gots' some so'kin' computa' anymo'e and so ... sheeit, duh." (at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/hacker_pr.html) Jive turns regular English into "the electronic equivalent of blackface" -- replete with uses of the word "nigger" and phrases like "slap mah 'fro." (at http://www.kkc.net/eyenet/1995/net0817.htm) ...... So I think we can pretty much kill the pseudo-ignorant "Oh it wasn't poking fun at anybody specifically" attitude. --Chip Morton At 07:15 AM 2/25/2003, Paul Robinson wrote: >Actually, the history of jive is an interesting one. If I remember >correctly, the Legion of Doom created to make fun of another hacking group >that they hated called Masters of Deception. LoD was composed mostly of >white middle-class kids whose parents would buy them the latest and greatest >hardware they asked for. MoD had to make do with scrabbling around for bits >of kit in bins and were generally C64 freaks at the time. I'm sure that the >fact that they were all Afro-Carribean didn't come into. > >In other words, jive owes it's existence to a desire of white middle-class >pricks to make fun of black working-class kids. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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