AIBU or is it not acceptable these days...

[Pickles89]

to refer to black people as 'The Blacks'?

I've just had a massive row with my parents. My mum was enthusing over a film they watched last night, and saying how positive it was that The Blacks were well represented, with A Black as one of the main characters. Not, 'black people' or 'a black person' but The Blacks. It made me feel tense and uncomfortable and I pointed out that it's not 'done' to talk like that in this day and age. She turned round and gave me a bollocking saying that it's the meaning behind terms you use that's important, and how you treat people, not how you refer to them, and that she and the rest of her white, middle-class generation (her words) won't be 'corrected' by their children.

Now she's not talking to me. Wonderful. The thing is it made me uncomfortable, and I could imagine using such language might not go down too well in wider society either. It's true that she wasn't saying anything derogatory about black people, quite the opposite, but I still felt I should made her aware. AIBU, or am I being oversensitive and officiously 'PC'?

While I’m white and I know I won’t ever understand what it feels like to hear those words, But I’m Irish and have heard discrimination too.

For me I find it’s only offensive when the intent is to be unkind. I’ve been called fenian before, I’ve only been offended if it was used in a discriminatory way. I’ve also been called Paddy before in both ways also, same thing . I’ve also had An American joke about our kind being drunk and aggressive, it didn’t offend me because it wasn’t meant that way. My cousin was gravely offended though

OP, I don't think it was the worst crime in the world, as people have said terminology is always changing and your mother is right, the important thing is how we treat people.

I think this is a time where we should try to be more tolerant of the foibles of the people we are enclosed with. Everyone is tense and worried

You're a grown woman, your mother can't tell you off for god sake. She said a racist thing and got annoyed annoyed when you challenged her. Keep challenging.

Bame is the worst kind of middle class parochialism. Usually used by people who think they're so right on.

Example usage: We really want to encourage more bame participation in this event

Meaning: we just need a token non-white person to make us feel better about inclusivity.

Was there any black people present/within earshot? Are you black? Just let her know that people might get funny about it then move on. As for BAME no, just no.

I've heard that a lot from her generation. It's not acceptable, times change. I also heard 'coloured' from a 45year old HR woman about a new employee not long ago. The horror on my face actually made her go bright red & flustered, so she knew it was wrong.

Here we go again.

When will ageism be an offence?

It's nothing to do with age or generation.

It's to do with Ignorance. Generally of the Willfull type.

They know better, they just choose to be offensive.

I've heard that a lot from her generation. It's not acceptable, times change. I also heard 'coloured' from a 45year old HR woman about a new employee not long ago. The horror on my face actually made her go bright red & flustered, so she knew it was wrong.

My point. Proven.

She is of course, very wrong! But it a generational thing as well.

Would she talk like that, use those words, out in society or just in the privacy of her own home?
If only the latter, then you can try and correct her, gently, sway her in the right direction.
If she’s one of these people that would say this in front of anyone, anywhere, then you need to absolutely tell her off, stick to your guns and explain this just is not acceptable anymore full stop.

How old is she op?

I also have lived through terminology changes, and it can be difficult if you don’t know. For me, as well as correcting people, you need to do so in line with the intent behind the words they used.

So I agree with your mother to an extent, a gentle correction but acknowledging her good intent is the way forward.

If someone has bad intent, then yes that’s very different, but it doesn’t appear to be the case here.

My daughter got the arse with me a couple of years ago, because I used the wrong word for transgender or transsexual, i got it the wrong way round or something, and she was a typical woke teen at the time. I simply said to her, you know full well I made a genuine mistake there, my intent was good, you need to look behind the intent of someone’s words before you decide how to act, which she acknowledged.

So for me, a correction always has to be made, but how you do that, is based on the intent behind the words. One day in a a few decades, you too might make a genuine mistake.

OP, I’m sorry this happened. My DPs can be awful about this. Apparently it’s fine to describe a colour as being ‘n word brown’. No, DM, it’s absolutely not okay and if you think I’m not going to call you out on it every time you have another think coming. Why don’t we just call And Then There Were None what it’s called now, we all know what it used to be called thank you, no need for a family argument.

It is partly bloody-mindedness, an I won’t be told what language to use attitude. But they DO have a racist attitude towards black people in the sense that I think your DM probably does, an attitude that black people are more homogenous than white people, and are very patronising, with a lot of stereotypes (mainly ‘positive’ stereotypes). My ILs are similar, overly, patronisingly positive, very ‘othering’ and use the word ‘coloured’ however I do believe they mean well.

It is infuriating. Your mum is being a prize pillock about it which suggests you’ve touched a nerve. Leave her alone to think about what she’s done. YANBU

Aside from the fact that it would be a bit clumsy/long-winded to say when referring to one person - would you say she is 'B.A.M.E.', spelling out the letters, or 'Bame', as if it were a word - surely it's as incorrect from a purely logical language pov as when the likes of Rebecca Vardy or Colleen Rooney are described singly as 'a WAG'?

Collectively, the term makes grammatical sense (albeit reductive and patronising), but just as you wouldn't describe an individual woman as 'a wife and girlfriend', why would you describe a single person as 'a BAME'? On an individual level, it sounds dismissive and, ironically, racist i.e. 'I'm only interested in white people, and that's not you so you don't count'. Not unlike describing a single person as 'a foreigner' rather than 'a Swede/Swedish'.

Even when used for a group or community in general, it's still not a term that travels very well. I'm very pale, so if I were living in a Nigerian village, I would be a minority ethnic, as would any Asian people there too, and the vast majority of the population would obviously be black; ergo referring to 'BAME people' there would be the same as saying 'people'. "We need to consider the needs of the 'people' population" - what, specifically as opposed to those of the horses, goats or elephants?

I hate "the blacks" "the gays" "them muslins" and I always correct when I hear it by the older generation

How about not referring to people by their skin colour? I find that works quite well.

is WASE (white and single ethnicity) an acronym all you white people who use BAME are happy with ?

I don’t know of any individual who uses BAME or ‘a BAME’ in conversation. My understanding is that the acronym originated as a descriptor in government and civil service to identify statistics, in the same way NEETs did.

I’m sure businesses adopted the term as shorthand and that it might have infiltrated to use by the general population to refer to a person is somewhat horrifying. And hugely inaccurate.

As for the blacks, the gays, the Muslims...people seem to think adding ‘community’ makes it more acceptable but to me it’s still mentally putting all people who fit the word into a village hall together, where they all think and act alike because of a single commonality.

Going off at a tangent here, but I worry about whether using the term "Oriental" to describe a person's appearance is currently still acceptable or not? I feel uncomfortable when I see/hear people being described as Chinese when a person's heritage is unknown - in much the same way that not everyone from the Indian subcontinent is Pakistani.

If it isn't acceptable, I suppose I could use Asian but that seems very broad (although perhaps no broader than describing someone as Western or white). South East Asian? "From the Far East"? What is the currently acceptable term?

I don't spend my time referring to people by their skin colour, but equally, on the occasions when conversation makes it necessary, I'd like to not offend.

If you use Asian in the same way that you'd use European then there isn't a problem but only if you know they are Asian. I used to know a Welsh person who had a Welsh parent and an Indian one. We met when he came round to collect something he was buying from my house - a colleague put us in touch, I'd never met him and said he's a Welsh guy, goes by the name of Yestyn. Yestyn knocked on my door later that night and was obviously not looking like you'd assume a Welsh guy but he preferred to be described as Welsh, he was born there and had grown up there and had never been to India so I expect he'd have found being called Asian as annoying if not offensive.

I suppose the reality is that what works for many people might offend some, and the intent can often be deciphered from the context.

Surely using BAME is basically no different than referring to a group of people as 'The Blacks'.

It's still putting certain members of the population into a 'handy' ethnic 'lump'.

I know black people that HATE HATE HATE the term BAME!
They are black and want to be referred to as such.
They are not coloured or brown!
They are definitely not 'the blacks' though!
That's awful!

BAME are you kidding me? That's so offensive.

I grew up listening to Bob Dylan ( The Hurricane.. apparently he had Ruben Carter's permission to use a certain word to put across the full impact the word carries) and Lou Reeds "Walk on the wild side")
I think as pp have said, intention is everything when using emotive words,
mistakes are allowed to happen so that people are able to have conversations about what some people find offensive and why.

I hate the excuse of - that’s what I said growing up so I can’t possibly learn to say anything in a less offensive way. My mum does it (in fact she has got WORSE as she ages which contradicts the ‘I’ve always said this’ trope. No, you actually didn’t) they’ve learnt new words like ‘WiFi’ and ‘internet’ and have learnt how to use mobile phones. They sure as hell can learn to use a less offensive term to describe people.

I'm 71, I would never in my wildest imagination even think of using terms like the OP's mother used.

Nor would I use any of the terms that Quickquestion2020 seems to think are exclusively used by 'the older generation'.

This is probably more to do with the fact that I'm not an ignorant arse than anything else.

What I find strange, with all this ageism on MN and the idea that it's only the older generation that use those sort of offensive term, is that the vast majority of racist and homophobic attacks are carried out by young men and not, as would seem to be the case if MN is to be believed, by gangs of marauding geriatrics.

gangs of marauding geriatrics.

Would she be ok being described as 'the whites'? She is BU, well done for calling her out on it.

My grandmother is lovely and not racist. I still call her out for refering to people as 'coloured'. People need to be told, age is NOT an acceptable reason for doing as you please.