I never heard the term"geechie" before this movie. anyone know what it means? where it comes from?
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I am from the south and when I was growing up the term Geechie was a derrogity slang in refernce to a dumb southern negro with French annessoarys. I only remember the black people in my community using the term.
shareA geech is an African American who attempts to please the "white man" by dancing, singing, and/or acting in an ignorant way.
Remember when the dude was like, "Momma say I got crow's blood"; and all of the whites laughed. That is a damn geech. People like that are ridiculous, making Sarge's point relevant. They should not be in places of authority, because their behavior may become expected of black men.
The Day of the Geechie is Over! - Martin Lawrence
GuyTwisted..I'm not sure I like sharing part of a name with you....
"Thus began our longest journey together." To Kill a Mockingbird
@BoneDoctor
No, that's not what the term means---look at the next-to-last post on this thread. Just saw this flick again, and basically in a nutshell, the Sgt. was a straight-up a**hole. I could see if the young Geechee soldier was a hateful person, but he wasn't. He was clearly one of the nicest guys in the whole unit, and Sarge had no right to take his own self-hatred issues out on him at all. If he could have treated the soldiers with respect and tried to teach them to do better for themselves, he would have been more successful. Instead, he was a mean, nasty, hateful bully who treated his men just as bad as the white men did. No wonder everyone hated him.
And the young soldier was just acting like the innocent country boy he was----he wasn't trying to be some stereotype---that was simply just how he acted. The Sarge was just being an arrogant d*** who thought he was automatically better because he was in a position of authority over a bunch of people,and because white folks had put him in charge. Very good film (probably the first one I saw a then-unknown Denzel Washington in) and it did get a lot of weil-deserved praise in its time.
I had the same question when I saw "Uptown Saturday Night". The character was called Geechie Dan Beauford (Harry Belafonte) but he didnt like to be called Geechie Dan to his face. This was back in the 70's and my Grandfather told me about the same as the first reply.
shareSooooo. Would like Steppin Fetchitt be like in the "Geechee Hall of Fame?"
shareIve heard it used to mean a dumb country negro, also as a derogatory slang towards west indian immigrants, as well as to refer to the gullahs.
shareGeechie commonly refers to a person of white descent whose family has long roots in the South Carolina lowcountry, mostly between Beaufort and Georgetown; centered around Charleston. They speak "Geechie" which is a heavily accented dialect of English with Gullah influences.
Geechie is a term used to refer to an ethnic people who are part black and part Native American from South Carolina/coastal area. It has Native American origins. I have relatives that are Geechie (with strong Native features) and the term has always been used in a positive way. This is the first time I've ever heard it was used otherwise. I've never seen this movie either. I'm not from the south, so maybe they developed a negative connotation somewhere in the southern regions.
Whatever Lola Wants, Lola gets...
Old question, but all of the answers are wrong. Geechee is another term for Gullah. The Gullah/Geechee people are African Americans who are from the coastal areas of the Carolinas and Georgia (the Sea Islands). These African Americans were brought here from the Senegambia area of West Africa to work primarily as rice cultivators. Because the ancestors of these folks all came from the same region, they shared common language and culture. Additionally, these were areas that had low white populations. The result is a transplanted culture that was given quite a lot of room to grow. Today, the Gullah/Geechee people share a common language/dialect (Gullah). Within popular culture, the term Geechee has been used to refer to rural African Americans, probably due to the connotations of the Gullah/Geechee being a rural, insular group.
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