Okie is a derogatory term, but Merle Haggard has every right to use it, as do I. Because our families were part of the Okie migration to California. You can't use it on us as a bad word, but we can use it about ourselves as a term of pride. It's taking back something that was once derogatory and making it our own. My folks moved from Oklahoma and Arkansas to California in the twenties and thirties to pick cotton, which makes them Okies. You were an Okie even if you were from Arkansas, although sometimes they said Arkie too. But my folks were Okies, I'm descended from Okies, and I'm proud of it, and I'll use the term Okie any time I want. Merle Haggard has certainly earned that right himself. He's right from around the same area my folks are from -- Bakersfield, Wasco, etc. He talks like them. He moves like them. He looks like them. We're Okies, and nothing wrong with that. I agree the song was originally intended to be satirical, though, and then veered off course when people started identifying with it. Merle Haggard was hardly a pristine, law-abiding figure and he rarely tried to look like one.
Okie is a derogatory term, but Merle Haggard has every right to use it, as do I. Because our families were part of the Okie migration to California. You can't use it on us as a bad word, but we can use it about ourselves as a term of pride. It's taking back something that was once derogatory and making it our own. My folks moved from Oklahoma and Arkansas to California in the twenties and thirties to pick cotton, which makes them Okies. You were an Okie even if you were from Arkansas, although sometimes they said Arkie too. But my folks were Okies, I'm descended from Okies, and I'm proud of it, and I'll use the term Okie any time I want. Merle Haggard has certainly earned that right himself. He's right from around the same area my folks are from -- Bakersfield, Wasco, etc. He talks like them. He moves like them. He looks like them. We're Okies, and nothing wrong with that. I agree the song was originally intended to be satirical, though, and then veered off course when people started identifying with it. Merle Haggard was hardly a pristine, law-abiding figure and he rarely tried to look like one.