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In reply to the discussion: Do you know any old "sayings" or phrases that are humorous or interesting? [View all]hunter
(38,310 posts)For my family the old California definition fit. They used "out in the tules" as a derogatory term. The white dairy farmers and ranchers who got to California first and claimed the best land had a much higher social status than more recent immigrants to California, many who were draining the tule marshes of California's Central Valley. My grandma and her sister were born in San Francisco which clearly made them a higher class of people than the various misfits, Portuguese, and later Okie immigrants to the Central Valley.
It's ironic because my grandma and her sister were both misfits in their own way, leaving the cows behind as teens to run wild in Hollywood. They were both classic Hollywood Liberals and they had a rainbow of friends -- homosexual, black, white, Jewish, "Spanish" (their word for Mexican-American), "Oriental," Italian -- but their internalized white privilege and racism went entirely unexamined and they could say the most cringe-worthy things.