What’s the earliest usage of this phrase? Is it inherently racist in its design, or was it twisted at some point?
If not, when did “spade” become a derogatory term for “black person?”
I always assumed it referred to the shovel like tool. And I live in the South where stereotypically we’re all a bunch of bigots.
I always understood it as being an admonition for clear speech, along the lines of “Call a spade a spade, not an instrument for the excavation of earth”, with any racist meaning being a much later “joke”.
Ah, yes. Thousands of years old. Jesus said unto his followers: “Thou shalt call a spade a spade!”
Those damn Mesopotamians and their gardening implement related wisecracks!
You mean it’s not about cheating at cards?
And then He called Mary Magdalene a hoe…
Gah. This is starting to get up there with words ending in gry.
“Calling a spade a spade” has no racist connotations whatsoever. IIRC, the English phrase came about as the result of a bad translation from ancient Greek. It’s actually a mistranslation from Plutarch (and goes back even further) except the original is more correctly rendered, “to call a kneading-trough a kneading-trough.”
Oh, and I think there should be a special *Revtim exception to the rule about not wishing death on someone . . .
Another explanation which goes into more detail along the lines of what Truth Seeker was © R-ing.
This seems to answer all your questions: http://www.quinion.com/words/topicalwords/tw-spa1.htm
Synopsis: The phrase “call a spade a spade” is as described by previous posters. “Spade” = black person derives from “black as the ace of spades” (analogous to “white as snow”), and comes from the early 20th century. (The full phrase “black as the ace of spades” no doubt goes back well before that, not referring to dark-skinned people, but I haven’t yet found a first recorded use.)
Black as the ace of spades to refer to the color of an African-American was a not uncommon phrase in the 1820’s in the US. I found an 1821 cite easily.