Referring to people as "black" in the USA

I was listening to a (US-produced) podcast recently, with a panel of guests talking about tech news. One of the guests was British, the rest American. It was recorded in the week after Obama's inauguration. The British guy, Wil Harris, interjected at one point to say "So guys, I hate to point out the obvious, but wasn't there something that happened this week that may have a huge effect on the tech industry for the next four years or so, maybe..?". After some joshing around about waht he might possibly be referring to, he finished his elephant-in-the-room routine with "Some black dude...?". At which point there were embarrassed noises from the others and the host said "We don't say that any more, Wil".

Harris's rhetorical humour, such as it was, obviously lay in referring the new US president in such off-hand terms, but seemingly his choice of words was beyond the pale. Is the word "black" itself the cause of the embarrassment? In the UK, "black" isn't seen as derogatory, whether it's used by white or black people. I know most Americans prefer "African-American" these days, but wasn't aware that "black" had become quite so off-limits. Or was it the fact that it was used in conjuction with "dude"? Or was this panel just atypically oversensitive?

If you want to hear it, it's at 16'40" of the mp3 at http://twit.tv/179

no, people still say "black". what they don't do is reduce the elected president of the US down to "some black dude".

I know most Americans prefer "African-American" these days

I wouldn't agree with this.

Black is fine. I think the embarrassment was more about that being the sole identifier. People often also use African-American, which is more politically correct than black, but the word black itself is not pejorative.

The diminution was purposefully ironic. Oversensitive panel.

surely it was the reduction of obama to his race that was offensive. as well as the casual disrespect of the phrase.

what akm and Maria said (esp. akm) (and Tracer)

OH MY GOD JUST BOMB ENGLAND ALREADY FFS THIS IS AN OUTRAGE

no, people still say "black". what they don't do is reduce the elected president of the US down to "some black dude".

― akm, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 2:30 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^yeah exactly. tbh this seems obvious to me, i'd have flinched a little if someone said "some black dude" to me, and i'm sick of british people pretending they don't know what words are appropriate or not when it comes to race.

RACISM CONTROVERSY STAN STAN STAN BACON BACON BACON OK SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

Yes, god forbid Alba ask such a question.

what they don't do is reduce the elected president of the US down to "some black dude".

― akm, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 2:30 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bit po-faced imo.

just tryin to speed things along!

fuck any country that ciara doesnt come from imo

"Wasn't there some jerk who said something about the Jews awhile back? Some short German dude"

bit po-faced imo.

― Ecstasy Mother Forster (special guest stars mark bronson), Wednesday, 11 February 2009 14:38 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

C'mon, it was The President of The United States of America this dude was bad mouthing.

i'm sick of british people pretending they don't know what words are appropriate or not when it comes to race.

I know what you mean, and I hesitated to ask the question. I was genuinely surprised by the reaction on the podcast and was interested in unpicking it.

From the sounds of it, it says more about American's deference to their leader, compared with the UK's. As Tracer said, it was a purposely ironic reductiveness, but perhaps it was an irony that came too easily to Harris's lips.

What slightly undermines that reading is the host's "we don't say that any more" reply, as if it was outdated terminology that offended him.

Can we get Marcello in here for his definitiv judgement plz.

srsly I will lock this thread when that happens

C'mon, it was The President of The United States of America this dude was bad mouthing.

HE LIKES SPIDER MAN FFS

tech industry? i don't get that bit

Obama's infrastructure plans involve dramatically boosting things like wireless broadband coverage in the US and getting everyone hooked into the Internet.

I wonder if the panelists were particularly uncomfortable with a British guy making a joke about Obama's race, as innocuous as it might have been. Since non-Americans aren't as acutely aware of how race operates in the U.S., it may be harder to tell what kind of implications, if any, such jokes carry. In other words, I don't think it was "deference to their leader" as much as protectiveness over the precarious racial dynamics involved in this country and specifically in Obama's election.

Yeah, his tech agenda has been a regular topic on TWIT.

x-post

Does 'african-american' include white africans or those from north africa? Does it include black people from the carribean? it's to make this distinction why black british is considered acceptable.

is he really called 'wil' not 'will'?

bit suspect.

xpost

'making a joke about obama's race'??

Yeah, jay, that sounds right to me.

'making a joke about obama's race'??

― Ecstasy Mother Forster (special guest stars mark bronson), Wednesday, 11 February 2009 14:46 (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah will you please stop it.

A joke involving Obama's race, I guess jay means.

I'm sorry, I said "purposefully" when I meant to say "purposely". I hope no one here is offended.

xpost Yes.

xpost that british white dude?

"white, black, Asian..."

still bothers me, maybe more and more

"some mixed race dude"

"black" in the USA

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61H82xJ0btL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

i'm still misunderstanding the joke somehow. what does obama's race have to do with his plans for spending on broadband infrastructure? sorry to sound like a dumshit.

Wil Harris included "black" because his joke was that the person in question was so obscure that an identifier like that was necessary.

"some secretly muslim dude"

Oh wait, now that I've done a GIS I get it. Harris is white. Yeah that doesn't help.

fyi britishes and various assembled foreigners african american is a term used primarily in the public sphere - in every day conversation regardless of the speakers race 95% of the time theyll say black - tho def african american is gaining in popularity - too bad imo its super clumsy clinical term - tho i guess that weve devised no ordinary sane way to refer to race shouldnt come as any surprise

Wil Harris included "black" because his joke was that the person in question was so obscure that an identifier like that was necessary.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 3:03 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark

Yeah, Harris was just putting on a little jokey routine: "Hey guys I think we're forgetting something here ... something big that happened this week ... involving, oh I dunno, some black dude ...?" He could've just as easily said, "some guy whose name rhymes with 'Marack Momama.'"

too bad imo its super clumsy clinical term

yeah it's just too long/too many syllables

And it can be somewhat inaccurate as well.

Have noticed lately that R Maddow refers to people in the news as "African-American", and her African-American guests refer to the same people as "black". FWIW

yeah whoever said that 'black' is ok if it's not purposely reductive was otm

gave me a good some dude pun username at least

quick on the draw

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20258442,00.html?xid=rss-topheadlines

(now I'm just baiting Marcello)

Personally I think they were just embarassed to see a British guy use the word 'dude' in front of them.

i feel u m-dog

In the UK, "black" isn't seen as derogatory, whether it's used by white or black people.

It's not exactly as if Britons of African or Carribean extraction could be called African-Americans.

Also, quibbling over nomenclature instead of seeking redress of real, concrete grievances (or say, electing a black president, I dunno) always seems such 70's style, feckless academic, shit-stirring, self righteousness to me.

Yes. I hope that's not what I was doing.

Perhaps the Americans on the panel were just excited at officially becoming a non-racist country a week previously?

Personally I think they were just embarassed to see a British guy use the word 'dude' in front of them.

Anyway, ^^^ this.

I vaguely recall a very probably made-up anecdote about an American referring to a British black person, not wanting to be politically incorrect, as a British African-American.

Googling suggests this actually did happen during an interview with Kriss Akabusi.

Lol

african-britishes

It's not as if people are going to go around and refer to me as a 'European American' or something. If you call me white, you're pointing out something descriptive about my appearance. If you call me American, you're pointing out something about my nationality. These are not the same thing. Once the hatred and spite about race (or whatever category) are removed, you're just left with what-should-be neutral adjectives; white, male, American (I usually prefer Californian), hetero, dork...

Having actually listened to that excerpt I think the "we don't say that any more" wasn't meant entirely seriously either. Especially as it was followed up with "you'll start another war between us".

yeah continent-based categorisation actually seems worse than race/colour-based, ultimately xp

"black" is ok in the usa but you have to look around furtively and half-whisper it

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,380 for "we are all african americans"

i only refer to black dudes as "black in the usa"

black-in-the-usa

Let's be honest. What's convenient about 'black' is that it's monosyllabic. Can you imagine what Colin Powell could be described as? Carribean African-American. Or the President? African African-American or Kenyan-American. The new PC term should be something like 'Afro' or something short.

Worst Springsteen cover ever.

well afro-amercian was the previous pc term until people were all thats a haircut

yeah well what if it was WHITE AFRICAN dude!? did i just blow your mind?!??!

not as much as the guy who said that 20 posts ago

what if it was a BLACK AMERICAN?

I do sometimes use African-American specifically to describe people who are descendants of slaves brought over during the 17th-19th centuries. They form a diverse but recognizable American subculture Calling my friend, Tunde, 'African-American' instead of just saying that he moved here from Nigeria seems weird to me.

Blamerican

Didn't Kerry's wife get into a little trouble in '04 for referring to herself as African-American?

i would call him Tunde

john kerry is married to a black american, tunde from tv on the radio

i dont think anybody gives 2 shits if you say black unless you use it like a noun (this bugs me too) - stuff like the ajc headline "CDC: Young Blacks unaware of AIDS risk" wtf is that

how would u reword that headline

'Young black dudes unaware of AIDS risk"

"I once knew a terrifically bright young black named Louis"

CDC: WTF, AIDS risks? LOL

I tried to persuade our editor to take "blacks" out of a headline once, though I suppose it is handy.

what was the headline?

"I once knew a terrifically bright young black named Louis"

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 11 February 2009 15:37 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Jagger's black?

I always thought it was kind of cool when guys use "Black" as a proper name, like "Yo, Black" - I could never say this of course. :(

what was the headline?

Was it corrected to:

New Zealand All-Afican-Americans defeats France?

Outdoor-Activity Chain In Financial Trouble

aways makes me think of p on temperatures risin - "what up black? hold ya head wherever you at"

Ha - no, though just raking through our archive to find it was hard with all the "All Blacks" there.

It was: "Army strategy to recruit blacks and Asians"

s r-c's mom to thread

i dont think anybody gives 2 shits if you say black unless you use it like a noun (this bugs me too) - stuff like the ajc headline "CDC: Young Blacks unaware of AIDS risk" wtf is that

― and what, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:35 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you see this less and less and basically no one uses the word like that spoken anymore (same thing with "gays" and to some extent "jews" weirdly enough) but im not sure theres any specific history associated with that kind of usage that would automatically make it forbidden

I personally use the terms in formal and informal language. If I'm sitting here, typing out a story about Jackie Robinson integrating Major League Baseball, I'm going to call him the first African-American baseball player in the majors. Certainly not "some black dude".

But, around friends or you assholes, I'm not going to say something like, "Whoa, would smash the African-American girl on the left, knowwhatimean?"

And Sammy Sosa is Latino.

Wait max, so if Lenny Kravits comes out of the closet what am I supposed to call him?

xpost

Wait max, so if Lenny Kravits comes out of the closet what am I supposed to call him?

"untalented douchebag" will suffice.

I always thought it was kind of cool when guys use "Black" as a proper name, like "Yo, Black"

I already say, "Hey, Irish" so it could work.

Jack: Well, well, well Lemon. Steven’s a good man; he’s on partner track at Dewey, and he’s a Black.
Liz: A black?!? That is offensive.
Jack: No, no, that’s his last name: Steven Black. Great family.
Liz: Oh, yeah, of course.
Jack: They’re remarkable people, the Blacks; musical, very athletic, not very good swimmers. Again, I’m talking about the family. Black is African American, though.

harrr

It's odd that you can still say Frenchman or Englishman but you can't say Chinaman and that black or jew are frowned upon. Even as we try to clean up our language, the heritage of racism skews everything.

really??????? that's odd to you????????????

language! society! history!

to be fair to michael white he is an old-timey fop

i trust that michael meant odd out of the obvious context

if an alien landed on Earth they would think it odd - think about THAT guys

o he's 150 years old isn't he

what would we call him?!?!? an ALIEN AMERICAN?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!!!!!

martian man

im not sure theres any specific history associated with that kind of usage that would automatically make it forbidden

with "gays" and "jews" your making a noun out of practices and beliefs, respectively (though kinda ethnicity too with "jews") - with "blacks" you're making a noun out of nothing more than skin color - which echoes the more subtle social operation of bigotry in that it takes an adjective and turns it into the whole person

we'd all have trouble telling the aliens apart from one another

i get that tracer my point is that language taboos tend to have specific usage histories associated with them, not necc. lines of semantic reasoning vis-a-vis humanity

with "gays" and "jews" your making a noun out of practices and beliefs, respectively (though kinda ethnicity too with "jews") - with "blacks" you're making a noun out of nothing more than skin color - which echoes the more subtle social operation of bigotry in that it takes an adjective and turns it into the whole person

i think they're all equally bad.

wait no i didn't mean it like that.

Whether being gay is strictly a practice rather than a fundamental condition of being is, I guess, still up for debate. In some parts.

I'm all in favor of certain people having their own, you know, lifestyle, but...why did they have to take the word "gay"? It's such a lovely word! They've...they've robbed the English language of a beautiful word. I...they have. I mean, now if I say to one of my friends, or one of my friends asks me, "How is your son or daughter feeling?", and I say "Oh, they're feeling gay"...it's a scandal. I've had to stop using the word altogether. Oh. So they've taken "gay" away from us. What was wrong with "pervert"?

And you can't use the word "faggot" anymore either, you...it used to be a lovely bundle of sticks. On cold winters' nights you'd throw another faggot on the fire. But now they work in restaurants, making your salads, being snotty and still expecting fifteen percent.

"Cunnilingus"? My grandfather drove one across America. With pride. He bought the first one off the lot in 1923. Oh, but now they're all gone, forgotten - the Cunnilingus, the Rambler. Oh. I suppose "Rambler" means something filthy now too, does it, does it mean something...?

Can't use the word "fisting" anymore either, oh no. No, no. But back in the forties the girls and I used to fist every Sunday afternoon. It was a knitting stitch, and a very difficult one. I made a lovely yellow afghan full of tiny, intricate fistings, that won a, that won a grand prize at a, at a jamboree. Yeah. Gave up knitting altogether, though, in 1979, finally found out what the word meant, oh no. No, no. I took that afghan with all that lovely fisting and put it up the poop-hole. Oh, that's, that's what we used to call attic. Now they're all gone, locked away, like those beautiful words.

Well, I guess I'm just supposed to fade away, in silence...or be modern and accept it. Fine. I guess I'll just have a Fuck Off. Oh, that used to be a summer drink, you know.

the euqiv would be 'englandman', 'franceman'.

with "blacks" you're making a noun out of nothing more than skin color - which echoes the more subtle social operation of bigotry in that it takes an adjective and turns it into the whole person

this is more difficult. we are not reducing someone to their nationality by calling them 'an indian'.

they prefer native american

America for the Americans imo

It's odd that you can still say Frenchman or Englishman but you can't say Chinaman

franceman and englandman?

xp obv

we're not talking about a guy who built the railroad here

I wish my last thread had been this popular.

franceman and englandman?

Good point. Does anybody think of the 'man' part of German as actually referring to a person? "What kind of man? A Ger-man."

Referring to a group of people as "blacks" (or "gays" or "Jews") doesn't seem quite as offensive as referring to an individual as "a black."

i get that tracer my point is that language taboos tend to have specific usage histories associated with them, not necc. lines of semantic reasoning vis-a-vis humanity

yeah i'm saying that the specific usage history of "blacks" as a noun coincides with some pretty ugly shit

What irks me is that people of mixed race are often referred to as "black" as if it's some sort of special genetic dye that pervades the entire being; taken to extremes, Australian cricketer Jason Gillespie is often called "the first Aboriginal to play for Australia"; he is 1/32 Aboriginal. Obama is the first man of black heritage to be US President, which should be rightfully celebrated, as Gillespie's inclusion was amongst the Aboriginal community, but an equally great cause for celebration is surely that he's also the first man of both black AND white heritage to be US President? I myself am arguably mixed-race (Anglo-Saxon and Arab), and I regard all such cases not as straight-up black/white absolutes but as glorious shades of in-between, a sign that the world really isn't made up of opposites. If we're defining people racially (which I don't like doing, although I have gotten into trouble on ILX about this before, and I do appreciate the momentousness and necessity of Obama's appointment), then their entire heritage should be taken into account.

Hopefully the in-house Americans won't take my entirely reasonable point and make me out to be some sort of moronic demon, but hopefully argue it with similar reason. I think it's almost tacitly racist in itself to describe someone of (especially half-and-half) mixed-race as "black"; it implies that "white" is some sort of default that must be worked against, and that black is the additional, subordinate qualifier placed atop the white template. Like I say though, so many shades of grey. If someone's obviously descended largely from a certain racial type then I can understand the labelling, but to tell the truth I'm uncomfortable with any racial qualification unless it's invoked to fight against racism or prejudice.

ooooh boy.

here we go.

Obama is the first man of black heritage to be US President, which should be rightfully celebrated, as Gillespie's inclusion was amongst the Aboriginal community, but an equally great cause for celebration is surely that he's also the first man of both black AND white heritage to be US President?

― Robin van Injury (country matters), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 11:04 AM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why the fascination, if it happens it happens

i'm reminded of the courtroom scene in "A Matter Of Life And Death" aka "Stairway To Heaven", they're all Americans no matter what their ethnic ancestry, who gives a fuck about firsts

― Just got offed, Monday, June 16, 2008 3:25 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

gk cyp is Arab now?

so guys what new screenname should i take away from this thread

tbh "long LJ post on race thread" hasn't been particularly propitious grounds for optimism before, but this is the year of CHANGE

Ethan, I learned my lesson from that azn prez thread, and realised quite how amazing it is that Obama could have been elected in a country with such a history of anti-black racism :)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JrfK88zf8HQ/SOp1CjSEl4I/AAAAAAAAAbE/imhCFisJRoI/s320/Lets_Get_This_Party_Started.gif

I think it's almost tacitly racist in itself to describe someone of (especially half-and-half) mixed-race as "black"; it implies that "white" is some sort of default that must be worked against, and that black is the additional, subordinate qualifier placed atop the white template.

you know what else?? why isnt there a national association for the advancement of WHITE people???

We seem to prefer adjectives in modern parlance to nouns. It feels less reductive, I suppose.

Country matters, if I refer to somone as black or white or dark-skinned or Asian or whatever, it's almost invariably because there's an actual need to differentiate between two or more people ("Which Patrick? The black dude.") and while I thoroughly understand your discomfort, I feel that suing these descriptives is just more efficient; the racism is conceivably in the ears of the hearer.

oh maxpaws ...

watching a clusterfuck thread is like watching storm clouds gather and just know they're gonna merge and form a tornado and destroy the fuck out of that trailer park

LJ: The One-Drop Rule

beat u to it ship

you know what else?? why isnt there a national association for the advancement of WHITE people???

unless it's invoked to fight against racism or prejudice.

― Robin van Injury (country matters), Wednesday, 11 February 2009 16:04 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

M. White, that's fair in such situations, and it's a slightly different kettle of fish when describing someone's appearance for practical purposes, rather than racial heritage.

ahh ok G00bs, cheers :) shall read

l-jag here is some reading 4 u

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Drop_Rule

saying mixed race folks shouldnt be "black" is like all them limbaugh folks who, now that racism is FINALLY dead, wanna strip away all black business associations and college funds and neighborhoods and history months and blah blah blah - as a white dude you cant deny people a place in mainstream culture for hundreds of years, force them to build their own separate indentity, and then immediately expect total assimilation & disintegration of black idenity once you impulsively decide that o lol wait u guyz are equal to us!!!@

xp

Louis, I think the deal with Obama is that people consider him black because he considers himself as black, and not without reason:

KROFT: You were raised in a white household?

OBAMA: Right.

KROFT: Yet at some point, you decided that you were black?

OBAMA: Well, I'm not sure I decided it. I think if you look African-American in this society, you're treated as an African-American. And when you're a child in particular that is how you begin to identify yourself. At least that's what I felt comfortable identifying myself as.

xpost yep

obama otm!

ah cool, Ethan/Jaymc :)

I think attitudes are a little different here in the UK; it would be interesting to read a good comparison, in fact.

they're not that different really

my dad has referred to black british people he has met as "african americans" - when i called him on it he was genuinely confused for a moment

louis i think this was generally agreed to be a good summary: OMG I WANT THIS AMAZING RONALDINHO BOTTLE OPENER

seriously lj dude just taking your example of obama - so america forcefully bans mixed and non-mixed black dudes from being president for 230 years, through law and predjudice and, shit, threat of lynching, and then once a dude with a black dad finally becomes president you wanna say he's not really black? even though basically everybody now and especially throughout american history considers him black? you wanna count the white half? dont you see how thats kinda shitty?

xposts in that it's v looks-based e.g. all premier league footballers with black fathers and white mothers will generally be referred to as 'black'

except ryan giggs lol

Yeah, Obama OTM -- if you "look black," you're going to get treated as black.

Also:

Obama is the first man of black heritage to be US President, which should be rightfully celebrated . . . but an equally great cause for celebration is surely that he's also the first man of both black AND white heritage to be US President? . . . If we're defining people racially (which I don't like doing, although I have gotten into trouble on ILX about this before, and I do appreciate the momentousness and necessity of Obama's appointment), then their entire heritage should be taken into account.

It's entirely unremarkable for a white guy to get elected president.

anywayz theres lots of mixed race dudes who dont identify as black and dont get called black, like vin diesel or homeboy from prison break

I never get called "mixed-race" or Asian, even when people know I'm half-Parsee. I suppose it's mainly because my pigmentation is pale and so people are entitled to say, "Well, you are white, look at your skin". It's hard to make people see past skin colour when it comes to race and ethnicity, and yeah, there's a neatness about "white" (and to some extent "black") that people who don't identify with either colour don't enjoy.

I wanted to quote from Invisible Man's ten-drops-of-black-makes-the-white-paint-whiter section, but I don't feel like typing it all out, and for those who have read it this reference will suffice.

i am probably the whitest person on this thread. it's over-rated dudes.

Ethan, what I would say is that "Obama is the first man of significant black heritage and indeed black appearance to be US president; he can be said to represent an oppressed people, and also represent the UNITY of black and white". That's probably a bit too long-winded to really stick in the mind, though. I can see how removing some acknowledgement of his blackness would be totally shitty, but that's not what I'm trying to do.

I know it's unremarkable for a white dude to become president, but a dude of BOTH white and black (to significant levels, i.e. half and half)? Moreover, a dude who seems like he'll be a great president? Awesome! Just as awesome as if a dude of entirely black heritage was elected IMO (AND was probably gonna be a great president).

lol dastoor one of my all time fav threads is the one where youre puzzled by an offer to join the association of black british journalists

, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 5:24 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i am probably the whitest person on this thread. it's over-rated dudes.

― O Supermanchiros (blueski), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 5:25 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty sure it's geir or tuomas tbh.

lol your name is Latin for "white" :D

Oh yeah - that's right. Well, it wasn't an invitation - it was the Black Journalist newsletter being sent to me by the NUJ because I had ticked the mixed-race box on their application form.

x-post

tuomas bangs out to hardcore rap ish

iirc

I think if you look African-American in this society, you're treated as an African-American.

This seems so blindlingly obvious.

xp whatever i still lolled

are you zoroastrian like dude from queen?

Well, by ancestry, yes. But my dad's a convert to Christianity.

i am probably the whitest person on this thread. it's over-rated dudes.

And what is my last name? Actually, I'm more pink. :(

one of the interesting philosophical splits ive found in white nationalist/supremacist communities is between pseudoscientific one-drop exclusionism (dudes who refer to scarlett johanson as a "hideous kike mongrel") and other racists who live by "if you act white, look white, talk white and fight for white, you're white", and bro down with skinhead asian and latin dudes no bullshit

Alba, isn't Parsee a cognate of Farsi?

History of slavery often omitted on plantation tours

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/61938.html

"It's a hard thing to talk about, because there's very little good you can say about it," said Belle Long, curator at the Lane House. "It's just awkward. It's such a black period in our history."

(dudes who refer to scarlett johanson as a "hideous kike mongrel")

I wonder what their idea of aryan perfection is.

Oh yeah - that's right. Well, it wasn't an invitation - it was the Black Journalist newsletter being sent to me by the NUJ because I had ticked the mixed-race box on their application form.

ha, i got invited to the NUJ black members' conference the other week.

Vin Diesel is actually pretty amazing/savvy in his creation of an "other" ethnicity for himself and how he's used that to play... well, Italian.

I wonder what their idea of aryan perfection is.

― Nicolars (Nicole), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:31 AM (1 minute ago)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/tx/weekinpictures/media/may_lynndie405.jpg

saying mixed race folks shouldnt be "black" is like all them limbaugh folks who, now that racism is FINALLY dead, wanna strip away all black business associations and college funds and neighborhoods and history months and blah blah blah

it's the same thing as people who always say "oh why do you keep having to bring up RACE all the time, everyone should look past skin colour and surely even noticing race is racist", which is code for "let's sweep all these discomfiting racial implications which white people would never notice under the carpet"

so america forcefully bans mixed and non-mixed black dudes from being president for 230 years, through law and predjudice and, shit, threat of lynching, and then once a dude with a black dad finally becomes president you wanna say he's not really black? even though basically everybody now and especially throughout american history considers him black? you wanna count the white half? dont you see how thats kinda shitty?

― and what

OTM x1000

Michael - the language Farsi could also be called Parsi, I think, but Parsis/Parsees would never be called Farsis.

It's still weird to me that "black" in the UK is synonymous with "person of color" -- I had a weird moment when I was studying there and a TA who was of South Asian heritage off-handedly referred to himself as black.

plus also lex - this thread is full of unexpected OTMs

that is surprising to me xp

unless it was like Do The Right Thing Korean dude joeks

xp to dan you ever see the movie where he talks about that? basically casting directors decide hes not italian enough to play italian but too light to play black

related to what louis said, here's an old nabisco post from when i asked him what times people considered him "black" vs what times people considered him "foreign":

I've been trying, E, and I can't seem to find a short answer to your question that doesn't sound really cynical and negative; it feels like people will often consider you black for negative or self-serving reasons, and consider you "foreign" in a way that is deliberately "exempting" you from being black, usually because you are behaving in a middle-class/educated manner. I will say that how black people think about this stuff can be a lot more individual, and basically revolves around a good detector for whether you think you're approaching as one of the group or not -- but I'm not sure how that'll shape up over the coming years, as we'll surely see black communities in a lot of cities have to sort out relationships with growing African-immigrant communities, lots of whom are going to be Muslims.

― nabisco, Monday, February 11, 2008 3:40 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OBAMA: Well, I'm not sure I decided it. I think if you look African-American in this society, you're treated as an African-American. And when you're a child in particular that is how you begin to identify yourself. At least that's what I felt comfortable identifying myself as.

― Bianca Jagger (jaymc), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 11:15 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

depends on how African-American u look - a lot of bi-racial people get the other vibe from both sides

It's still weird to me that "black" in the UK is synonymous with "person of color" -- I had a weird moment when I was studying there and a TA who was of South Asian heritage off-handedly referred to himself as black.

― Bianca Jagger (jaymc), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 5:35 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is pretty unusual now, though you still have the association of black police officers, etc, which represents all non-white police.

which is why, louis, i was suspicious of your reasoning there - i hear "well he's actually mixed" only when black folks do good, i betcha if obama fucked up marion barry style republicans wouldn't be pointing out how america's first mixed-race president got caught smoking crack

you ever see the movie where he talks about that? basically casting directors decide hes not italian enough to play italian but too light to play black

I haven't seen that but I bet it's interesting! He fascinates me as an actor in that he seems to be one of the few around to have figured out how to make his limited talent work way above and beyond where anyone would expect it to be.

Melcor

actually i guess with obama it's been more of a targeted approach, right-wingers sneering at blacks, liberals and non-racist whites that obama "isnt really black" while sending jpgs of watermelons and fried chicken to their base

It's still weird to me that "black" in the UK is synonymous with "person of color" -- I had a weird moment when I was studying there and a TA who was of South Asian heritage off-handedly referred to himself as black.

You had an atypical experience, jay. People of Asian origin are rarely referred to as black, in my experience. You do sometimes get organisations (like the Association of Black Police Officers) that cover all ethnic minorities, but that doesn't find an analogue in everyday usage.

(aside re Diesel: He's also one of the few who seems to have embraced the Schwarzenegger Path To Fame; I wouldn't be surprised at all if he also ended up in politics.)

xp It's possible that it's an outdated concept (this was 10 years ago), but when I talked to people about it, they made it seem like it wasn't totally uncommon.

Were you talking to aristocrats?

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34052

Okay, so my blackdar is not 100 percent infallible. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, it fails me. Like with Mariah Carey. At first, I was positive she was black, but now I'm not so sure. And that guy on the Yankees, Derek Jeter. I'm pretty on the fence about him, too. But, like I said, that's the rare exception. Almost always, I'll look at a person and immediately know for sure whether they're black, like, say, Jesse Jackson, or not, like Peter Jennings.

xxpost

I agree with Alba - it is pretty atypical, at least in London.

xp It's possible that it's an outdated concept (this was 10 years ago), but when I talked to people about it, they made it seem like it wasn't totally uncommon.

― Bianca Jagger (jaymc), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 5:45 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it seems to have been more normal in the 70s/80s, from what i can tell.

I myself am arguably mixed-race (Anglo-Saxon and Arab)

To be fair to many people, a lot of this stuff, though definitely pretty easily understandable, is based in a specifically American historical and cultural context. I remember nearly blowing my top at a very smart Montenegrin girl (and Oxford PhD) going off about why was everyone making such a big deal about Obama being the first black president when he's half white. He's not even really black, etc. I bit my tongue and carefully explained a lot of obvious American racial history and she got it pretty quickly actually. There's a lot of countries where racial identity is way less important than ethnic/national identity. Like among prejudiced white folks in the former Yugoslavia, "Albanian" is a pretty charged epithet.

He fascinates me as an actor in that he seems to be one of the few around to have figured out how to make his limited talent work way above and beyond where anyone would expect it to be.

― HI DERE

doesn't seem at all surprising to me. like most action stars, he gets by on a combination of physicality and charisma, has nothing to do with talent in the conventional sense.

ahh ok Ethan - I can assure you my intentions aren't borne out of emphasising how the whiteness in Obama did him good, it's purely a pedantic factual concern, with my personal vested interest of demonstrating how the two "distinct" communities can be united under such a historic figurehead

if he fucks up, I won't care about how black he is etc etc, I'll be deeply saddened, but I won't for a second blame it on his race. I can see how others would, and unfortunately how such bigoted attitudes still prevail in the American right

as for "foreign", I believe that if you're raised in a certain country, or if you've lived there for a significant amount of time, then that is your true homeland. you can still feel allegiance to a spiritual homeland, land of your fathers etc, but every citizen of America is an American, surely, by definition?

On the other hand, jay, I can see how the guy you spoke to might want to call himself black. As I said, it's kind of timesome how white people can all be "white", but if you're not white, then you're expected to pick from a complex set of problematic terminologies, mostly with geographic connotations. Saying "fuck it, if I'm not white, I'm black" has its appeal.

"non-white"

No-thanks.

Here's that Vin Diesel short film mentioned earlier, called Multi Facial:

I also like how John Turturro has been able to play anyone of any kind of Latin or Mediterranean origin, basically.

i don't like the sound of african-american cuz it sounds so pretentious/timid/dumb. i mean, my boyfriend isn't caucasian-american, he's white.

According to John Brunner's 1968 dystopian tale of overpopulation Stand On Zanzibar, by the year 2010 the predominant polite American usage will be 'Afram'.

Famous philanthropists will donate Afram Grants to disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Surmounter you just blew my mind

giggles @ Matt DC

afram sounds like a nasal inhaler

I remember nearly blowing my top at a very smart Montenegrin girl (and Oxford PhD) going off about why was everyone making such a big deal about Obama being the first black president when he's half white. He's not even really black, etc. I bit my tongue and carefully explained a lot of obvious American racial history and she got it pretty quickly actually.

- G00blar

OTM, and i want to leave it at that, but the obama race thing is complex. like andwhat sez, given obvious american racial history and the way whites tend to view race, it's naive (at best) to go on about, "oh, but he's not black - he's biracial."

that's true, but on the other hand, it discounts the way non-whites might conceptualize race. early in the election cycle, there seemed to be a fair amount of "not one of us" hesitancy on the part of the black community WR2 obama.

I tend to use geographical descriptions as opposed to skin-colour based descriptions, but I guess that's problematic too, given the dispersion of people and cultures. So, usually I end up saying "that dude" instead.

afram sounds like a nasal inhaler

ya

there seemed to be a fair amount of "not one of us" hesitancy on the part of the black community WR2 obama.

Yeah, I remember Michelle specifically being tasked with refuting that.

that's true, but on the other hand, it discounts the way non-whites might conceptualize race. early in the election cycle, there seemed to be a fair amount of "not one of us" hesitancy on the part of the black community WR2 obama.

― get drunk and do legos (contenderizer), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 12:07 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think much of this was in direct response to the media portrayal of his early embrace from largely white liberals & response from conservatives - in chicago obama was certainly considered "black", and if you watch one of his speeches from the early 00s he sounds like malcolm x or some shit

My dog is called Franceman btw

meanwhile, in England: British Comic contends Prince Harry made a racist remark: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/02/11/international/i045040S49.DTL&tsp=1

This is news?

He makes Prince Phillip look like Tuomas.

in chicago obama was certainly considered "black", and if you watch one of his speeches from the early 00s he sounds like malcolm x or some shit

― and what

yeah, but in chicago, he was a known quantity, with an established place in afram political society. my comment was more about how he was perceived by people who didn't yet know what to make of him

I was working under the assumption that Prince Philip was an actual fox who lives in the pines.

xpost

i don't think i'm going to to try to work "afram" into things anymore

Surmounter you just blew my mind

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 11 February 2009 17:04 (14 minutes ago) Permalink

<3

wait I posted akm's exact same story earlier this morning

http://www.dustinrowley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/bd006invisible-man-by-ralph-ellison-posters1.jpg

meanwhile, in England: British Comic contends Prince Harry made a racist remark

it's not like I"m going to actually read all 300 posts on this thread

i've never seen that cover of invisible man!

DC mayor Tony Williams reportedly got some* degree of flak for "not being black enough," which was taken to mean not dressing/acting/speaking/walking as if he'd spent much time absorbing what might loosely be termed black culture. Urkel was mentioned a time or two.

* = Of course will never really know exactly how much of this was genuinely from the African-American community and how much was the media and the cultural right blowing one or two offhand remarks into a huge example of black racism. Because there is a mentality that loves to pounce on "they do it too so why can't we" stuff as if it were profound or as if it changed everything (cf. max's NAAWP post).

they prefer native american

I believe it's actually "First Peoples" now.

My mother's entire side of the family is indian and we all say "indian." But it sounds weird if someone else says it.

will never really know exactly how much of this was genuinely from the African-American community and how much was the media and the cultural right blowing one or two offhand remarks into a huge example of black racism. Because there is a mentality that loves to pounce on "they do it too so why can't we" stuff as if it were profound or as if it changed everything.

― Ye Mad Puffin

OTM. the flipside of the flipside i was trying to point out up above. basically race crap is almost impossible to sort out, what with everybody yelling about what everybody else is supposedly yelling about & cetera.

i've never seen that cover of invisible man!

I'm about to buy a poster of that cover.

it's awesome

looks like an alternate cover of the spy who came in from the cold. which makes a kind of sense

He makes Prince Phillip look like Tuomas.

If anybody shops Phillip's head onto the sundae photo, they are running the risk of great bodily harm.

Now don't be daring me like that.

Anybody ever see this at the MOMA?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/72/166592426_74ddf4914b.jpg?v=0

o me

It's Jeff Wall's 'Lightbulbs', based on the prologue to 'Invisible Man'. It's really stunning to see up close.

This thread is a bit too long to actually read before posting this, but hey, haven't I gone on here before about how people always attach "dude" to "black?" I don't know if it's meant to sound faux-casual or what, but it's always, like ... oh, this black dude. Umm proven by science, or something! (The other part of the trinity is how often people are inclined to add "big" at the beginning when talking about some notional / hypothetical "big black dude.")

"dude" is a last-minute substitution for "cock"

i think i say white dude and latin dude as much as black dude... not asian, which probably reveals something

haha

i like that piece michael

other casual-type word that's often attached to "black" = "folks", plural form of "black dude". i think the forced casualness is supposed to communicate comfort

in america, white folks don't really say "black folks"

nope

no, not anymore. but they did

i say black folks, and white folks

xpost - Well it's not everyone -- and probably more prevalent among older people? I think the first time I noticed it was when reading Stephen King novels around 11 years old. Those things are littered with black dudes. Everyone's like, "You see that guy over there? The black dude?"

Lots of people say it -- I think when they feel some twinge of discomfort at identifying someone by race, and then slide in the "dude" to balance it out with something more casual. Like the non-weird cousin of using "gentleman."

xpost - I think "black folks" is often just sparing the space and energy that'd be required to say or really define "the American black community" or whatever; it kinda skips around the details, which you often have to

I don't say folks because I have trouble pronouncing it correctly

folksclovetofu

(The other part of the trinity is how often people are inclined to add "big" at the beginning when talking about some notional / hypothetical "big black dude.")

― nabisco, Wednesday, February 11, 2009 1:15 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this term after years of flying under the radar seems to have recently entered the popular consciousness as something that might have racist qualities - ive gotten in so many arguments when people say this and theyre always like yah well he was big and i totally would say big white guy wtf why u callin me racist

"some Asian babe"

haven't I gone on here before about how people always attach "dude" to "black?"

I don't know, nabisco, but I am totally guilty of this, though not just with black but any descriptive, as if specifying someone's skin color or ethnicity needs to be made casual by using 'dude' or 'chick' instead of gentleman or young woman, though I also use guy and girl, too.

it's usually "white guy"/"black dude"

my stepdad who is black says white dude

so there!

"You see that guy over there? The black dude?"

It's probably the puffy jackets.

I say white dude, black dude, white guy, and black guy

there are white folks, and there are ignorant motherfuckers like you

i say black dude/chick, white dude/chick

Err sorry, wrong quote: that was meant to (facetiously) explain the use of "big".

Jordan comes through with the tranny taxonomy!

id say black dude, white dude, black girl, white girl, and for older women black lady, white lady. id use "guy" if i wanted to distance myself.

it's usually "white guy"/"black dude"

And all the people say he's pretty rude for a black dude.

I don't get the problem w/BBD? (Provided he's actually a big dude.)

it's usually "white guy"/"black dude"

Except to me, at least, dude is a very 'white' thing originally, like 'cat' was orginally very black before it got hepped up.

I use "dude" when talking to someone ("Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?") and "guy" when talking about someone ("What the hell is wrong with that guy?").

remember that thread about "black boy" ages back? ho boy

yeah going there = pain

these days I just refer to all forms of life as "creetchuhhs"

Who is the black boy in the sex pistols grundy interview?

didn't it turn out to be a girl

I figured it was just a comment on the androgyny and generational inclusiveness of the punk movement

There's nothing horrible about it as an accurate description! It's just that "big black dude" often gets used to mean "someone tough / scary / threatening" in kinda lame ways -- wouldn't we all agree on that? It's most annoying to me when someone's groping for an example of danger and it's like, eh, you really didn't need the "black" in there, did you?

(This always bugs me in comedy stuff, how "big scary black guy" is constantly used as such a type, and then the "joke" is always that the guy "unexpectedly" turns out to be sensitive and intelligent.)

(Hahaha I mean, Chi McBride is a better actor than that)

looooool

you made me totally paranoid about the dude thing, nabisco. so much so that I felt relieved when a black guy called me dude.

and then the "joke" is always that the guy "unexpectedly" turns out to be sensitive and intelligent.

― nabisco

or childlike to the point of retardation

and then the "joke" is always that the guy "unexpectedly" turns out to be sensitive and intelligent.)

My, but you're a well-spoken young man. ;)

thug that turns out to be smart and/or gentle thing gets applied to thugs of all races, though...

dont hear a lot of stories about big black asians

big black white dudes

"black guy" and "white dude" are easier to pronounce because the unvoiced consonants at the ends of the first words elide smoothly into their respective voiced consonants at the beginnings of the second words

blap guy

Haha bnw I don't think it's anything to be paranoid about with talking to people (haha and surely the whole source of the thing is black people saying "dude" a lot in the 1970s, right?), it's just funny -- nobody's gonna care unless it's obvious that this is like the only time you ever ever say "dude"

xpost - yeah, the sensitive-thug joke gets applied to everyone, the annoyance is more with how often people use blackness to set up the "thug" expectation that then gets controverted -- blackness or Danny Trejo, usually

I was under the impression that everyone said "dude" a lot in the 1970s

I mean, I'm with you on the "big scary black dude" thing but I've never heard of the just "dude" thing

i was at a barnes and noble the other night and there was this big scary black dude, and then it turned out to be astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson signing books

wkiw^

i was at a barnes and noble the other night and there was this little scary white dude, and then it turned out to be astro-psychicist genesis p-orridge signing books

he turned out to be more of a guy

"black guy" and "white dude" are easier to pronounce because the unvoiced consonants at the ends of the first words elide smoothly into their respective voiced consonants at the beginnings of the second words

― Curt1s Stephens

kuh-dew feels as natural and easy to pronouce as kuh-gai. same goes for tuh-gai vs. tuh-dew.

if anything, "dude" works a little better in both cases.

I think "dude" does get more often attached to "black" than it does to "white" et al.

Though Wil Harris is always saying "dude". It sounds a bit rubbish, as Matt DC pointed out way up thread. I have a friend who does it, and somehow gets away with it.

There is an unspoken geek factor in the proper usage of the word "dude".

I like it when Hurley out of Lost says dude.

he is good at saying dude

Yet if Ben said it, it wouldn't work.

One would expect to find more Google hits for both "black guy" and "black dude" than for "white guy" and "white dude," simply because white is considered the default for the white majority (e.g., a description of Lethal Weapon in a TV listing as a movie about "a cop and his black sidekick") -- but the margin is proportionally much greater between "black dude" and "white dude" (1,150,000 vs. 383,000) than between "black guy" and "white guy" (4,110,000 vs. 3,990,000).

Dude originally meant a fop or dandy, I believe.

xpost - Weirdly, I think of "dude"-meaning-"person" as a totally different word from "dude" as a million-meaning term of address, exclamation, interjection, interrogation etc. (I like the latter way, way better and use it at least once a sentence)

assholes quoting the offspring on their myspace pages is probably producing a statistical anomaly there though xposts

"black fop" vs "white fop" - 837 vs 253
"black dandy" vs "white dandy" - 16,300 vs 3,340

"white asshole" vs. "black asshole" - 330,000 vs. 10,400,000

very interesting

woah.

First two celebrities pictured in a GIS search for "white dude": James Gandolfini, Bill Clinton
First two pictured for "black dude": Cam'ron, Carl Weathers

i thought dom had established that italians aren't white

First celebrity pictured in a GIS search for "asian dude": Lindsay Lohan.

is it a lex thread?

almost spit all over my screen

this is on the first GIS page for "hispanic dude"

http://whgbetc.com/mind/black-white-minstrel-show.jpg

(lol, the first celebrity is... Danny Trejo)

Danny Trejo is super-awesome and I'm sure figures very, very heavily into some documentary somewhere about Hollywood's portrayal of Latinos

jaymc's research is interesting, and mostly seems to confirm that "black dude" is a construction with special significance, commonality, weight. no surprise, i guess

541,000 for "black folks"
742,000 for "white folks" (silly me)

346,000 for "white folk"
622,000 for "black folk" (huh)

337,000 for "white culture"
906,000 for "black culture"

498,000 for "white society"
123,000 for "black society" (society vs. culture?)

9,720,000 for "white people"
8,270,000 for "black people"

411,000 for "white racism"
96,600 for "black racism"

11,200 for "white athelete"
102,000 for "black athelete" (!)

338,000 for "white music"
4,470,000 for "black music" (maybe not so !)

20,400 for "white politician"
60,100 for "black politician"

47,900 for "white actor"
135,000 for "black actor"

134,000 for "white professional"
242,000 for "black professional"

9,060 for "urban whites"
64,200 for "urban blacks"

1,140 for "white assailant"
4,540 for "black assailant"

28,400 for "white victim"
19,100 for "black victim"

406,000 for "black crime"
114,000 for "white crime"

69,000 for "american whites"
372,000 for "american blacks"

120,000 for "whites in america"
289,000 for "blacks in america"

lock thread?

Haha wow: are there seriously are more results for "white athelete" spelled wrong than there are for "white athlete" spelled right? Descriptivist spellers take note

(embarassed) yes

11,000 for "white athlete"
101,000 for "black athlete"

which is hilarious, exactly the same, but FEWER mentions

"black culture" vs. "white society" was the one that really surprised me, though i don't know why

which is hilarious, exactly the same, but FEWER mentions

I think this is because Google autocorrects common mispellings, so when you searched for the atheletes, you got the atheletes plus the athletes, whereas when you searched with the right spelling, you only got the correct ones.

People who use Google counts to judge how to spell a person's name, take note.

^ did not know

or did know, kinda, but never thought it through

common mispellings

ha

Famous philanthropists will donate Afram Grants to disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

― Maximo Park Ji-Sung (Matt DC), Wednesday, 11 February 2009 17:03 (2 hours ago) Bookmark

lolz.

xpost a milz
not to get all linguistic geek on you contenderizer, but crutis was 100% right about "black guy" and "white dude"
"k" is an unvoiced velar plosive, whereas "g" is a voiced velar plosive, meaning the only difference between the two sounds is that the "g" is voiced, so the tongue is in the same position for the two
likewise, "t" is an unvoiced alveolar plosive and "d" is a voiced alveolar plosive
so really the only thing you need to do to make each of the pairs flow well is to delay your voicing of the sound a bit to make it sound like you're saying both sounds when really you're not

don't worry about the geek-speak, i appreciate the info. but can't you play the same trick with "whitedude", basically saying "whi-dude"? nobody actually pronounces the t-then-d transition, or (i suspect) notices the substitution.

and "white guy" and "black guy" are treated similarly (at least in terms of how i pronounce them at normal conversational velocities): "whi-guy" vs something resembling "black-eye"

the t-d and k-g are the easier ones, when you get to k-d and t-g you're having to move your tongue, which still comes fairly easily, but on the grounds of maximizing efficiency, you've got a minor subconscious urge to say "white dude" and "black guy"
of course with me, the larger subconscious urge of wanting to distance myself from whiteness by saying guy and associating myself with blackness by saying dude wins over. silly silly white guilt.

i love how articulation conversations always get me saying "duh duh tuh tuh tuh duh duh" out loud. i wonder what my new roommates think.

i know, i'm trying to be very quiet about it. anyway, i've gotta grant yr points, cuz you seem to know something about the subject, while i'm entirely ignorant (outside what i think/imagine i observe in my own behavior)

when you start dissecting how you pronounce things it gets hard to remember how you'd say them in the context of normal speech. i should probably shut up now and hope this thread dies.

God, here we go.

Haha now I'm imagining people sitting around in a living room going "Why is he alone in his room saying 'black dude' over and over?"

Wouldn't it be a more realistic representation if the search terms were:

18,800,000 for politician
60,100 for "black politician"

117,000,000 for actor
135,000 for "black actor"

?

something resembling "black-eye"

Hence the traditional pronunciation of the archaic epithet, 'blackguard'.

203,000 for "black Bush"

James Mitchell, I was wondering the same thing, I think. How often do you have to specify that a person excercizing a profession is black or white? Of those 117,000,000 results for actor, how many are, indeed, black?

re james mitchell:

yeah, i should have thought of that. check the [race]+ construction vs. the word or phrase on its own. not instead of black vs. white, but in addition, for context & skew.

not gonna do it though...

203,000 for "black Bush"

― fwiw (rockapads), Wednesday, February 11, 2009 3:31 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

all jpgs of demi moore

Is colored acceptable anymore?

I make that joke every laundry day, it seems.

okay a few:

514,000,000 for culture
57,200,000 for society
29,100,000 for athlete
73,200,000 for victim
328,000,000 for crime
142,000,000 for americans

dunno how illuminating any of that is. we see that society is a much less common word than culture, but what does this tell us about the clear preference for "white society" and "black culture" vs. "black society" and "white culture"?

Is colored acceptable anymore?

― OldHamSweat

try not trolling for a change

I am not trolling. I just peek in every once in a while. Busy guy here. Wait-what is trolling again?

Is colored acceptable anymore?

I dunno, ask the black man who once stopped me on the street on laundry day to ask me if I separated my whites from my colors.

^ This story is incomplete without your response

Where can I find him?

I think I laughed and kept walking. He also asked me if I washed it "good, really good. Get those clothes REALLY CLEAN?" I mean the whole thing was just lols.

I can't think of anything snappier than "No, but I keep my intimates separate from my street clothes"

Having someone walk entirely too close to you to hiss something in your ear about how you sort your laundry is kinda intimate already.

i think that's the same guy that once asked my friend, randomly, on the street, if he could see her panties. she was like "why the hell would you want to see me panties?" and he goes "i just wanna see how CLEAN ya are!" and we were both like uuuhhhh GAHHHH

I think the society vs. culture split is very telling. For a lot of white Americans, "culture" (in its anthropological sense) is often thought to be something that other people have. (Which is part of the joke behind Stuff White People Like, not that we should get into that here.) So it's no surprise that "black culture" is used more often than "white culture."

What we're missing in this kind of analysis is not the frequency of the unmodified noun but a statistic that would show the average percentage difference in usage between "black X" and "white X." You want to be able to see not just whether "black actor" is more common than "white actor" but whether that difference is greater than one might normally expect.

sorry, "MY panties"

this was in nyc

xpost

I knew a laundry miscegenist who pre-emptively washed all his clothes together and had on odd collection of underwear and socks that varied from tinged to dun. He claimed that that way he didn't have to worry about anything but the total amount of laundry to be done.

ill get me panties

this was in nyc

And not, as you implied, in the North of England.

For a lot of white Americans, "culture" (in its anthropological sense) is often thought to be something that other people have.

^ this. "culture" is implicitly anthropological, thus often directed towards the other. but that's the easy half.

"white society" went 4-1 over "black society". tempted to suggest that "society" is implicitly "civilized", and therefore...

hay white guyz and black d00dz just saw this google ad on a huffpo obama story

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imgad?id=COHz35reo7rmbRDIARi9ATIIrZLLp0wbiO8

Oh, I would have said that the "society"/"culture" debate is easier that that, I think that white people don't think there IS a "white culture" because we're more into being Italian or Scottish or Dutch or whatever than a skin color. Whereas black people are all the same, I seen it on the teevee. Therefore, black people have a (singular) culture, whereas white people are all different, don't you know.

lol "interracial singles"

But Laurel, aren't most white people in America pretty mongrelized culturally? Perhaps not in pockets but generally?

look on white dudes face is buggin me out

Probably? I just suspect that deep down (or maybe not that deep) the cumulative white viewpoint is that they're more different from their white neighbors than black people are from other black people. Purely supposition.

Partly based on my kind of recent realization that people mean black when they say "urban", for instance.

urban = saggin

am i supposed to read that backwards

OMG

How did you even NOTICE that? Or is this something else I've missed?

andwhat:

fuck no! i realized after i posted, and was gutted. but no takebacks on ilx...

jesus

bahahahaha

contendo u should google 'reggins' once.

those racists, so clever.

i am happy to have been totally clueless WR2 reggins

flaming heck, this thread started this afternoon or something and it's 330 posts

^ mechanics of race thred

'Reggins' is so despicably cowardly.

How many of you guys are black?

That's because the board loves this shit.

do you mean how many of us dudes are black

Does anyone have blue eyes and do you hate yourself if you do?

Yeah sure. No. Um-how many of you people are black. You people. Jesus.

actually my eyes are fuck off troll

I am Black Jesus

the repetition of "you people" is A+ trolling, though, right?

unfunny troll is gone now; go login with another one of your bazillion guesspaper sockpuppets

was it chaki

reminded me of this classic chaki post

Ya see, them Neegrows have flat noses. The Bible says that people with flat noses are not allowed to approach God "For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous," Leviticus 21:18

Ethiopians on the other hand have proper noses so they ain't really black

- Jim

― murderdogger, Monday, February 11, 2008 2:53 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imgad?id=COHz35reo7rmbRDIARi9ATIIrZLLp0wbiO8

can't get enough of this

was it chaki

odds are no

Interracial Singles

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3230/2348480491_3c21e4f01b_b.jpg

who was it, HD?

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/opopop.jpg

this can be the part of the thread at the end of irreversible

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/opti20animated.gif

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/output.gif

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/01_censored.jpg

http://www.banbucket.com/uploads/1234449075.jpg

this thread has truly been a blaffair to rememblack

i haven't been following it, but i just remembered this paper i wrote like freshman year of college, something about racism, and i used "black" instead of "African-American" for the whole thing, which was a lot of "black"s. i also remember the professor said the paper had a "voice." yay for college!

lol @ who started thread w/"black dude" in title
Seeing a black dude at a Cat Power show and thinking to yourself "oh, he must be the bouncer" - racist or not?

I've always liked how guys with strong south Chicago accents say "blacks"... like "blakes" sort of.

late, but I call both women and men of any race "dude" because I grew up in southern California and that is how we talked there, dude

also everyone in southern california is a black dude, regardless of race or creed

Didn't realize l0u1s jagg3r was an Ay-rab.

By the time Feb. is over I predict a blacklash the likes of which God has never seen.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22334