[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
I think it’s that people perceive as problematic the fact that we will say “the black guy in the polo shirt” but we usually don’t say “the white woman in the twin-set.”
[/QUOTE]
My problem is that I’d have to ask, “What’s a twin-set?”
[QUOTE=Dewey Finn]
My problem is that I’d have to ask, “What’s a twin-set?”
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=elmwood]
And, on their SDMB, their weight. Witness the inevitable trainwrecks that come with pittings of some random “inconsiderate fat woman”.
“We?” Who does that include? I often hear black people use such descriptions for white people, even in settings where most of the people in a crowd are white. Is it okay for blacks to use skin color in describing someone, but not whites?
Gotta admit, though, I cringe when I see it in print, outside of a bulletin describing a criminal at large. I also reel when I hear an older person say “that colored guy there.”
[/QUOTE]
I think this is because, in this culture some things are “better” than others. Everyone knows white is better than black, straight is better than gay, slim is better than fat and straight or loosely curled hair is better than nappy or tightly curled hair. Even the most PC liberal “we’re all brothers and sisters” types know this on a subconscious level. Even a light skinned black person can cause hard feelings by using skin color to single out a darker black person. People are all ready on edge about those terms because they’re often used negatively, so they take it the wrong way even when no offense is intended.
As for the OP, sorry that happened to your son. The other boy’s parents need to teach him to stop being so sensitive and to keep his hands to himself.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
I haven’t the time, energy or motivation to make this pit worthy, so here it is in mild format.
Casually making mention of the colour of a person’s skin is not, in and of itself, a racist attack.
On Saturday, my son (9) got punched really hard by a boy a couple of years older than him for saying “your skin is a lot browner than mine”. I think it was an absolutely innocent comment, but the boy insisted it was a racist attack.
I tried to point out that actually, it’s just a fact. If he’d said “You’re stupid because your skin is browner than mine”, or “I don’t like people with browner skin than mine”, that would be racist, but just casually commenting that the boy’s skin is more brown than his own, when it truly is more brown, is just a plain factual observation.
This argument did not prevail, so apparently now I too am a racist bully.
[/QUOTE]
Sue the other boy for a hate crime? Or would that only work if the parties had been reversed? PC at its finest.
[QUOTE=JKellyMap]
I just wanted to add that this extreme avoidance (in many but not all contexts) of mentioning the color of someone’s skin – or their approximate weight – is a particular (though not unique) trait of U.S. culture, of the past thirty years or so.
[/QUOTE]
Except that I’m pretty sure Mangetout lives in England.
Am I right?
The OP reminded me of something that happened at work one day. I work in an environment where these such descriptors do not work:
The old guy.
The old smelly guy.
The old mean guy.
The old guy with a Korea hat.
The asian guy.
The stiff.
The old guy Jerry.
The old guy Dick.
The old guy Harry.
The old guy Steve.
Ya know what works? Especially in tournaments? The well built black guy. We have ONE, very well built, very handsome, very nice black guy that plays in tournaments regularly. It’s hilarious to see all the different ways people won’t refer to him. Now, I know his name, and most regulars do. But it is still funny to have this interaction:
Me: Who is the player in that seat?
Player: Uh, a tall guy
Player2:He has on a red shirt
Player3: Short hair
Player4: It’s a polo shirt.
Kerry walks up.
Me: Oh, it’s YOU! I was wondering who it was.
Kerry: They couldn’t say the black guy, eh?
Me: Nope.
He has no end of fun with it. Mostly because, well, I think he may have noticed he is pretty distinguishable, what with all the old white guys around. (Then again, I think he would stand out in any crowd, he really is a beauty.)
Hmm… makes me kind of proud of “my boys” – the three I fostered and their friends. Randy was for quite a while “the Taekwondo guy,” the one of them with training in that martial art who would coach the others. That was the first thing I knew about him before he stopped over to visit, and how impressed they were with his skills – to hear them talk, he could break a steel girder with a harsh look – was the focus of any mention of him. Then we were downtown together and I got to meet Randy. He and two other friends of theirs were about a block away walking in our direction when they pointed him out to me. “That’s Randy, there – the black one.”
To me that says volumes about when and when not to use skin color or whatever as an identifier. What was important to them about Randy was his martial arts skills – what was a useful identifier in pointing him out at a distance was that his skin was significantly darker than the other boys’.
[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
I think it’s that people perceive as problematic the fact that we will say “the black guy in the polo shirt” but we usually don’t say “the white woman in the twin-set.”
[/QUOTE]
How about “the blonde with the dirigible tushie”?
A few years ago, it was seriously suggested that my local police department should change its policy regarding press releases that discussed suspects and other persons related to crimes. No longer would they release a bulletin saying, for instance, that a suspect was a black male 5’10" tall. Now the bulletin would say that the suspect had black hair and brown eyes and approximately 5’10" tall. NO MENTION OF RACE OR GENDER.
What’s next? “Be on the lookout for the bank robber, a carbon-based entity of indeterminate size, color, and age.”
In professional situations, I think it’s the better part of discretion for people (especially managers) to avoid drawing attention to any physical attributes. I spent Saturday evening listening to story after story of an idiot manager who repeatedly remarked on his employee’s skin colour (which of you has paler legs?), thinness/fatness (do you guys think so-and-so needs to exercise?), etc.
[QUOTE=pinkfreud]
A few years ago, it was seriously suggested that my local police department should change its policy regarding press releases that discussed suspects and other persons related to crimes. No longer would they release a bulletin saying, for instance, that a suspect was a black male 5’10" tall. Now the bulletin would say that the suspect had black hair and brown eyes and approximately 5’10" tall. NO MENTION OF RACE OR GENDER.
What’s next? “Be on the lookout for the bank robber, a carbon-based entity of indeterminate size, color, and age.”
[/QUOTE]
Press release’s are like that here.
I was driving into work one day not that long ago and on the radio I hear from the news lady, “Police are looking for a man about 5’8” to 5’10" in height connected to the robbery. And the temperature today should be…"
“Shit”, I thought, "I’m going to jail because that fits my description to a “T”'.
I agree with most people in this thread, that there’s nothing wrong with saying, “The black guy,” when you’re trying to point out one particular person in a sea of white people. At least, I think that’s what most of us are agreeing.
On the other hand, I’ve seen it go the other way. One time I was talking to the man I was dating at the time, and telling him an anecdote about my young cousin, Will. “Who’s this Will, again?” my date asked. I told him, “You know, my little cousin, he’s about eight, he was at the house today.”
“Who?”
“Gosh, you played cars with him for about half an hour.”
“Ohhhh, why didn’t you say so? The half-black one.”
Apparently in this guy’s case, if you didn’t specify that the person in question was slightly other-than-white, he couldn’t figure out who you meant.
I was pretty stung, because it had seemed like he was getting along real well with Will, but I guess the main thing going on his mind was, “Oh my heavens, this little boy is half black.”
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
On Saturday, my son (9) got punched really hard by a boy a couple of years older than him for saying “your skin is a lot browner than mine”. I think it was an absolutely innocent comment, but the boy insisted it was a racist attack.
[/QUOTE]
(My son’s 8 and never has, but I sure had my share of fights as a kid.)
I recall a recent essay in Salon by a (black) writer – the author’s kid was describing the misbehaviour of a kid in class and she asked whether the kid was black or white. The author’s kids refused to answer the question and called her out as racist – we’re describing the behaviour, why do you need to know his race?
This is what I wonder. There are contexts where that would be perfectly acceptable, and on the other hand there are also contexts where it would, in fact, be a racist attack. Compare:
“Why do you have to wear that big, floppy hat?”
“So I don’t get sunburn.”
“I don’t wear a hat like that, and I don’t get sunburn.”
“Yeah, but your skin is a lot browner than mine.”
with
“Ha, you couldn’t even make that goal? You suck!”
“Yeah, well your skin is a lot browner than mine!”
Of course, sometimes that’s not helpful even with skin color included. A few years ago, there was a rape in town, and the attacker was described as “white male, medium height, between 18 and 26 years old”. I think they might have mentioned brown hair, too, but I’m not certain. Thing is, this is a college town, with about 1% minorities. That description probably matches about three or four thousand people, out of a population of thirty thousand.
Reminds me of my aunt and baby cousin on the bus. They sat down next to a black guy and my baby cousin said, “Mommy, he’s black.” My aunt starts apologizing to the guy and he says, “No problem…I AM black!”
No cite, but I do recall of one study where a crime was staged (a bag-snatch in a high street or something similar), to assess eyewitness statements. When the perpetrator was black, most statements which mentioned colour or race identified this. When the perpetrator was white, a significant minority of statements said he was black. Basically, eyewitnesses aren’t always right.
And with far more cites, don’t forget that even members of the Met Police can mistake a Brazilian for an Ethiopian.
[QUOTE=pinkfreud]
A few years ago, it was seriously suggested that my local police department should change its policy regarding press releases that discussed suspects and other persons related to crimes. No longer would they release a bulletin saying, for instance, that a suspect was a black male 5’10" tall. Now the bulletin would say that the suspect had black hair and brown eyes and approximately 5’10" tall. NO MENTION OF RACE OR GENDER.
What’s next? “Be on the lookout for the bank robber, a carbon-based entity of indeterminate size, color, and age.”
[/QUOTE]
Why do you have to say he was carbon-based? What’s up with that, huh? Fucking silicate-centrist.
On kids hitting kids:
My daughter, adopted from China when she was 6 (now 8) was chatting with her mom about school in China. “One day this boy wouldn’t leave me alone. I finally hit him in the nose. Blood came out…a LOT of blood.”
On things kids says because they don’t know they’re supposed to be PC:
My second daughter, now 18, was about 4 when she rode the bus with her grandma, who rode every day. A friend, who was blind, got on at the next stop. Daughter, after being introduced, said something like “Look at that” while pointing out a window. After the blind person got off, grandma explained to daughter that she should have said what she was seeing instead of pointing, since the man couldn’t see. Daughter replied “Well, if he would take off those dark glasses, maybe he could see better!”
On police reporting:
My brother was a police officer in Southern California, on patrol with his partner. They stopped a suspect. When filling out the report, there was (this was 40 years ago or so) a field labled “Race” where he wrote PORT. His partner asked him what that was? His answer: Portuguese. He partner says “That’s not a race!” So my brother erases it and writes MEX. “Is that better?” And his partner, of course, answered “Yes.”
On referring to skin color, even absent malice:
On one of the adoption boards recently, a (seemingly harmless) adoptive mom posted that she loved to sing the Jesus Loves the Little Children song to her adopted Chinese daughter. Many of the regular posters came down on her like a ton of bricks. Racist was one of the nicer things she was called. VeryCoolSpouse was attempting to phrase a reply to her that was more gentle, but still let her know what the problem was. I suggested that perhaps this would be appropriate: “How can we expect to grow up in a world where our children are judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin, if we keep referring to the color of their skin?”
My point in all this: the rules for what to say and how to say it change all the time. People’s reactions are unpredictable. I sincerely hope your son was not injured, physically or emotionally. Perhaps he has learned a valuable lesson. (Not that I could say what that lesson might be.) I still make gaffes when speaking, and even when posting. This post may well turn out to be one of them.
Hee-hee. I lived for a while in an extremely small community with two women named Lucy. They were known as “Crazy Lucy” and “Nearly Normal Lucy.” Nearly Normal Lucy knew the epithets assigned; we spared Crazy Lucy from knowing what we called her behind her back.