Asclepias
Diamond Member
No I dont want to ban the word. I call myself Black. I was pointing out that using Black to describe a negative experience is racist in its concept. It feeds into the subconscious of everyone that uses the words.Of course they have a connection with Black people. When that same term is used to describe someone the subconscious does not do a switch. Read the posted article I linked.You forgot blackball. blacklist, "black as sin", blackmail, black monday, black day, black eye, black sheep, black look. black mark, black mood, blackface.
Interesting article.
A rose by any other name The consequences of subtyping African-Americans from Blacks
The majority of these terms have nothing to do with black people.
Blackballing is a rejection in a traditional form of secret ballot, where a white ball or ballot constitutes a vote in support and a black ball signifies opposition.[1] This system is typically used where a club's rules provide that one or two objections, rather than an at-least-50% share of votes, are sufficient to defeat a proposition. Since the seventeenth century, these rules have commonly applied to elections to membership of many gentlemen's clubs and similar institutions such as Freemasonry and fraternities.
A blacklist (or black list) is a list or register of entities or people who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle.
blackmail Sixteenth-century Scottish farmers paid their rent, or mail, to English absentee landlords in the form of white mail, silver money, or black mail, rent in the form of livestock or produce. The term black mail took on a bad connotation only when greedy landlords forced cashless tenants to pay much more in goods than they would have paid in silver. Later, when freebooters along the border demanded payment for free passage and "protection," the poor farmers called this illegal extortion blackmail, too.
In finance, Black Monday refers to Monday, October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed, shedding a huge value in a very short time. The crash began in Hong Kong and spread west to Europe, hitting the United States after other markets had already declined by a significant margin. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped by 508 points to 1738.74 (22.61%).[1] In Australia and New Zealand the 1987 crash is also referred to as Black Tuesday because of the timezone difference.
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Black sheep' is rather an odd phrase to choose to epitomise worthlessness. Why sheep? Badgers, dolphins, pandas and penguins, which are all primarily black, are considered cute. First thoughts might suggest that it came about because of the linking of black things with bad things, which is a long standing allusion in English texts - black mood, black looks or (where I come from) the Black Country. It may also be because shepherds disliked black sheep as their fleeces weren't suitable for dying and so were worth less than those of white sheep.
In fact, it is more likely to have derived from a bit of misinterpretation by the writers of early English Bibles. Myles Coverdale's 1535 Bible, which was the first complete bible printed in English, renders Genesis 30:32 as:
‘All blacke shepe amonge the lambes’ which Coverdale had translated from a German source text.
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Blackface is the only term that has any connection to black people.
So, now you want to ban use of the word black for anything with a negative connotation? Good luck with that, Skippy. In general, you and I are often in agreement, but I find this argument pretty stupid.