“You realise that’s racist mum”

Thanks Molly yes, all nice things ( family and friends lunching ) but I am doing all the catering and hosting on the three days.It’s all planned out, but still a lot to do.Not complaining though, as we have all waited a long time for this.
Hope yours go well.

Lemongrove I hope your packed few days is something good.
I’m just hoping the weather will be lovely as we have several small group, mainly outdoors meet-ups.

Good posts Elegran and Mollygo and the analogy with cricket bats and tweeds made me laugh.
Aren’t we all up early today?? I have a packed few days so this is the calm before the storm.

Elegran your comment about biodiversity is frighteningly true. It’s not even as if it’s happening in secret, because we can see evidence on TV or the Internet besides around us.
Your analogy about the cricket bat made me smile, but it’s true. As soon as one word becomes unacceptable to use, people simply use another one. The derogatory sexist and racist epithets have changed over the years, as each one has been ‘banned’.

There is a parallel with the global loss of biodiversity. Extinctions are happening at accelerating speed. Yes, extinctions have always taken place, and natural evolution means that other species have taken over the niches left available, but that has historically occurred gradually. Currently, species are vanishing at an unprecedented rate, due to human expansion and the drive to tame all the wild places on earth, leaving great gaps in the ecology of areas. This could will unbalance the whole global ecosystem.

Banning certain words because of their negative connotations is not guaranteed to remove the friction between races. While the connection remains in some minds between black/slave/inferior, anyone wanting to refer back to that connection will use other words.

A daft analogy - suppose it were found that a frequent use for a cricket bat was to beat up anyone wearing a tweed jacket, because tweed jackets were connected in a lot of minds with rural landowning gentry. Banning cricket bats might seem one way to protect the tweedies, and sparing them the trauma of seeing the bats used on village greens all summer. However, those with a dislike of landowners would just buy baseball bats instead.

Yes, language has always evolved but what is happening here is not evolution, it is taking whole tranches of phrases that are in constant everyday use and have - and have always had a clear meaning and derivation and telling us they have an entirely different derivation and meaning. This smacks more of 1984 than the normal evolution of meaning, which, as we know, has always happened.

i often listen to and enjoy radio 4 extra.
the other day i was surprised to hear a so-called comedy from the 1980s, which throughout had words and moreso attitudes that would be unthinkable now.
i was surprised they put it on. it wasn't funny. had no merit.
think it was called, circles.
i'd never heard of it, then or now.
i can accept some passing phrases from long ago, in an otherwise funny or entertaining show.
but this was drivel. and offensive drivel.

Elegran

^"If we can change that then why wouldn’t we?"^ The changes in language that occur all the time will throw up other references very soon, which will reflect the general valuation of the individuals who now see themselves devalued. If the value of everyone, of whatever creed or colour or degree of financial solvency is equal, then there will be no problem with the references. If certain groups are valued less highly, then the new references will reflect that. Changing words is not the priority. Changing valuation is. and words will follow that.

Given that the meaning behind many of these phrases are embedded into language and are passed down through generations as colloquialisms (as happened here with the blue eyed boy comment), then there is generally a lack of awareness as to origins. Just because something was acceptable doesn’t mean it remains so.
I completely agree that equality and valuation are vitally important, however the language used is important in making that change.
Effectively, the “woke” era is changing language and challenging attitudes as did all the generations that came before, and with each passing generation the acceptability of certain words or phrases are challenged or become taboo.
In an ideal world where people are all equal and there isn’t institutional and inherent discrimination then there would be no problem, but we don’t and haven’t lived in that world yet - so until we do, if we can change it, why wouldn’t we (on a personal level).

i certainly regard paddywagon as offensive.

Esspee

Interesting list vegansrock. I would challenge jip always being racist.
In Scotland it means pain, especially twinges of pain as in “my arthritic knee is giving me jip today”

yes, but it's origins may be racist, as it seems to have come via gyppy tummy, which was dysentry while in Egypt.
cf, delhi belly.

"If we can change that then why wouldn’t we?" The changes in language that occur all the time will throw up other references very soon, which will reflect the general valuation of the individuals who now see themselves devalued. If the value of everyone, of whatever creed or colour or degree of financial solvency is equal, then there will be no problem with the references. If certain groups are valued less highly, then the new references will reflect that. Changing words is not the priority. Changing valuation is. and words will follow that.

M0nica

Isn't it strange that a generation who have been brought up with such gentleness and respect for their opinons and needs are so intolerant of all those who disagree with them.

Another way to look at that would be challenging racist micro aggressions in every day speech and refusing to engage with it.
Language has always evolved. The things that were on tv in the 90’s are now being seen by a new audience due to streaming platforms and the like. So every day language then is being challenged by the younger generation now and personally I think that’s to be commended.
Using the term “blue eyed boy” without realising the connotations as per the original OP is completely understandable, tbh I may have used the same phrase myself. However, having the negative implications pointed out - I won’t use it now, because words do matter. So, if omitting certain phrases from my vernacular means I’m not going to inadvertently cause offence then surely that’s a good thing? Doubling down and justifying these phrases just adds to the problem in society, that there is an inbuilt racial bias that we all contribute to simply by virtue of living and learning in that society. If we can change that then why wouldn’t we?

Isn't it strange that a generation who have been brought up with such gentleness and respect for their opinons and needs are so intolerant of all those who disagree with them.

Campaigners for any cause tend to have an if-you-are-not fighting-with-us-you-are-against-us kind of stance. It was noticeable on political threads a few years ago - (anyone who wasn't noisily and insistently Labour was at once labelled a dyed-in-the-wool Tory who ate children for breakfast) - and there are elements of it in the current black/white thing. Sometimes I am reminded of Chairman Mao's era, when Chinese citizens were exhorted to confess their shortcomings in not supporting enthusiastically enough the Government's latest re-organisation of work practices and society. Anyone mildly dissident found themselves standing in front of their assembled community to eat humble pie and confess to being a miserable worm for not throwing themselves wholeheartedly into destroying what was good (or at least neutral) about their previous life.

I think those who do^ associate negative meanings of colours as being indicative of any underlying bias against racial groups^ are those who already have more than average sensibility to that bias, either because they have personally met some very nasty people, or because they are actively supporting the cause of non-whites v whites. Those who would not use those words with any bias themselves (or any words designed to hurt) don't see any bias in them.

Rosie51 I so agree with you.

vegansrock we are more than capable of grasping the concept so stop trying to patronise us.

Quite simply I, and I think others, fail to see why we should have to avoid using what have always been common and useful phrases with a clear meaning that have no connection with racism, just because either some one chooses to decide they are racist or because they have a different and derogatory meaning in anothercountry.

And before you start on about respecting how other people see words. Were we to exclude from our language every word that someone, for some reason, considers personally offensive, we would have no language left to speak.

Monica "The other thing to remember [is] that the impetus to 'clean' up the language comes from the USA and many of their words and phrases may sound like ours but have a completely different origin." As are some of the assumptions about the interactions of white and black people. In the USA, a black person was probably a slave, the property of a white owner, living in a ghetto of separate quarters to white people, working all day in the fields and subject to the owner's whim for his/her day-to-day life, sexual and family life, and indeed for life itself. In the UK, one example could be an ex-seaman, (possibly press-ganged, possibly joined a ship voluntarily) who had left the ship in a seaport and worked at some other trade, as a free man under the same conditions as the white workers, living in whatever accommodation he could find and afford. As an incomer with a different appearance from most people he would attract attention, some of it automatically hostile to all strangers (during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, the population of Hartlepool were ignorant and xenophobic enough to have hanged as a French spy a shipwrecked monkey which was wandering round the town) but they were not the large, well-known and universally recognised underclass that they were in the US.

Black and white, good and bad - Only some black things are negative. Some are positive. Some white things are negative.

A "little black dress" is positive - very elegant and sexy.. Blackcurrants and blackberries are delicious.
A blackboard is (or was) a useful and universal teaching aid.
Black pudding isn't a sinful food.
Ghosts are white. So is fog (whiteish).
White hair isn't superior to any other colour of hair.
White Van Man isn't our favourite driver.
Whiteheads are nasty little spots, not superior in any way to blackheads.
And a blue-eyed boy isn't anything admirable. He has gained the position of boss's favourite by being a yes-man and dishing the dirt on rest of the employees, and is hated by everyone else.

Most people in the UK would never say "nice white family" though, I suspect timetogo2016. Becuase they would never think it necessary to make a point of the fact that they were white. They'd just be a "nice family".

I don’t associate negative meanings of colours as being indicative of any underlying bias against racial groups either, but having RTFT, this view is not widely shared.

I am getting fed up with having to over think before i say anything,just in case it is deemed racist.
If anyone takes offence,feel free as i would NEVER say anything racist on purpose, is it deemed racist if i refer to the nice white family that has just moved in ? i think not,but if i said the nice Asian family that would be jumped on.
The blue eyed boy is far from racist,and thats my point.

my reply above to vegansrock.

So how about "whitewash"? What about using the colour yellow to denote cowardice? Or red to denote rage? Green to denote naivety? Honestly there is enough "othering" without going looking for it. I don't associate negative meanings of colours as being indicative of any underlying bias against racial groups. You are so patronising and condescending you do your argument absolutely no favours.

We have not yet considered a ‘red letter day’ meaning something pleasant or a red bill, or being in the red or the black meaning to be in debt or not.
The problem has mainly been avoided by re-designation of a group of population as ‘native’.

But a “black mark against you “ does not mean you literally have a black ink mark on a piece of paper does it? It means you will be judged negatively for something , it may have originated from the plague but that’s not how it’s used- an example of how meanings and uses changes, no it doesn’t mean a racial slur but it is an example of the word black being used to describe something negative of which the English language has plenty. Some are unable to grasp this concept.

What is Black Friday?