My folks grew up in a rural part of East Texas in the 1920s. They both picked cotton in their youth, and neither of them ever had anything good to say about it. They used the term "cotton-pickin' " as an adjective all their lives, as in, "Get your cotton-pickin' hands off of me!" Country singers used it, too. Johnny Cash, who picked cotton as a sharecropper's son in Arkansas, used to sing, "I'm a cotton pickin' man, and these are cotton pickin' hands..." They also sang about "Them Old Cottonfields Back Home." There were references to "snatchin' and grabbin' " -- the method by which cotton was hand-picked. "Fair to middlin' " -- a term used to describe a cotton crop -- was a stock answer to "How are you?" long after its meaning was forgotten. In fact, "cotton-pickin' " had lost its meaning. It was an empty modifier, much like the timeless "fuckin'."
So when, in the recent elections, a white candidate in a southern state used the term "cotton-pickin' " when speaking of his African-American opponent, I thought nothing of it. But a lot of people did. It was "racially tinged," or some such, apparently referencing slavery. I never know these things are offensive until somebody gets called out for saying them. Fortunately, only a few dozen people hear or read any of my words, so I'm reasonably insulated, but public speaking is a minefield of potential [insert simile here].
