"The jig is up" is only racist in the minds of the terminally offended. The term is ELIZABETHAN in origin, and existed hundreds of years before the Klan started hanging people. The claim that "jig" = "nig" is an Internet invention. "Jig" is simply an old English word for "joke". The word "jig" is literally just a heavily regionally accented version of "joke" ("joke" became "jick", pronounced like Rick, which eventually became "jig"
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Peanut gallery comes from the vaudeville days. This is one of those claims that includes just enough truth to make it believable. The top galleries in early theaters were the cheapest seats in the house, but they were NOT just for black people. Many theaters DID have segregated peanut galleries, but that typically just meant that they split their peanut galleries into white sections and black sections. The peanut galleries themselves were heavily used by the poor of ALL races. And the reference to peanuts? That has nothing to do with black people. Peanuts were cheaper than popcorn back in the day, so peanuts were the snack of choice among poor theatergoers. Since it was once considered socially acceptable to pelt the stage with food if the performers were terrible, a bad show would often lead to a rain of peanuts falling on the stage and other theatergoers below.
"Spade a spade". Even the author admits that this term has been around for over 500 years, and is a reference to the card. There is no connection AT ALL between the term and racism. Unless she's advocating that we rename the card and the digging implement as well, and ban the entire word from the English language, I'm not quite sure what her point is with this one.
"Spook" is an ancient germanic word that simply means "ghost". Hell, it still exists in German today as "spuk", in Dutch as "spook", in Norweigian as "spjok" and in a bunch of other languages as well. It was introduced into English more than a thousand years ago, and has NOTHING to do with racism or black people.
Basically, the original articles author is an uneducated idiot who is spreading Internet discussion board memes as if they were fact.
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