I was just reading the comments to Cecil’s piece on blue men, and I just wanted to confirm that the Irish (Gaelic) for a “black man” is “fear gorm”, or blue man. Why this is the case, on the other hand, is a real mystery to me.
Well, I was in a classroom where the black students and the teacher got to talking about names for color, and they talked about “high yeller” for people who are mostly caucasian but have a little bit of black ancestry (= still considered black in the US, where 1/16 black and 15/16 white makes you “black”); and they talked about black folks who were really dark and/or Africans who had no caucasian ancestry being called “blue-black” because the skin almost looks dark blue (lacking the reddish-brown tones we more often see in black folks in the US).
Cite please? I have lived in the USA all my life and haven’t heard this. I’ve heard similar things about the old South Africa.
I don’t have a cite for the specific laws, but here is a reference to it. This was not true in all states, I should point out. IIRC, it was true in a few sattes in the old Confederacy, and most Northern states (who didn’t have discrimination codified into law, and therefore perhaps didn’t have to slice it quite so fine). I know that there was a local newspaper story about descendents of people who “passed,” (apparently more common in rural Upstate New York, but there was no actual evidence supplied on that, just the assertion) and one researched his grandfather’s grade school records in Indiana. A teacher had attached a note stating that he would likely “pass,” so care must be taken to classify him as negro. Fortunately, I guess, later teachers never saw it.
Mikhail, Fear Dubh, literally “black man,” refers to the devil, or someone working for the devil. Fear Gorm does mean “blue man,” but refers to people of African descent, who really aren’t black in color, either.
See Cecil’s column on the subject: What percentage of black parentage do you need to be considered black?
“One drop o’ nigger blood makes you a nigger in this state.”
– Show Boat (Original 1927 version.)
Cheers Freedom, that makes sense.
Apparently, I’m black.
(emphasis added)
This statement refers to the present and apparently to some allegedly general or semi-official criterion which I am not aware of. Cecil’s column that bibliophage linked to does not state this. I couldn’t find it in a quick reading of saoirse’s link. So I think we still need a cite.
Check the US Censis. Any trace of “Black” and you are classified as Black
I didn’t mean “officially”. Just informally, and by black people themselves, not just other folks, and not necessarily intended as insulting (i.e., as often as not a way of acknowledging that “you have to deal with it too, same as other black folks”)
Exceptions certainly exist, but if someone, on casual visual exam, appears to have some black ancestry, most folks in the US are going to consider that person black.
I usually hear Tyra Banks described (if race is mentioned) as black, although it’s really hard to imagine her having anywhere close to 50% African ancestors. She has a boatload of distinctively caucasian features and isn’t appreciably darker in hue than I am.
Tiger Woods, who considers himself to be of mixed ancestry,IIRC, is often described as a black athlete who broke a white-folks-ceiling in the sport of golf.
The only criterion used by the US Census, for any race, is self-identification. If you fill in the bubble for “black”, then as far as the Census Bureau is concerned, you’re black. If you fill in the bubble for “white”, then you’re white.
Interesting. I used to work with a lady from Khartoum, Sudan. She and her husband are both black. One time I was visiting them and he said, “In Sudan, when someone is my color, we say of him rajul akhdar, that mean ‘green man.’”
I never heard any explanation for why they say this, but the Irish example sounds like a very close parallel… especially since in Middle Eastern languages, they often say “green” for what we would call blue, for example in Arabic and Persian poetry the sky is called “green” instead of blue. I don’t know why. The boundaries of color areas are a little different for each language, I guess.