Learn English – Is the term “halfcast” racist

The word is spelled gobbledygook and does not have racist origins (although they are fowl). Here is the etymology:

also gobbledegook, "the overinvolved, pompous talk of officialdom" [Klein], 1944, Amer.Eng., first used by U.S. Rep. Maury Maverick, D.-Texas, (1895-1954), a grandson of the original maverick and chairman of U.S. Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II. First used in a memo dated March 30, 1944, banning "gobbledygook language" and mock-threateaning, "anyone using the words activation or implementation will be shot." Maverick said he made up the word in imitation of turkey noise. Another word for it, coined about the same time, was bafflegab (1952).

Edit: As JLG says, "Wikipedia's entry is pretty good, too.

Gobbledygook or gobbledegook (sometimes gobbledegoo) is any text containing jargon or especially convoluted English that results in it being excessively hard to understand or even incomprehensible. "Bureaucratese" is one form of gobbledygook.

There are two distinct and opposite cases. One is that incomprehensible material is actual gibberish. In the other some abstruse material is either ineptly presented or is subjectively perceived to be gibberish due to a lack of preparation.

I don't think any of our answers are helpful. The unfortunate fact is that if you want to capture an era, you have to steep yourself in that era. The only way to do that is to read widely and deeply -- Faulkner and Angelou and Baldwin and even (gasp!) Mitchell (inheritors of that era) and some diaries from that era. There is one in particular that I read a review of, or a comment about, recently -- it was called something like "Diary of a Charleston Lady", but you should get the more recent, unedited version -- the earlier version was extensively edited (whitewashed ?) according to the review or comment, and thus was far politer than the original. According to the review/comment, present day Charlestonians love the edited version, but not the unexpurgated version. Sorry not to give you a detailed reference, but I just don't have it.