To have called this lad "black"...

[ExitStageLeft]

Genuinely unsure about this and need the bluntness of AIBU.

I work at a college, was working with a group of young men and one wandered off. I poked my head back into the office and asked if anyone had seen the missing student. My colleague asked what he looked like and I said:

"He's wearing a denim jacket, got dark rimmed glasses on â?? black lad."

My colleague was shocked I used his colour to describe him.

Totally prepared to be told AIBU...not in the least bit racist and will be quite embarrassed if I've got it to wrong....

GO!

Indian probably isn't OK unless the person is actually Indian by nationality or birth. I wouldn't be wild on being called Indian (I am half Indian by heritage) because I am not, in fact, Indian. I am English by birth, culture and heritage. The last time one of my ancestors was actually Indian it was the 18th century. In the intervening period some of them were West Indian/Caribbean, and then some of them were English (but Asian/dark-skinned/of Indian heritage). But nobody in my family who is currently alive or is remembered by someone living is actually Indian. Asian would be OK, or mixed race (even though I loathe the term race).

Black is perfectly OK and your colleague is nuts. And what MrsDeVere said.

Ic not if. Sigh.

newbie but the op has stated they were all young men who dressed similarly and he happened to be the only black one. Skin colour is such a distinguishable feature yet we're made to feel bad about mentioning it

Ok I stand corrected but it against my understanding of these things. I'll continue to exercise caution in this area.

I thought the police used ic codes

Only on The Bill

Your colleague is a bit 90s IMO

The Police use IC codes, I did when I was in and I still use them now in security work, however most people without that sort of background dont know their meanings. I often mix up IC4-6, so its easier using ethnic description, alongside other description words.

I had to describe a guy at work once
Described his team
His hair
His brown eyes
What he was wearing
His girlfriend
His best friend
It went on
Finally they said "you mean * with 1 arm?"
So hard to be pc

suitsyousir I think our Force does in reports etc but in day to day radio transmissions never. But then even using them you're just saying the same only in a code

My other half says he is black and would expect to be described as such. I heard him describing himself to a new boss as black, he's the only black man on the team. The boss had only met them all briefly and asked over the phone which one are you remind me what you look like, he said I'm the black guy.

He says he is most definitely not a person of colour. He says white people are far more colourful, we go red when embarrassed, Brown when tanned, green when ill, and blue when cold

I can't understand why anyone would think it wrong. How could saying someone's colour be wrong when describing someone. I'd think it was offensive to omit his colour as if it was something distasteful.

Like others, I listened to a conversation in a room of important, educated professionals trying to differentiate between two people of the same name. One was black, one was white. 5 minutes it took them to describe every single differing characteristic before someone was finally brave enough to state the obvious. Hilarious it was! I was only there to observe so could quietly sit there rolling my eyes at the sheer stupidity of it.

No you were not being unreasonable. You described him accurately.
Why do people always look for a racist element in everything.
I bet it wouldn't have even bothered the man in question.

Like it, QOD. There's a story in my family that my uncle (this is back in the 70s) had to describe over the phone to his bank manager a description of the man who was bringing in a cheque. My uncle said "he's wearing a grey suit". He didn't like to mention the hair lip because the man was sitting in the same room.

"you bitch" is acceptable. (possibly not to the 'bitch')
"you black bitch" is not.

"He's black" is acceptable.
"he's the black bastard" is not.

It is true that people of colour of any kind are mostly in a minority in the UK at the moment. As that evolves and changes, it will be a less-useful identifier, and then it will die out naturally, won't it.

When I did diversity training, they said that people don't generally find compliments which are all inclusive insulting. So 'black men have big dicks' or 'Asians work hard' generally ok. "Yanks are loud", "French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys" not so good!

I quite like "political correctness gone mad", because it makes us think. To my utter, utter, utter shame, I used the term "half caste" to a black woman about 15 years ago. She was describing a youth group and I was struggling to understand who was welcome to attend it, and I'd not come across the term "BME" before. When I said "Oh... you mean half caste" and saw the look in her eye, something inside me died. I felt like everyone's granny... the world had changed and I hadn't noticed. (one of my best friends at school had a black and a white parent, which was rare back then, 10,00000 years ago, and she was often thus described. Not by her, I now remember)
And what kills me, even today, is that this woman went away from what was supposed to be a very positive meeting thinking she'd just met a racist.
I think about the language I use very carefully!

YANBU

hopping my 9 year old DS said the same to me. I think it's something they've picked up in school/been taught. I told him that it wasn't racist to call someone black as a description the same as it wasn't racist to describe someone as white/Asian if they were.

YANBU and I am black

"Person of color" in the US is not a synonym for black. It is an expression that was devised to replace "non-white." And it is not the same as "colored" which is considered offensive because it is a term associated with segregation and did only refer to black people.

I was in the US a couple of weeks ago, and came across black people who found the term black very insulting, and wanted to be called people of colour.

I dither on this now i worked with a woman called Sarah a tall black woman she was my manager and one day i couldn't find her anywhere so i asked at the nearest desk "have you seen the floor manager sarah" guy at the desk said no what does she look like i said "tall with a bun hairstyle and heels on" couldn't say black as i was self conscious about being racist she walked by after and i called her name she came over to me he looked at me like and i was so mortified

Charis, as someone else pointed out the first time you mentioned this on this thread, the terminology used in the US and the UK is very different.

I always say dark skinned

I'd like to point out, OP, that the recent national protest movement in the US regarding deaths of black men at the hands of police uses the theme "Black Lives Matter." I have seen nothing in the press or in discussions online or in RL where people find this insulting to black people. I think the people you met are a small minority.

Sorry, I was relying to Charis, not the OP.

I've been on US sites where posters have been (rightly) torn to shreds for calling someone a retard. A couple of times I pointed out that spaz was just as offensive, explained why, and been completely ignored. The same people who were up in arms about people using the word retard then went on merrily using spaz.

This is because "spaz" does not resonate the same way in the US as it does in the UK; it is more like using the word "idiot." There are a lot of reasons for this, one of which is that "spastic" was never generally used in the US for cerebral palsy as it was in the UK. That is changing, though, with more globalized discussion, and it is becoming less acceptable in the US.