To refer to a black man as a black man

[ShakeRattleNRoll]

The other day i was talking about this black man who lives down the road to a neighbour and she said it was politically incorrect of me to say 'you know that black man who lives there' after I had said it.I thought well i never.What's wrong with calling him a black man when he is a black man? How should have I described him? TYIA

stooshe, I don't know what's happened to MN at the moment with all these threads. The sheer number on the general theme of 'Was this racist?' seem beyond coincidence. And the number of awful, dismissive posts about it is frankly making me feel like leaving MN, at least for a while. Utter shit.

Mumsnet has a very large population of the Professionally Unoffended.

Thanks rootypig and stooshe.

I agree Eldritch and the dismissive replies are eyeopening.

Good on you for fighting the good fight, Amberleaf. I just haven't the heart for it at the moment.

I find this whole thing a bit of a nightmare.

I have friends of every spectrum of every colour and from all over the world. I have two friends called Betty with almost identical surnames, and we call them White Betty & Black Betty just to make it easier to work out which one we are talking about - but I did wonder if that was somehow racist.

DS also ran into difficulty at school, as he was talking to two girls after the holidays. One of them is white and the other has a white mother and a black dad. The white/black girl was boasting about how great her tan was to DS & the white girl and DS said, well you would have a better tan, because your dad is black. The girl complained to the teacher that DS was racist, DS gets hauled in to see the Headteacher & I get a phone call about my son's racist comments

Was DS racist or was that just a statement of fact? I argued very strongly to the Headteacher that it wasn't racist - but was I wrong?

"DS said, well you would have a better tan, because your dad is black. The girl complained to the teacher that DS was racist, DS gets hauled in to see the Headteacher & I get a phone call about my son's racist comments"

But presumably when it was explained what your ds had actually said, no more was said about it?

PostBellumBugsy

You might need your own thread for that one, not sure what to say really i'm .

I know you have to be very careful these days what ever you say.

"I know you have to be very careful these days what ever you say."

No you don't. You just have to be kind and good mannered.

But all you people who have sooooooo many black friends would know that already..........

No, curlew. Even though DS's comment was verified as correct by the other girl, the Headteacher was still trying to make out that it was a racist comment.

I was horrified, as I don't think we could be a less racist family. We have multi-coloured, multi-national relatives, friends etc. I couldn't care less what colour someone's skin was - it just doesn't matter to me at all.

I argued really strongly that it wasn't racist but a statement of fact. I asked her to justify how it was racist, as he wasn't pre-judging this girl or being unkind or in any way derogatory and I said that if she put this on DS's school record I would take it up with the PTA, board of trustees, my MP etc etc etc.

However, it did really make me wonder if perhaps somehow it was racist & I just couldn't see it.

What happened when you involved the governors?

My elderly mother had an incident recently whereby an asian gentleman was making light of the fact about him not needing to get a tan from the sun.My mother being friendly just agreed with him to keep him on side but I told my mother it was not ok to do this because two wrongs don't make a right.I told my mother it was not right of her to make a joke about this even though the Asian gentleman had made a joke about it.
PBB I can understand both sides of the story but in future somethings are best left un said.I'm sure your boy won't be doing that again in a hurry.I'm sure he didn't mean to be racist.It's all gone pear shaped

Curlew you do have to be careful what you say despite being friendly and good mannered.My opening post explains that

I think it is ok. It's only like saying the ginger guy or tall guy or guy with a big beard surely!

PostBell we have two close friends with the same first name but different ethnic backgrounds.

DD use to say Uncle Mike and Pink Mike. Then I taught her how to say Uncle Mike and Mike LastName when she needed to differentiate.

She could cope with this age 3 - its not difficult.

Re your DS I don't think that was racist, just a statement of fact.

My DD, at aged 5 got accused of making a racist remark when she said a girl had a black face, and the girl got upset. When I got to the bottom of it DD was actually referring to the look on the girls face rather than the colour of her face and was mirroring a comment straight out of a school book she had been read. I felt sad that the girl got upset. DD did not understand at although I tried to explain. We just work towards many ways of identifying people without defaulting to colour - which in multicultural London where we live, usually isn't that helpful anyway.

DD's father is Brit/Caribbean, I'm Caucasian. Not that it makes any difference.

DD's father and his family proudly identify as Black. I've sadly been subject to more racist comments from them than I would have thought possible. They usually won't even take on board that what they say/do is racist - or if they do they feel fully justified in it and it's OK for them to say because they are black

I don't let their ignorance bother me and I just try my best to bring up my DC in a world full of equal people, or many colours, physicalities, religions and backgrounds where everyone matters and everyone is important.

I hear people described as 'that black woman' ALL THE TIME unnecessarily and actually 'that white woman' doesn't really come up much... Even in groups where there is only one white person. Generally it's a non black person who would describe someone as a 'black man/women' in the same way that a non white person would describe someone as a 'white man/woman'. It's unlikely that people of a certain race/colour of skin/sexual preference etc would use what is common to them as a defining feature, they are more likely to use it as a describing feature when someone is different to them.

No. Your opening and subsequent post says that you used a man's colour to identify him when there was no other sensible way of doing so.

Somebody stupid then told you that this was racist. Everybody on this thread from every side of the argument since has said that it is not racist to use somebody's skin colour as an identifier if that is the only sensible way of doing it.

So you don't have to be careful what you say. Just be polite.

Curlew the person who pulled me up on my comment to my surprise was a very senior person at the BBC and I was told this would be unacceptable to say this at the BBC/in life.I am polite and kind etc and definetly not racist but I still have to be careful what I say especially after my friend at the BBC pulled me up on it.

So, a (presumably) non-black person starts a thread about the correct term to call black people.

General jist (sp) of the thread is people bleating about having to be careful so not to offend anyone and the PC brigade, ad nauseum.

Just why?

I really don't think it's black people who are sat there constantly thinking about the colour of our skin. We have the non-black folk to do it for us.

Sorry i spoke

Well the very senior person in the BBC is wrong. Simple as that.

So am I. Sorry you spoke, that is.

IMO using someone's race/colour to describe them using descriptive, factual terms is fine. Identifying someone's race when it is irrelevant is not.

The thing is, as with all isms, it is impossible for those born into a position of privilege (in the sense of never being discriminated against for that particular reason) to truly empathise. If we are good people we can have a go, but we will never really 'get' it.

If a black person tells you they find a particular term offensive or a particular way of being treated dismissive, stop using/doing it even if you didn't intend any offence.

I think the thing is, it is bewildering.

You think you are going through life being polite, being respectful, treating people as they come - regardless of what they look like, where they come from, what they do, what sex they are, what religion they are, whether they are gay or straight and then all of a sudden you unwittingly step on some kind of landmine that you didn't even know was there.

One of my closest friends, who is from Dehli, refers to himself as Brown Boy. We always laugh, but then I'm thinking - shit does that make me racist because I'm laughing at my friend refer to himself as Brown Boy. If a white person called him Brown Boy, no doubt everyone would have a fit. I have another friend, who refers to herself as LezzerLiz because she is gay. Again, it always makes us laugh, but presumably if anyone else called her that, it would be a all wrong.

DS is autistic & finds the whole thing a nightmare to negotiate because there are so many unwritten rules. I find myself, telling him not to refer to anyone by anything other than their name. We've stopped using White & Black Betty because I was so nervous that it could be perceived as somehow racist if said in the wrong context by DS.

Why did penis size come into the conversation?

Funny isn't it? If you said the fat lady or the South african guy or the red headed lady on the corner would they be considered offensive? If you live in a part of the country where being black or foreign or really really pale (as I was when I lived in Lewisham - cause I am super pale even by most white people's standards) I wouldnt find it offensive. I know that until recently I was the fat Aussie lady - it wasn't offensive I was fat and I am Australian.... Why take offense if none was intented?