[quote Cacacoisfarraige]@PurpleOkapi
My mums not racist but she’s old fashioned. When we grew up (ireland 70’s/80’s) there were no black or Asian families in our school.
As a consequence my mum doesn’t have any black friends. Once when we were out she referred to someone as ‘coloured’. I said ‘that’s not what we say anymore’ - she replied ‘I thought that’s what people preferred. She then said , it’s hard when these things change and no-one tells you. I’m guessing she learned her during the end of the SA apartheid regime which was widely pushed for and welcomed in Ireland
She’s nearly 80. She still calls Europe ‘the continent’😂
Ireland is a much more multicultural place nowadays, but she spends her free time with other 70+year olds playing bridge.[/quote]
I am in my seventies. When I was a child, say 6 years old, it was perfectly acceptable in England to call someone "coloured", more polite than saying "black". "Cape-coloured" in South Africa was a specific description. If you were to find some BBC material from, say, 65 years ago, you might find the word "negro" used in what in those days was a perfectly respectable way. When I was older "Black Power" came to the fore - Malcolm X, young men making black power salutes at the Olympics etc., and so I learned that now I was to say "black", it wasn't a little bit rude any more, it was the accepted word. (Yes, I did see Denzel in the Spike Lee film - who wouldn't?) Now we are at a point where it's considered in some circles to be ok for me to describe a person as a "person of colour" but awful beyond belief if I say "coloured person". Logically, it's rot. The words black and white infuriate me, and so far in my life I have never seen a white person or a black person. Brown, beige, cream, ok. I have added this because I realised that this evolution of terms isn't known by everyone. I was talking to a younger person at the time. I don't care if this is de-railing.
We don't know what was actually said. Harry did say that he was surprised by it. Correct me on that if I'm wrong. The actual words used would be interesting to hear, but I don't think we'll ever know. The things that they both did say AND didn't say have left everyone in the RF under suspicion, except HMTQ and PP, and that seems unfair to all of those who didn't say it.