Happy Wednesday Everyone!
So...I learned something today that I was totally clueless about. Remember the OK sign/symbol that used to mean something was good to go...thumb to index finger with other three fingers in the upward position? Most often the hand signal was used when a person was not within range of someone to hear it said vocally. Well there will be no more of that.
An article from USA Today popped up in my Google News Thread with title "Family Outraged after a Universal Character made 'OK' symbol on 6-year-old's shoulder". Oblivious me thought what's so controversial about the OK sign? So I read the article and was dumbfounded. This once used hand sign to tell my mother I acknowledge all the chores you told me to do while gone as she backed out of driveway could now get someone in trouble and they may not even know why.
Turns out the ok hand sign is now recognized as having to do with White Power, White Supremacy, etc. Racism! Another article I read about the evolution of the OK hand sign from acknowledging something to racism shed a little more light on the subject. It appears that the man responsible for the 2019 New Zealand Massacre flashed the OK symbol while in court. Some contribute the use of the OK Symbol to a group called 4chan using it while trolling saying the symbol made a W and a P standing for White Power.
A Jewish Lead Civil Rights Group called Anti- Defamation League maintains an online database called Hate on Display which consits of hate symbols, memes, slogans etc. said to be used by racist and hate groups. The OK hand symbol and others were added to this database which is regularly updated.
Another one added is the "bowl cut". Yes the unflattering haircut that moms gave in the kitchen consisting of a bowl being placed on a kids head and scissors cutting around the outline of the bowl. Hence the name "bowl cut". This hair style was worn by the egregious gunmen who shot and killed 9 African American Church Members in Charleston, SC back in 2015.
The article does state that some symbols in the ADL's database are shortlived but others take on a life of their own or have been used for decades. The bowl cut is a hard one for me to give a whole lot of attention to. A bad haircut had by the scum of the earth doesn't mean every poor kid subjected to his mom's kitchen Barbershop is a racist. Most likely mom either doesn't have the money or won't spend money on a haircut she feels like she can give for free.
I never stopped to think what O.K. may actually mean. I figured it was an acronym for something. The internet says OK is "initials of a facetious folk phonetic spelling, e.g., oll or orl korrect representing all correct, first attested in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1839, then used in 1840 by Democrat partisans of Martin Van Buren during his election campaign, who allegedly named their organization, the O.K. Club, in allusion to the initials of Old Kinderhook, Van Buren's nickname, derived from birthplace Kinderhook, New York."
So next time you think about using the OK symbol to communicate agreement or good to go about something instead maybe just text OK, yell real loud or nod your head. Everything thing else is to complicated.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/01/universal-orlando-resort-fires-despicable-me-actor-after-ok-symbol/3791483002/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/26/anti-defamation-league-adds-ok-hand-gesture-hate-symbol-database/3772950002/
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