"And what's with some of you and your insistence on using the word "blacks?"

"Black" and "blacks" are the words many of us were taught to use to refer to persons with dark skin, typically of African descent, in order to be respectful. These are perfectly respectable words that have been in use for a long time. The same basic idea, referring to races by the color of their skin, goes back thousands of years. In ancient Ethiopia, they referred to the races they were familiar with as "red" and "black" (in their own language, of course).

Of course there used to be other words: "Negro", "Colored", and even "Nigger" were once used as merely descriptive words, and were considered respectable and respectful before they were condemned for political reasons. "Negro" of course comes ultimately from the Latin "niger" via Spanish and Portuguese. It simply means "black".

Of course there are other words that have been suggested: "Afro-American", "African-American", and "person of color", for example - but they are all unacceptable for several reasons.

First, "African-Americans" are not really African. They are, typically, of majority African descent, but if they went to Africa today they would not find a place or even a culture that was familiar to them. The closest would probably be the Boers. "Person of color" is particularly amusing: American blacks typically have some shade of brown skin, brown or black hair, and brown eyes - compared to whites who might have skin that is pink, red, orange, very light brown, or it could be so pale that one can see blue veins; and they might have red, brown, black, or yellow hair (or all of the above on different parts of the body); and might have brown, blue, green, amber, or gray eyes. Who is really "of color" here?

Second, all these terms are displeasing to the ear. They are a mouthful, they are jarring and dissonant, they do not fit neatly into normal speech, and they are a constant reminder to the speaker of how unnatural and demeaning these words are.

But most important, all these terms are euphemisms, and that is why they are demeaning and disrespectful when applied to people. We don't have euphemisms for things we love, we have euphemisms for things we find unpleasant - things we hate or are ashamed of to some degree. We don't have a "polite" word for a dog (though we do have synonyms). We can call a dog a dog and no one is offended by it. We don't have special "polite" words for hearth and home, mother and apple pie. We call all these things by their proper names without feeling any shame or disgust, even if we do have other words we can use. Some word choices might betray a speaker's social class, or might describe a substandard member of the class (such as a cur or a mongrel as a subset of a dog) but none are considered impolite in themselves (though if you call a person a cur or a mongrel, or even a dog, that is another thing).

The same is true of things which we might regard as neutral: there are no euphemisms for a stone or a brook, because no one is offended by a stone or a brook. Humorously one might call a brook a "muddy ditch", but not because anyone recoils from the thought of a brook.

But we have all sorts of euphemisms for sexual organs - not due to disgust as such, but due to shame, as our culture shames sexuality. We have euphemisms for anything related to feces - including "feces", because it is natural to be disgusted by shit. Of course it is not always so extreme: we used to say that a person was retarded because we did not want to say that they were a fool or that they were stupid; but that became offensive and now we say that they are learning disabled which naturally became a new way to be offensive because what really discomforts us is the fact that some people are naturally stupid and there is nothing we can do about it; we mostly still say that a person is blind but some would argue for "visually impaired"; same with deaf versus "hearing impaired". We say a "military strike" had "collateral damage" because it is unpleasant to say that someone acting on our behalf attacked and killed innocent people.

So what does it imply when a large portion of society is always careful to say "African-American" instead of "black", much less "colored" or "Negro"?

I don't know about you, but to many of us it looks dishonest and duplicitous, a way to gull black people into thinking that the speaker is on their side even while the speaker privately holds black people in contempt. I recognize racial differences and I don't pretend to have any special preference for black people, but I'm not disgusted by black people either. I'm aware of differences in rates of violence among the several races, as can be seen even in African nations that were never colonized or were only briefly colonized, but I also keep in mind that the vast majority of Africans, and the vast majority of blacks in America, are more or less decent folk who are not inclined towards violence. I try to be realistic about racial differences, but that realism doesn't just recognize the bad - it also recognizes the good.

I also recognize duplicitous behavior by white people, and I don't want to be part of it.




Baldur