Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bol Bomb. Here across the globe, language and history
Speaker 1: are inevitably intertwined. Linguistic origins are borrowed and transformed, and
Speaker 1: as society changes, new words or phrases are created to
Speaker 1: reflect the current cultural understanding. Some phrases and words simply
Speaker 1: morph into accepted usage, their origins forgotten or conveniently misplaced.
Speaker 1: One such phrase, grandfathered in, has become common shorthand to
Speaker 1: mean that someone is exempt from following new rules or regulations.
Speaker 1: Although it may evoke the image of a gray haired
Speaker 1: gentleman let off the hook because of his age, the
Speaker 1: term arose from something far less innocent. A deeper look
Speaker 1: into the first use of the phrase reveals the political
Speaker 1: and racial climate in the United States during the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth and early twentie centuries. A person or business is
Speaker 1: considered to be grandfathered in when they're exempt from new
Speaker 1: rules and can continue to operate under the existing set
Speaker 1: of regulations, and new rules will then only apply to
Speaker 1: future cases. Today, the term is widely used across various sectors,
Speaker 1: most notably in real estate and health insurance. But when
Speaker 1: the term was first coined in the eighteen nineties, it
Speaker 1: referred to only one thing, voting rights. After the Fifteenth
Speaker 1: Amendment was ratified to the U. S Constitution in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: thus banning the infringement on a citizen's right to vote
Speaker 1: on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Speaker 1: Some Southern states did not readily accept the ruling. Instead,
Speaker 1: they carefully crafted amendments on the state level that circumvented
Speaker 1: the federal decree in an attempt to prevent black Americans
Speaker 1: from accessing polling stations. Since the basis of race could
Speaker 1: no longer be used, the state amendments imposed things like
Speaker 1: poll taxes and literacy tests. These limits were powerful. Close
Speaker 1: to of all voting age men were illiterate, a majority
Speaker 1: of whom were poor black men. But those taxes and
Speaker 1: tests would also affect poor, illiterate white voters. Thus, a
Speaker 1: grandfather clause was added to allow an illiterate man to
Speaker 1: vote as long as he or his lineal ancestor, that is,
Speaker 1: his grandfather had been a registered voter before eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: which was three years before the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: The clauses suppressed the vote along racial lines, but party
Speaker 1: lines were at play too. At the time, most Black
Speaker 1: Americans were Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, which then
Speaker 1: favored expansive government funded programs, and most whites were Democrats.
Speaker 1: The Democratic Party then favored curbing expansion of government power.
Speaker 1: Suppressing the vote served to keep power in the hands
Speaker 1: of the Democrats. The parties wound up switching their big
Speaker 1: government versus small government ideologies over the next sixty years
Speaker 1: or so, leading to the stance as we see today.
Speaker 1: But that's a different episode. In nineteen fifteen, the state
Speaker 1: amendments and clauses were ruled nationally unconstitutional, but the poll
Speaker 1: taxes weren't eliminated nationally until the adoption of the Amendment
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, and on the state level in
Speaker 1: ninety six with the Supreme Court's decision in Harper versus
Speaker 1: the Virginia Board of Elections that meant decades of continued
Speaker 1: voter suppression. The phrase grandfathered in is widely used today
Speaker 1: without the connotation of disenfranchisement. But even as culture shifts,
Speaker 1: whether we're aware of it or not, language holds the
Speaker 1: power of our history, positive and negative. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by Katie Carmen and produced by Tyler Clang. For
Speaker 1: more in this and lots of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio.
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.