When Racism Slips Into Everyday Speech

[DirkGently]

48. That's not the consensus on "peanut gallery."

It comes from vaudeville, and although there is some basis to connect it to segregation, that is not the consensus opinion.

Those who typically inhabited the cheap seats were known to be rowdy, and free with their constructive criticism of the show, which would often be expressed in physical terms – such as by throwing anything conveniently at hand. As peanuts were a common concession snack for vaudeville shows, unpopular performers would often find themselves pelted with the easy-to-hurl, edible projectiles, not unlike The Beatles during their 1964 U.S. tour. (See: When the Beatles Were Pelted with Jelly Beans)

Others disagree, in part, with the preceding class-based, rather than racial, claim. They note that in the past, cheap balcony seats were often reserved for, or largely made up of, African American patrons. Thus, since the phrase implies that the opinions expressed by those from the gallery were unsolicited, unwarranted and unhelpful, the phrase also connotes something negative about those giving them, purported to be African Americans.

That said, the Online Etymology Dictionary remains agnostic, as does the Oxford English Dictionary and most etymologists, on whether it truly originally had anything to do with race instead of simply a reference to social class, in this case referring to poor people in general inhabiting these cheap seats. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the expression “peanut gallery” to 1874, while the Oxford English Dictionary notes that it was recorded as early as 1876, in the Placerville, California Mountain Democrat, where the writer intoned, “as a bid for applause from the political pit and peanut gallery it was a masterpiece.”

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/03/origin-phrase-peanut-gallery/

Also, blame Howdy Doody and Charlie Brown:

But the fact that “peanut gallery” is still part of our common vocabulary is almost certainly due to the Howdy Doody Show, an immensely popular children’s TV show in the 1950s. Howdy Doody (a marionette), Buffalo Bob (who provided Howdy’s voice), Clarabell the Clown, Princess Summerfall Winterspring and the rest of the cast performed with a studio audience of children seated in bleachers known as “the Peanut Gallery.”

Incidentally, so popular was “Howdy Doody” and his “Peanut Gallery” among a generation of children that in 1950, when United Features decided to syndicate Charles Schulz’s comic strip, then known as “Li’l Folk,” they insisted, over Schulz’s vigorous objections, on changing its name to “Peanuts.”

http://www.word-detective.com/2009/07/peanut-gallery/

I saw someone on some site also claiming the other day that "Hush Puppies" also has a dark racial origin, in that runaway slaves supposedly threw them to pursuing hounds. There is no evidence to support that is actually the case either.