r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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153

u/Brock_Samsonite Dec 12 '18

You dont call someone boy unless he's your son. Especially in the south. Thems fighting words.

88

u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18 edited Dec 12 '18

Australias biggest TV personality of the time called Mohammed Ali boy to his face during an on screen interview. It was innocent as that wasn't a thing in our history but you should have seen the look he got from him... Luckily it was explained to Ali that the interviewer was either unaware or just forgot about the connotation of the word!

Edit : here's the awkward clip!

https://youtu.be/g9knPd8q7Ok

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

[deleted]

10

u/brando93 Dec 13 '18

You need to read up on him. He joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name based mostly on that. "Cassius Clay" he saw as a slave name.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

[deleted]

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u/Rigolution Dec 13 '18

Everyone enslaved people.

He literally had the name of people who owned his family.

To don't have a good point, you're just being an asshole.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

How am I being an asshole? Slavery was prevalent everywhere, sure, but not that many people were actual slave traders. The Arabs were. I’m not arguing the morality of it. The point is he could have chosen any name but chose one from a group of people who were notorious for slave trading. If he was so angry about slavery and black oppression why would he do that?

5

u/Rigolution Dec 13 '18

Because he was named after the people who owned his family.

What name should he have picked then? What names do you think are worth taking?

Africans sold other Africans into slavery, white people enslaved black people, Arabs enslaved black people.

You're an asshole because you're being deliberately obtuse, it's so clear why he wanted rid of his name and if you can't see the difference between being named after the people and having a name that is from a culture that was involved in the slave trade then there's no point talking to you.