Quote:
Originally Posted by octothorp
I'm trying to figure out what the ** is, and I can't figure it out.
An interesting fact I was just recently learning about was how in both Canada and the US, every railway porter was typically called 'George' by customers, a reference to George Pullman, who developed the Pullman Sleeping Car, which were almost always staffed by black employees. The struggle to actually be able to display nametags in the car was a long-standing union labour dispute, only resolved in 1945 in Canada. There's definitely a history of avoiding using people's actual names as a way of enforcing ideas of social rank.
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** = bo. Old timey racist English stuff. Can’t say I’ve ever actually heard it in person or used by anyone but it exists for sure.