Talk:bulldoze

RFV discussion: April–May 2022

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bulldoze

Rfv-sense: To intimidate; to restrain or coerce by intimidation or violence - the referenced article no longer exists Xealfurl (talk) 20:48, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

There’s a lot of evidence on GoogleBooks of the word being used this way, ever since the American elections of 1876 where former slaves where violently intimidated by splinter groups from the KKK, especially in parts of Louisiana where they were such organisations were apparently called white caps or white liners. The following links support the claim that bulldoze can mean intimidate, I’ve chosen them either as they’re the earliest quotes to be found or they’re early quotes that explicitly favour the theory that the word stems from the literal use of a bull whip to intimidate black voters into not voting or voting Democrat (though it soon came to mean using a whip to get them to sell houses and land cheaply to whites and just to intimidate more generally):-[1],[2],[3] and [4]. There is a rival theory that a ‘bull-dose’ was simply a strong dose of punishment in the same way that a ‘bull fence’ is a strong fence, however (see[5]) Overlordnat1 (talk) 01:12, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Cited. Overlordnat1 (talk) 13:44, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

RFV-passed - excellent cites, nicely done. This, that and the other (talk) 13:37, 5 May 2022 (UTC)