Mastrionotti: Fink. That’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?
Barton: Yeah.
Mastrionotti: Yeah, I didn’t think this dump was restricted.

AT THE Lingua Franca blog, Ben Yagoda describes a conversation Ruth Fraklin of the New Republic over anti-Semitic code language in America before and during the second world war. “Restricted” is perhaps the baldest of all the terms (as used by a thuggish detective in the Coen brothers’ 1991 masterpiece, Barton Fink, above). Apparently, “no Jews” code was particularly common in hotel advertisements. Mr Yagoda and Ms Franklin discuss “exclusive” and “selected clientele” among other euphemisms. Shockingly, ads like these persisted into the years of America’s participation in the war against Hitler.

At least a silver lining is that, on some level, people know naked racism is wrong, wrong enough to disguise in euphemism anyway. Anti-black racism needed no code in the pre-1960s era: “Whites Only”, etc. Now, people know that it’s not acceptable to reminisce about the good old days of Jim Crow. But several years ago I responded to a reader who, I thought, protested far too much in proclaiming that “ghetto” as an…Continue reading

via Johnson http://www.economist.com/node/21576483?fsrc=rss