Honky Without the Tonk

My husband called me a “honky” the other day, which set me off into a fit of guffaws for more than one reason. First of all, I don’t think I’d heard that word for over twenty years.

I can’t remember exactly how my husband used it, something about “you honkys … blah blah blah”. He’s half-Asian and was saying something about some childhood racial issue and I guess that was the best word he could come up with about us “whiteys”.

After I got up off the floor, I told him that he couldn’t call me a “honky” because only black people could say it. My vast knowledge of the word comes from growing up on 1970s television so as far as I was concerned, George Jefferson OWNED that word.

This whole “honky” thing led me to recall that there was another word reserved for black people’s exclusive use. Which in turn led me to wonder if it’s horribly offensive to say “honky” nowadays.  Would anyone under the age of twenty-five even know what the word is?

Maybe a word’s offensiveness scale is determined by the images and feelings it conjures up when uttered. To me, “honky” does not conjure up hate, violence, slavery, war, and rap songs. The images that come to my mind are The Seventies and The Jeffersons and a certain Saturday Night Live sketch. For me, it represents comedy. But then I was raised to avoid conflict and confrontation, so maybe that taught me to find the lighter side first in everything.

Research indicates that its origins were meant to be derogatory, but perhaps over time it sort of lost its heft. 

Also, the word “honky” just sounds funny, almost silly. Doesn’t it sound like a cross between “honk” and “donkey” to you? If someone called you (or someone you know) a “honky” today, would you be offended? Or would you crack up like I did?

Should I have been offended? Am I just an ignorant “cracker” who should be angry, rather than amused when hearing such a word?

With the exception of bigots and hate-mongerers, we all learn at one time or another in our lives that it’s not okay to use the N word (see? I can’t even say it when writing objectively about it, it’s badness is so drilled into me.) I learned this at the tender age of seven or so when I presented my mother with a black jelly bean and announced, “Look Mom, a n—– jelly bean!”

Nothing burns into your brain stronger than the look of horror on your mother’s face.

“Don’t you EVER…,” she death-threatened me with her tone of voice, which conjured up images of the wooden spoon that lay on top of the piano in the living room and was reserved for disciplinary purposes. I don’t think I ever saw that kind of reaction from her before that day or since. I must have shocked the hell out of her, such vile filth spewing from her darling daughter’s mouth.

But “honky”? I choose to find “honky” funny. Unless you gasp in horror, in which case I will clam up and vow never to utter the word again for as long as I live.