Terminology

[Amina]

Am I the only person who gets an uncomfortable squiggle up my spine when I see people referring to 'Blacks' and 'Whites'? I'm not sure if it dates back to reading a lot about the Apartheid struggle in South Africa and the white SA accent talking about what the blacks (they would never bother with a capital) were up to.
I run a charity giving free books to low-income families, refugees, people without papers, women and children in shelters and homeless people. nb not 'the homeless'. In the same way I always refer to 'Black people'.
Let us please first remember the peopleness of people before we start worrying about their history, colour, religion etc.
People criticize me for not speaking about the homeless - but that's exactly why I do it!
Just cussed, maybe, but always hoping to make people thing twice.

[Steve Drill]

No you're not, Amina. The culture, the vernacular, the institutions, the media, IMHO around the world, are obsessed with race; not in a positive way of celebrating cultural differences, but as a wedge to maintain power structures and status quo. I cringe at the extent to which I have been trained to possess and maintain the stereotyping system. I'm just thankful to have a functioning intelligence that tells me there is really only one race, the human race.

[Amina]

True, but at the same time we can't go overboard and not recognize history. My main point was not about mentioning the differentiating bit (=colour) but omitting to add the common bit (=people).
In the last few days I was remembering the speeches of Enoch Powell 40 years ago and his whiny voice going on and on about the harm 'the blacks' (he wouldn't bother with a capital B either) were going to do to Britain. For me that was closer to home than apartheid.
Here in the UK we are holding Refugee Week, to celebrate the contribution refugees have made to British society. A welcome break from all the tabloid nonsense about 'asylum seekers coming to take your jobs and your benefits' etc etc... same ole same ole, generation after generation.
Do you suppose the dinosaurs grumbled about the brontosaurus coming to marry their sisters and mess up the neighbourhood?

ps I hope you all excuse me for spelling in English!

[Flora]

hi, i understand what you are saying Amina, i,too, prefer to use the word black as an adjective rather than a noun when referring to people....
but imagine my outrage, when in my country, people refers to my kids and other mixed-race /biracial kids as "mulattoes" ("mulatto" in italian, or "mulatta" for a woman) Sometimes i am even more horrified when i hear other white mums of mixed-race kids using the word for their own children....or in the diminuitive form "mulattina".....
also, people seem to have a taboo about mentioning skin colour (black , white ecc) , and try to invent all sort of silly phrases when talking about it , they rather use the term which is similar to the english "coloured", or "dark" for example, when they see me with the kids the always ask me "are they adopted?" ,when i reply "no, i made them" they carry on with :" oh ! so, their dad is ...ermmm, ....well.... a bit dark?" , i usually reply "no, is real black". That leaves them a bit off balance....

[Amina]

Haha!!!! I really laughed out loud at that last line! I have (also) lived in the Netherlands for a long long time and am always very surprised that even the Antillians and Surinamese will sooner use the word for 'coloured' or 'dark' as well about themselves. Every now and then a group will come up with a "Black Consciousness" programme, but they seem to fade away just as fast. When people (or the press or police describing the culprit) describe Moroccan people they say they have a 'tinted skin'.
Perhaps you also know that St Nicholas arrives in the country accompanied by a servant called "Zwarte Piet" - Black Pete(r). He is dressed in Elizabethan velvet puffy pants and tights, with jerry curls and very red lips... Whatever you do to try to get the Dutch to see this as highly insulting, they tell you it's a harmless joke and just for the children (who are of course not the ones keeping this alive). Some people will insist that Zwarte Piet is not really black but looks that way because he comes through the chimney, Yeah! well he's black enough following St Nicholas' horse and I never saw a chimney with a lipstick machine in it.
For all their mythical "tolerance" the Dutch are really backward.

[Amina]

Of course, I omitted to mention that Zwarte Piet is almost always played by a white person in blackface... a la Al Jolson. And you can find them all over the place (except, I notice, at the airport!!) sometimes all the check-out people at the supermarket are blacked up with curly wigs... and they think it's funny.
Yeah.
ha xxxxxx ha

[Rebecca Groebner]

I think it is very important to be aware of what it means when we, especially as white people, say that there is "only one race." It implies that we are somehow better than looking at skin color as something that truly affects people in their daily lives. It implies that we are somehow better than the racial stratification that we benefit from on a constant basis. I have NEVER heard a person of color tell me that there is "only one race," because IMHO they know better than that - because they are forced to pay attention to race, when we are not.

When I use, and hear, the words "white," "black," "latina," "asian," etc... to refer to people - this means far more than the color of their skin. This is describing to me their experience in this country, which tells me a great deal about them. So, for me, these words aren't bothersome, they are informative. For so long, we (as whites) have acted as if there is only one race - the white race, and every non-white person in the world was just a variation of that. It's time that we started putting the language to use that recognizes that there are a multitude of races in the world, and each should be honored in it's own right.

[Rebecca Groebner]

Some food for thought on this:

http://www.antiracistparent.com/2009/01/07/is-there-a-right-way/