Unit 4: The Tipping Point. (A little bit of history about the term)
The Racist Origins of 'Tipping Point'???
Tipping point, which we define as “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place,” has achieved a certain degree of cultural ubiquity or common use in everyday speech. This may be attributed to the enormous success of Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point, published in 2000. Though tipping point is now often used to describe a wide variety of cultural and sociological phenomena, it had a curiously specific, and quite troubling, meaning when it first became popular as a figurative phrase in the late 1950s.
Today, 'tipping point' is most often used to mean “a critical juncture at which unstoppable change takes place."
What brought “tipping point” into the general vocabulary? Was there a best-selling book that neatly encapsulated a number of psychological theories about human nature? A catchy pop song that contained a line about “the tipping-point of my heart?” Did some doughty politician make an impassioned speech about the Cold War that referenced some imaginary tipping point? No. The actual origins are considerably less pleasant than any of these scenarios.
When tipping point became popular in the middle of the 20th century, it had already existed in English for a long time as a literal phrase meaning "the point at which a thing would begin to tip over". However, when tipping point first began to be employed in general use, it was almost entirely in reference to the propensity of white families to move out of an area when a certain percentage of the neighborhood was composed of black families. It served as a precursor of sorts to the phenomenon of white flight, which is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse.
Tipping point, which we define as “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place,” has achieved a certain degree of cultural ubiquity or common use in everyday speech. This may be attributed to the enormous success of Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point, published in 2000. Though tipping point is now often used to describe a wide variety of cultural and sociological phenomena, it had a curiously specific, and quite troubling, meaning when it first became popular as a figurative phrase in the late 1950s.
Today, 'tipping point' is most often used to mean “a critical juncture at which unstoppable change takes place."
What brought “tipping point” into the general vocabulary? Was there a best-selling book that neatly encapsulated a number of psychological theories about human nature? A catchy pop song that contained a line about “the tipping-point of my heart?” Did some doughty politician make an impassioned speech about the Cold War that referenced some imaginary tipping point? No. The actual origins are considerably less pleasant than any of these scenarios.
When tipping point became popular in the middle of the 20th century, it had already existed in English for a long time as a literal phrase meaning "the point at which a thing would begin to tip over". However, when tipping point first began to be employed in general use, it was almost entirely in reference to the propensity of white families to move out of an area when a certain percentage of the neighborhood was composed of black families. It served as a precursor of sorts to the phenomenon of white flight, which is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse.
References:
Wikipedia: The tipping point / White Flight.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary: Tipping point.
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