to think "ran away with a black man" is racist

[Slarti]

Seen a discussion on a local FB page, one of those "Who remembers parents/grandparents saying X when you were little" and everyone enjoys the nostalgia. Except this one was "Who remembers asking where you mum was and being told 'She's ran away with a black man'? And before anyone says, it isn't racist!"

My first thought was, are you sure?? Why mention racism in the first place if it's so benign? Isn't it a reference to interracial relationships being taboo/shameful/illicit? Anyway, the response on FB is unanimous - "My DM/DF/DGF/DGM used to say it all the time, so of course it isn't racist." My opinion that it might be hasn't gone down too well at all. AIBU?

it’s using a black man as ‘other’ that will come and run off with your family

You've hit the nail on the head there Moist and put into words better than I did as to why this made me uncomfortable. It's the othering.

Never heard this expression, in my innocence I thought you meant it literally. Born in the late 1960s. Didn’t have gollywogs as they were racist, my parents didn’t buy/eat South African fruit, can never use eeny meeny miny mo as the fear of saying the wrong word (which was used in the school playground) is so strong. Never heard expressions like n or p in any of our extended family. We also always used sunscreen as my mother was v opposed to getting tanned/burning.

The running away with the milkman thing stemmed from the joke about them having access to lots of allegedly eager housewives in the course of doing their rounds. People would equally joke about whether any of the children looked like the milkman. On the face of it, a saying about running away with a black man isn't likely to have the same origin.

My Dad said it every single time I asked him where my mum was. But he was a bigoted idiot.

Some people on Mumsnet surprise me with their inability to grasp nuance. My six year old is less literally minded. Of course it's racist. And of course it's not always racist to say black. It's all in the context - here there is no purpose to the descriptive except to make it sound more illicit and scandalous than just saying "a man".

I had heard the expression but it was the milkman that DM had always run away with if I asked as a child. The milkman got blamed for everything tbh, dsis doesn't look like any of the rest of us and so was always called the milkman's daughter as well.

Our family joke is that my youngest Aunt who is blonde in comparison to her dark haired siblings, is the milkman's.

That's a harmless family in-joke.

Running away with a black man is racist. End of.

I work with someone who says it regularly "if I decide to run away with a black man, you'll find x here and such and such is in that drawer"

She always whispers it too, so she knows it's racist.

X post flesh!

What does it even mean?

Bertrand I think you have it right.

Of course it’s racist, it’s suggesting that running off with a generic black man is the worst of all possible scenarios.

Revolting expression, if your friends don’t see this you need new friends.

Of course it is.
They probably had gollywogs as children and still firmly hold that they arent racist either.

I can’t believe people still say this.

My parents used to say ‘play the white man’, when wanting to say play fair, or don’t be unreasonable.

@Juells - I think it's a joke response to "where is Mum?".

Reported.

My grandma used to say this, when I asked her about it she said that she thought it came from all the girls who went off with GIs and foreign sailors (port city). She didn't use it to mean the worst thing that could happen to a girl/woman, it meant that someone had gone off and lost contact with her family.
I pointed out that the reason they probably lost contact was because they had been shunned for racist reasons. She says milk man now.
There was a lot of subconscious racism going on and passed down through families without thinking about the reasons behind it. Then people get defensive about it when they are accused of racism.

Why reported?

Absolutely it’s othering. I’ve never come across the phrase ( not from this country) but when he was a child, DH’s family used to say, if one of them was left out of something, or overlooked when cake was being distributed or something ‘What am I, Jack the Black?’ And it wasn’t intended as a subtle and incisive comment on racial discrimination....

My Mum is in her late 40's and used to say this to me, infact it was a pretty common statement in 90's Glasgow! I heard her say it to one of my siblings the other day too and I only realised then how odd it was.

It's not something I'd say myself and yes it probably has racist origins imo.

I took it to mean that mixed marriages were frowned upon and/or unusual in the past, so people conducting them ran away
That's how I took it too. As in the person posting it is recalling a memory of a time when that happened.

I've heard elderly relatives tell tales of women they knew who got pregnant out of marriage. Some of their expressions were odd and dated. But that's a reflection of tje times. My parents weren't married and nobody batted ab eye lid. As the relative said, times change.

Reported

Why?

Yes - it's racist (I can remember it being said), but unconsciously so. Whether we like or not, we are all products of our environment and the age we live in. Very few of us can break out of it. We (I hope) are more conscious of casual unthinking racism because some of those inspired people have broken out of the mould and made us aware.

Without their influence, we would be parroting the same expressions today.

Why "reported" parsnips?

It is a genuine thread with a genuine enquiry. Reporting threads at random is ridiculous!

Yes, why reported?
OP is not condoing the use of this phrase.
Hope MN does not pander to random reporting.

Why "reported" parsnips? Because it's a load of goady rubbish.

Surely people who said it weren't meaning it was the worst thing that could have happened more that it was the most unlikely. Especially if you lived in a town like mine where there wasn't any non-white families at the time (late 50s/60s).