To think that it's not racist to describe someone who is black as being black.

[lovingthecoast]

Sorry, probably haven't worded that very well but I'm feeling a bit upset and shaky after virtually being accused of racism.

Just took DS2 (3wks) to clinic. It's a large clinic with a few HVs and nursery nurses helping. I had had a conversation with one of the ladies last week and brought up said conversation today. HV asked who I'd spoken to and I said 'sorry I can't remember her name but the tall, black lady.' HV practically gasped, looked at her helper then said to me, 'We'd rather not describe people in terms of their ethnicity as it's considered rather offensive.' She was then frosty with me for the rest of the time.

I'm quite gobsmacked for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I was giving a physical description of the woman so to me, saying she was black was just like saying she had blonde curly hair or something. Secondly, is it really considered racist to make mention of someone's skin colour? I wasn't implying she was somehow inferior (in fact she was very helpful, more so that this HV) I was merely describing her so they'd know who I was talking about. If 3 of the 4 HVs were black and I wanted to point out the white one, I'd say the white one.

I know I'm hormonal but it's shaken me and since Ive come home I'm starting to feel angry about it and a bit teary. Oh I don't know, it's made me doubt my use of language even though I didn't think I was attaching anything to the colour of her skin if that makes sense.
Talk to me please and tell me straight whether she was being UR or whether I need to look at my language a bit more. Thanks

Whoever mentioned playing 'Guess Who' and the fact that adults won't use skin colour as a descriptor, it's quite interesting playing this with my children who don't really know about the sensitivities of describing ethnic groups, they go for 'brown' and 'pink' rather than black/white.

I don't think it's racist - but I think I can see the reasoning behind the assumption.

This is presumably to do with the assumption that white is the norm and everything else is not and therefore "other" and relevant. And the less white looking a person the more supposedly descriptive ethnicity becomes (e.g. I am brunette, tall, slim, wearing extravagant makeup Before "white" in many people's mind).

It's something to be aware of, I suppose. As stated above, though, I don't think the situation described is racist and do think HV should have handled this better.

""Coloured" is the term used by the older generation and I would have thought any sensible black person would recognise this and wouldn't be unduly offended by this term."

I presume thefor that gay people and people with disabilities should be happy to be called "queer" and "cripple" by the older generation too?

since when has mixed race been unacceptable? my children are mixed race, people describe them in that manner at the school doctors etc all the time, also when my mum meets up with friends I've heard them use this term to describe my DC's if they've seen us in town that week for example, there's many grandchildren but mine are the only one's with a different ethnicity, that term has never ever bothered me? what term is meant to be used instead then? x

seeker I'm black and my foster grandpa is White he uses the word 'coloured' and none of us even react to it. That man has loved and cared for us (over 25 of us in total) and so I know that he doesn't mean it in a horrible or cruel way. No it isn't the politically correct term but I would never haul him over the coals because of it - he has never let me down or not been there for me. Goodness I got ready at his house on my wedding day, which was absolutely wonderful. Having lived in London and visited my foster parents and foster grandparents every holiday in a small all White town I have been subject to all manner of abuse - 'coloured' just doesn't even register with me because the only people to ever use it around me, loved me.

But you are right that a lot of people would find the 'non-PC' version not very nice, upsetting or even abusive. The problem I have is that the more words people come up with to describe something the more on edge it puts everyone to the point that people are wary to approach anyone 'different' (be that ethnicity, age, ability, gender) because their too scared of upsetting someone or being seen as against a set of individuals because of their perceived difference.

Seeker - my DH has been described as "lame" by an old lady, and found it mildly amusing rather than offensive. I think as long as it's just the word and everything else they're saying is non-offensive, most people will accept that older generations maybe aren't going to know that the fashion in PC words has changed over time. If it doesn't sound like they meant it as an insult, then it probably wasn't meant to be.

OTOH it's perfectly possible to be racist/sexist/disablist etc while using words which individually aren't counted as non-PC. A younger colleague recently referred to an acquaintance of hers as "a bit special" which sounds like it ought to be a compliment, but definitely isn't!

I have a lovely young friend who is very politically aware with strong ethical beliefs etc. She is 16.

She kept using the terms 'hmm very 'special' and 'thats a bit 'special' until I asked her not to and explained why.

She was clearly shocked at how offensive it was to use 'special in this way when you actually thought about it. She hasnt done it since although I sometimes hear her correcting herself before it comes out

She just didnt know. She is very intelligent and educated.

I think its a sign of her real emotional intelligence that she has decided the terms she used are not worth hanging on to. Just because she 'doesnt mean it like that'.

Some adults could learn from this 16 year old.

I used 'mixed race' btw. I use it because I dislike the dual and bi type terms as I dont see my children as half/half of anything. They are a mix. Half caste is vile though.

What a old of bollocks. Of course you weren't racist, OP.

I work in a small firm with 4 other women that encounter clients regularly. We are all around the same height and build, and aged between 36 and 50. 4 of the 5 of us have dark hair and none of us have any obvious scars or tattoos or piercings that would distinguish us. The most obvious difference between us is our ethnicity. We have one white british, one eastern european, two (different) Asian backgrounds and one black African lady.

When a client rings up to ask who he is going to be meeting at court, I can assure you that my colleague doesn't mess around saying things like "KFP, you know, the one with the slightly larger breasts and fractionally longer hair. No, you are thinking of Colleague1, she's about an inch shorter and a dress size smaller'. She says 'KFP. No the asian lady is Colleague1, KFP is the white lady".

It is actually quite offensive to think that people are incapable of recognising and referring to obvious physical differences without automatically lapsing into unthinking racism, or that those hearing the comments are incapable of telling the difference.

Everyone is dual heritage, because everyone has got two parents. How many people could say that both their mother and father have only one nationality in the backgrounds? Therefore we are all a mix of different nationalities and ethnicities.

That is true karma (that everyone is a mix).

So why is it usually only children with parents who are different skin colours who are referred to as 'dual heritage'. Dont make no sense to me.

On a total tangent (but never one to miss an opportunity) the more people who realise their mixed heritage the more people might start realising how important it is to sign up to the BONE MARROW register.

Cos the larger the pool of donors the more chance you or one of your DCs will get a match.

As you were

I remember my DD then 4 running out of nursery saying she had made a new friend....I said thats great lets ask her mummy is she can come to playetc... what does she look like..

Well mummy she has a shiney shoes and a silver coat and a pink cardi......
(she was the only black child in nursery) for some reason i felt really proud of my daughter as she didnt seem to care what colour/race/disability her 'friends' had... they were just her 'friends' ;)

Little girls mum thought it was funny DD just didnt say the little black girl ;)

My dd would say 'the lady with the brown skin' or would say 'the lady with the yellow hair' (she means blonde but doesn't recognise blonde as a colour). Children just describe what they see, it is only adults who load every word with significance and try to put people in boxes.

CoffeeDog, one of my DDs would say shiny shoes etc because she's a very girly girl and that's what she'd notice. The other DD would probably say, 'the black girl with the pink cardi'. Personally, I wouldn't worry that DD1 noticed skin colour and DD2 only shoes. I guess I want them to see both as an acceptable physical description because I want them to view skin colour as just that; a physical descriptor. ie, it's only relevance is when you are physically describing someone.
I guess that's what upset me yesterday, because it flew in the face not only of what I believe but of what I'm teaching my kids.

So what's the cut off age, then? What's the age over which it's OK to say coloured, cripple and queer? How about Negro?

Well, I'm mid 40s, and Coloured was the term I was taught was polite when I was a child, though I know that is not the case now. Even I was taught "disabled person" rather than "cripple". And I'm not sure that "queer" was ever used as a polite term? "Negro" was probably considered polite a long time ago?

The thing is, if you're over say 65, you may spend a lot of your time with other people in that age group, and not be as aware that some terms are just not the accepted ones any more. If you say "cripple" without meaning to be insulting, and the people you normally chat to don't see anything wrong in the term and pull you up on it, how are you going to realise that it's not the done thing any more? There's nothing fundamentally rude about the word, its just things change over time.

So I'd say over about 65 I'd cut people some slack, so long as it was just the word and not the underlying attitude that was wrong. 50s upwards I'd probably pull them up on it, but politely.

seeker, it is never ok really - but it is very hard to get old people to change their ways. I remonstrate with my own parents (mid-70s) if they ever come out with any odd stuff that was acceptable in the "olden days" but I'm not sure I'd take on a stranger over 70, in the same way I would with someone my own age or younger. I try to look at the motivation behind the comment - was it offensive, or just using language that is not ok any more. My parents are generally polite & respectful & not prejudiced but my mum still refers to lesbians & homosexuals as "a bit queer". My dad would also describe someone as "coloured" but not in an offensive way, simply because that is the word he has always used. Me & my brother & sister have told them that these aren't the words people use any more, but they still do it. I don't think they are being offensive though, just stuck in their ways.

It took my mum about 10 years of training to get her to drop the use of the term 'gay' to mean happy and to use it to mean what she terms 'homosexuals' (which is also fine, I think).

She wasn't being difficult, at the time (probably 15-20 years ago), the word had a dual meaning, now one of those meanings has completely vanished.

She didn't have a lot of reason to say the word 'gay' anyway, and I didn't live at home at the time, so couldn't remind her. We did use to tease/correct her though if she said 'he's such a gay chap' (meaning in the happy sense). So, through a few incidents like this, and seeing it in the newspapers in only the homosexual sense, it became second nature for her to say this.

I don't even attempt to correct my nearly ninety year old granny when she talks affectionately about her fancing a 'coloured minister' at her church seventy years ago. To her, this is polite, I don't want to correct her only to make her feel like talking about different ethnic groups is something difficult or you shouldn't do.

seeker - coloured was the polite term.
Cripple and Queer have never been polite terms - they've always been descriptors, yes, but never meant to be polite.

seeker I often find myself agreeing with you, but not in this case. As nickelbabe says "Coloured" was the polite term. It's not the same as saying queer at all.

See the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP

As for the dual heritage I find that a bit odd. To be honest I can't think of a situation where I'd want to say mixed-race anyway - people seem to want to say it about their own children, but 'dual heritage' actually says something different.

If you said "two of my grandparents were from africa, one was French and one Indian" then 'dual' doesn't fit and heritage means a lot of things.

Technically 'race' is the wrong word since we are all the same race, but we all know what we mean by it.. Not sure what a biologist would call it.

Coloured isn't that dissimilar to crippled though - it would have been quite acceptable at one point to talk of being a cripple, or crippled.

It's an interesting question for me on how people would like to be described.

When dd1 was about 4 she suddenly started noticing different skin colour, so I asked a lovely Negro lady that I knew fairly well how she would like to be described. Her immediate response was "black". She said she was proud to be the colour she was and had no issue with people describing her the "way she was."

She then asked dd1 what colour she thought herself was. Dd1 looked carefully down at her arms, which have quite distinct veins and said: "I'm pink with blue stripes."

DeWe @ your dd. Too cute

My children have all used brown as a descriptive term because they are being literal and not political.

As they get older they begin to use the term black to describe themselves and others.

Have I told you about my neigbour across the road who never says 'black' out loud but only mouths it?

'cos they dont like it'

Doesnt matter how many times I tell her its fine, she wont have it. But then she is 'scared' of people with learning disabilities so the less said the better

"...pink with blue stripes."