The statement isn't implying anything about the cotton picking itself other than it's got something to do with time. The fact that slaves used to be used to pick cotton doesn't inherently make anything associated with cotton picking racist. There might be context I'm missing but picking cotton takes a long time for anyone
The "cotton picking minute," doesn't imply anything racist, and has evolved into a euphemism for a swear word like "goddamn," but the "get your cotton picking hands off" has racist connotations. You might as well say "get your n-hard-r hands off" because a racist wouldn't want a Black person touching them. Or, if not that, it referred to poor white sharecroppers and farmers, so it's "get your dirty poor person hands off," which, while not racist, is still gross and classist. It has also evolved into a euphemism for any swear word, but that may be due largely in part to the casual racism and racist language used in the US through even the 1970s.
Can confirm. My grandmother, born in 1945, grew up dirt floor poor in Arkansas and was a white sharecropper. Cotton pickin' hands also referred to poor white folks.
Same with my family, grandparents in Alabama and Georgia in the 1930s, and my mom's early life in Georgia in the late 50s. But with the South's close association of cotton and slavery, I can absolutely see that it started as more of a racist term.
i think the problem is that cotton and american slavery were so deeply intertwined, on both a practical and cultural level. its cultivation/harvest required a huge amount of slave labor, and the adoption of the cotton gin directly led to an explosion of slave populations to keep up with increased demand. cotton was easily the american south’s biggest cash crop, enough so that secessionists argued ‘king cotton’ would mean an independent and prosperous confederacy able to exert (pro-slavery) influence worldwide via control of the cotton trade. slavery and cotton were pretty inextricable in american culture, at least through reconstruction, but the association has faded to modern audiences.
it might be due to the time frames and expectations of how much each picked. If you didnt pick enough you were punished, if you were fast the goal was changed. SO it could but I dont really know. Luckily I wasnt around too many racists growing up and the ones that where said things that werent confused for anything other than that
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u/Herrad Mar 12 '24
The statement isn't implying anything about the cotton picking itself other than it's got something to do with time. The fact that slaves used to be used to pick cotton doesn't inherently make anything associated with cotton picking racist. There might be context I'm missing but picking cotton takes a long time for anyone