Do you agree ...or not?

I think black sheep, and black lambs especially, are beautiful.

My DH goes, in normal times, to a "current affairs " class. Someone once mentioned the black country, and was challenged by a member of the class who was black!

I worked in a school for along time Newatthis and all of the staff and parent helpers too were told not to say blackboard say whiteboard and coffee with milk not black coffee.and tea without milk,amongst other things.
So you are not lying at all.

Just overheard the nursery over the road having the children sing 'ba ba happy sheep! Still laughing!!

Anne Robinson just comes across arrogant, elitist and rude!

Hellogirl1

I had a post taken off GN once because I used the word "foreigners", I didn`t realise it wasn`t a word to use anymore. I was accused of being racist.

Really?

I consider myself a foreigner if I go to another country. Wasn't there a rock group called Foreigner - have they had to change their name?
Perhaps I'll call myself a traveller from an antique land.

TEFL Teaching English as a Foreign Language, which presumably means we are the foreigners.
CELTA from Cambridge is a qualification for teaching English as a foreign language.

I'm becoming like Miranda, can't stop using the word.

Ps Anne Robinson is rude, not funny.
She doesn't even look like herself any more either.

"I don’t want the English language mangled" says the woman who thinks the ancient city in North Africa was called Carthaaage.

love0c

Just overheard the nursery over the road having the children sing 'ba ba happy sheep! Still laughing!!

What a coincidence!

grannysyb

My DH goes, in normal times, to a "current affairs " class. Someone once mentioned the black country, and was challenged by a member of the class who was black!

It’s The Black Country and was so called because the sky was dark with smoke because of industry. The whole area was covered in darkness.

My mother’s maiden name was Blackman, possibly because of charcoal burning in the Weald. There is also a village called Black Boys, nothing to do with race but also because of charcoal burning for the iron industry there.

Some common sense would not go amiss

I know someone called Blackman, he's fair (well grey now) and blue-eyed.
Perhaps his ancestors were charcoal burners.

My dear, departed Grandmother (Black Country through and through)
claimed that the term predated the Industrial Revolution, and was first coined because of the colour / quality of the soil (ie it is rich in something or other that I can't remember!)

I think it was coined in the Industrial Revolution.

Perhaps the soil is black because soot from chimneys was dug into the soil as a fertiliser.

I thought it was to do with coal being very close to the surface?

The Black Country is so called due to its industrial past; the air, the soil and the coal seams all contributed to the term. It's a whole lot greener now.

We Black Country folk are proud of our history.

My father used to put soot on the vegetable garden and I did meet an old man who did that near here, nowhere near The Black Country.

I now always ask for coffee without milk because if I ask for it as black coffee it usually comes with a jug of milk that I don’t use. I hate waste ☕️

I don't have a TEFL qualification. But I do have a TESOL qualification. Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages is rather a roundabout way of saying foreign.

Nobody gets their post deleted for using the word "foreigners".

Foreigners, foreigners, foreigners.

(Still here ?)

Fanny, your post at 14:14 - I got it!

Re the nursery rhyme baa baa black sheep I was quite surprised when DGs arrived this morning and his Daddy says you’ve been learning a new song at nursery sing it for Grandma. Lo and behold it was this along with the original words. It doesn’t faze me but was quite surprised being taught it in this way in this day and age especially with some of the alternative versions mentioned on here.

Grandmadinosaur

Re the nursery rhyme baa baa black sheep I was quite surprised when DGs arrived this morning and his Daddy says you’ve been learning a new song at nursery sing it for Grandma. Lo and behold it was this along with the original words. It doesn’t faze me but was quite surprised being taught it in this way in this day and age especially with some of the alternative versions mentioned on here.

I wonder then if the "wokeness" isn't quite as widespread as some people would have us believe?

I have been in 5 early years settings this week, all sang baa baa black sheep and the thousand other versions that are available. I promise it is sung everywhere, I can teach you the signed version and everything

timetogo2016

I worked in a school for along time Newatthis and all of the staff and parent helpers too were told not to say blackboard say whiteboard and coffee with milk not black coffee.and tea without milk,amongst other things.
So you are not lying at all.

A blackboard and a whiteboard are completely different.

Alegrias1

Nobody gets their post deleted for using the word "foreigners".

Foreigners, foreigners, foreigners.

(Still here ?)

Fanny, your post at 14:14 - I got it!

Agree. There must have been more to it !

If this were really about being 'woke', wouldn't it be a whole lot more obvious why the word 'black' in the song should be changed?

The reason that black sheep were less valuable than white ones is/was because black wool is more difficult to dye than white, so was harder to sell. I'm not sure that this links to the song in any way, which is about the wool tax of ages ago (#vague) when a third of the profit from a bag of wool went to the master (king) a third to the Church (dame) and the other third to the farmer (the little boy).

Neither the rhyme nor the idiom ever had anything to do with race, or even with the sheep - it was all about the wool, and the corrupt taxation in (I think) the middle ages.

Blackboards were changed to whiteboards not because of colour, but because of breathing issues for those who breathed in chalk dust all day. (Breathing in marker fumes may have had other effects, but perhaps they were more enjoyable ?).

Black binbags were and still are, just black. Because they are made out of black plastic. Which is black.

All of the above are very different from referring to someone as 'a Black', or worse, as 'a Black X'. Not the same thing at all, but it is in the interests of some to confuse the issue and make a mockery of anyone who wants to think about language and how it does affect people on the receiving end of thoughtless comments and outdated usages, such as obvious racial slurs, and words/phrases surrounding disability and sex (and/or gender).

If we are all tying ourselves in knots about sheep, or beanbags or coffee (for goodness' sake!) it distracts us all from the more important areas, and persuades us that we are being 'told' to do pointless things by 'experts' who are lacking in 'common sense'.