Square Dance Drama

[bjarvis]

CALLERLAB officially announced yesterday that the Advanced call "half-breed thru" is being renamed to "brace thru." There has been low level grumbling for many years that the term "half-breed" was demeaning and insulting; I have cringed every time I've had to use it, and have taken great pains to avoid using the call unless absolutely necessary. Personally, I'm relieved it's being renamed to something innocuous.

I suspect a huge portion of the square dance world would shrug its shoulders, realize very little has changed and move on as though nothing had happened. Of course, those who object to the renaming are incredibly vociferous in their objections --after the fact.

I find the basis for the objections a little odd. For the most part, there are three lines of argument.
1. "I'm not insulted by the term 'half-breed,' therefore no one else could be. This is just political correctness!"
2. "I'll have to redraft *all* my choreo cards!"
3. "Change?! I demand a vote!"

Argument #3 is easily dismissed. Calls are determined by program lists issued by CALLERLAB; each list is maintained by a particular committee with open membership. Want something changed? Join the committee, lobby for your change and vote in committee. There is no cost except time. These things aren't done in secret by a cabal in a secret chamber in some faraway island. If you didn't know the change was coming, you weren't paying attention. And now that the change has been made, the same process can be used to change it back: those complaining have every right to join the committee, propose the change and vote as they wish.

Argument #2 is also pretty easily demolished. It's just a name change: there was no change to the definition or the program list where it resided. One can either just scratch out the old name and scribble in the new one, or just leave the cards as is and mentally substitute the new call on the fly. Any caller worthy of the title should be able to do this.

Argument #1 seems to be the most common reaction on the callers' email list currently. As you can guess, I don't give it much credibility. Whether a term is insulting or not is subjective, not objective; just because a handful of people don't find it offensive doesn't mean others can't. Social context matters a great deal too: an intimate friend calling me a 'dumb bitch' over cocktails at happy hour is a world apart from, say, a manager at a business meeting.

As square dance callers, the words we inject into a microphone are amplified by both the sound systems and by our position as community leaders. Verbal missteps by dancers are forgotten in seconds, missteps by club officers in hours or days, missteps by callers might as well be etched a mile high on the side of a mountain for eternity. What we say to whom and when matters enormously. Even if one could imagine a world where 'half-breed' wasn't an insult, the universe isn't static: there was a time the infamous n-word was commonly heard in even polite conversation but few would accept it today.

I think there may be an age split on the 'brace thru' renaming issue, but it's hard to tell. My perception (and it is only that, a perception) is that no one under the age of 40 has objected while those who complain the loudest are 50+ years of age. However, this may be because the number of callers under the age of 40 is miniscule compared to those aged 50 or more.

In any case, I follow CALLERLAB rules and heartily embrace this particular list change. And I can finally use the call without cringing.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Oh is that what the Advanced dancers were complaining about tonight. I got that the call name was changing and what to, and that our caller thinks 'PC Thru' would be a more appropriate name to change to, but not what from, and when I asked for an explanation I got walked through what the call does instead of what it was named. Helpful, that; I dance Plus, not Advanced. And even knowing that some people are privileged assholes, I'm kinda surprised anybody could get the former call name out of their mouth without choking on it.

[(Anonymous)]

I am amazed at how many people are upset about this change and "PC-ness" in general. So what if you don't know anyone who was offended? If there's a chance to offend someone at a square dance, why take that chance?

Even if one believes its much ado about nothing (which I don't), there's no harm in making this change.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I was at the Advanced committee meeting at the Callerlab 2011 when a straw vote was taken to do exactly what has been done. Bill Harrison noted then that this has been voted on probably 7 times over the past 20 years or so and that this was the first time there was actually a concensus to change the name.

As I mentioned, I dropped off sd-callers list about five years ago after a particularly brutal, abrasive interchange about a full-time caller that coincidentally we hosted during a dance weekend here not long after. Yeesh.

There are so many more pressing issues that any protracted discussion of "Half Breed Thru" just seems bizarre. It's over and done and in a year no one will think much about it. If I see "Half Breed Thru" on one of my 'cards', I'll simply say "Brace Thru" and go on. Non-issue.

I wonder when "Here Comes the Judge" will become an issue? The actual term was used decades ago (about the time of Laugh In and before) said in a slangy-African American uneducated patois. Check out this 1968 'rap' record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvMBxlu62c0

In any case, this whole discussion (which I've mostly seen on lgcwsd with some really odd input there) puts yet another blip of 'meh' in the idea of continuing with square dancing.

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

"Here Comes the Judge" and "Sock It To Me" are both from Laugh-In (which makes sense with the two calls being symetric). HCTJ was actually a line from Sammy Davis, Jr., which I think he ad-libed, so I think of it as more of a pro-African American line.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Kinda my point. :-)

[omero-hassan.livejournal.com]

For the life of me, I cannot wrap my mind around the vehement defense of "Half Breed Thru." The cognitive dissonance that especially perplexes me is people who, on the one hand, deny that it's offensive and say we shouldn't make a big deal about it and, on the other, make a big deal about how it's being changed.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Tick-tock goes the progress clock…!

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

The straight square dance world is in severe decline, as it has been for many years. The numbers attending nationals have dropped each year. The old guard cling to their outdated rules and behaviors, and bizarrely, the gay community clamors to join with these organizations, reducing the fun flavor of our own version of this activity. Yet the thing everyone gets upset about is renaming a call.

I liken this to the way the American people are content to be spending several billion dollars a week for the past 10 years in Afghanistan, but are completely outraged that a little under one million was wasted at some stupid federal 'conference' (read: party) in Las Vegas. We can get our heads around the minutiae much more easily than we can the 'big picture'. It's easier to have these long pointless discussions about renaming Half Breed Through than to spend time figuring out how to keep the activity going longer than a few more years.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

After the third of those incredibly dense and embarrassing messages, I found myself well into the process of mentally drafting an editorial for the Call Sheet, entitled "Half-Grow-UP, People!" when I realized what I was doing and stopped myself.