Have heard the term "cotton picking" my whole life as in "out of your cotton picking mind" or "wipe your cotton picking feet" before you come in the house. Never once associated it with being a racial slur. Is it because the slaves and more recently migrant workers who worked the cotton fields were black that we now associate picking cotton with blackness? Is anything significantly associated with blacks now going to be the basis for a racial slur? Really? Is everybody out of their basketball playing minds?
