Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that… isn’t completely racist…

I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me are:

I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that every time you feel like you’ve got a handle on how bad, pervasive, and grotesque the sexism in our society is, there’s a woman waiting to tell you her even more horrible story…

Fair warning, this week’s patron story is about women in brewing. We talk about their history then dive into stories that have rocked the craft brewing world this month. Mild content warning for the story, I avoid quoting specific accounts of abuse, but it is the undertone of the story.

Patrons this week will also get our much funnier, archived story on Great Lakes Brewing News as an outtake making this episode’s patron content nearly a full extra hour of the show!

And with that, I’ll turn it over to Shea for today’s super funny, uplifting, feel-good story…

Racist Rhetoric

Overt racism is easy to detect and has been brought to the surface for decades. It includes racial slurs like the “n” word, hate crimes, burning crosses, painting swastikas, violence against immigrants, dressing up in blackface or brownface, blatant use of stereotypes, registering as a republican, and more. It can be a jarring experience to learn a common word or phrase you’ve been using for years is actually kind of racist or sexist or homophobic. The harder you look, the more language you’ll find with problematic roots. While English certainly has its fair share of racist words and phrases, it also has a baffling number of synonyms and alternative ways of saying something. Fortunately, that makes it pretty easy to swap out the word or phrase you’ve been saying for a more innocuous one.

"Words like 'slave' and' master' are so folded into our vocabulary and almost unconsciously speak to the history of racial slavery and racism in the US," says Elizabeth Pryor, an associate professor of history at Smith College.

But America's reckoning with systemic racism is now forcing a more critical look at the language we use. And while the offensive nature of many of these words and phrases has long been documented, some institutions are only now beginning to drop them from the lexicon.

"Language works best when it brings as many people into communication with each other," she says. "If we know, by using certain language, we're disinviting certain people from that conversation, language isn't doing its job."

Here are some familiar words and phrases you might consider dropping from your vocabulary.

Off the reservation, pretty obvious that maybe this isn’t the most PC phrase. It’s meaning is to deviate from what is expected or customary, oftentimes used to describe someone acting not normal. In the 1800s, the federal government forcibly removed Native Americans from their land and sent them to live in designated reservations. The phrase “off the reservation” was used in government correspondence to report on whether Native Americans were complying with orders to stay within their designated living areas. Over time, it came to be used to describe anyone acting outside of what is expected, particularly in political situations.

Grandfathered In or Grandfather Clause is to be exempt from a law that has recently been adopted. But originally it had a much more sinister meaning. The terms “grandfathered in” and “grandfather clause” have their origin in America’s racial history. While the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited racial discrimination in voting, African Americans were kept from exercising their constitutional right due to states’ literacy tests, poll taxes and constitution quizzes. These “tests” were designed to disenfranchise Blacks. If they did not pass or pay the tax, they could not register to vote. These laws also hindered poor American whites. As a result,