Southern racists adopt “Canadian” as a euphemism for “black”

The National Post looks on with mild horror as American
linguists report on the growing trend in the American south to use
“Canadian” as a masking euphemism for black people, so that white
racists can say socially inappropriate things without tipping listeners
off about the cancer in their souls.

Last August, a blogger in Cincinnati going by the name
CincyBlurg reported that a black friend from the southeastern U.S. had
recently discovered that she was being called a Canadian. “She told me
a story of when she was working in a shop in the South and she
overheard some of her customers complaining that they were always
waited on by a Canadian at that place. She didn’t understand what they
were talking about and assumed they must be talking about someone
else,” the blogger wrote.

“After this happened several times with different patrons, she
mentioned it to one of her co-workers. He told her that ‘Canadian’ was
the new derogatory term that racist Southerners were using to describe
persons they would have previously referred to [with the N-word.]”

A similar case in Kansas City was reported last year on a
Listserv, or electronic mailing list, used by linguistics experts. A
University of Kansas linguist said that a waitress friend reported that
“fellow workers used to use a name for inner-city families that were
known to not leave a tip: Canadians. ‘Hey, we have a table of
Canadians…. They’re all yours.’ ”