So apparently the Karens want to know if any names were used as insults for the white men who owned/commanded slaveships.

Listen up #Karen (and anyone else) to just one example of the oppressed using English names as insults
(Thread)

I grew up in northern India, in a part of the country that was often at odds with its overmasters from the East India Company and after 1860, the British Empire.

It still suffers from acute trans-generational poverty and deprivation resulting from this period.

An old short thread that explains some of my area https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_n6/status/632447136257470464?s=21 https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_n6/status/632447136257470464

#Bimaru belt is drawn from names of the states: Bihar, Madhya Oradesh, Rajasthan and UP. It’s a coinage dating back at least to late 1980s so includes the ‘new’ states that have emerged from these.

The acronym also forms the Hindi word for sickly (from bimaar - ill).

Even in my own life time, I have seen the terror white men evoked

Yep another old thread: https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_n6/status/1066789392306581505?s=21 https://twitter.com/sunnysingh_n6/status/1066789392306581505

Now I was quite little when I noticed that Tommy was popular name for dogs.

In the cities, people used it for ‘pedigree’ dogs because English was/is a class indicator.

In our village, it was mostly used for mongrels.

Tbf in our village it was likely to be called out as ‘Tom-eeya’ with the typical eastern UP, Purabiya lilt

If you don’t know the link between British soldiering and Tommy: https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/this-is-how-british-troops-got-the-nickname-tommies

My grandmother (yep the Jhalak of the Jhalak Prize) got a little sly grin when she heard a dog being called Tommy.

She had very anti-colonial views and explained that naming the dogs was a quiet resistance.

After all, you couldn’t be jailed or beaten or worse for a dog’s name!

When I was about 8 and back in our village, I counted eleven dogs named Tommy.

My grandfather would watch me feed them and good naturedly warn me that “Tommies would grab the whole arm if you offer them a finger” (unglee pakadte pakadte pahuncha pakadna is the usual idiom)

So yeah, in Bimaru belt India at least (though am sure elsewhere too), Tommy was long the male Karen.

Btw Tommy was an insult, often concealed/veiled, because the consequences of an Indian explicitly insulting a white, British man were so terrible, violent, even deadly.

Kind of like Karen is today.

Now stop Karen-ing or Tommy-ing already.

It’s not a slur. It’s not sexist or racist.

And if you’re insulted by it, sit down and think hard about why!

End thread!