# Straight hair (May be un-PC) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 5, 2004, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088 "2004-11-05T00:11:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/41 "2004-11-06T04:27:39Z")
I have really straight hair. Remember that Harlem Globetrotters cartoon? There was the one guy with the big mofo afro that he could pull all sorts of useful stuff out of…that was kinda his super power? I used to sit there and think: Man! I wish I could do that! ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/42 "2004-11-06T04:44:06Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Heh, well according to crazy ol’ me, there are no black people in any other countries. Everywhere else, a person of African descent is either an immigrant (or his descendant) or a native. Sorry, I guess that didn’t clarify anything. My obtusely made point was that black (or Negro or whatever) is a political and cultural title here because of circumstances unique to the U.S., and not just a superficial physical descriptor. That’s why I don’t think it can really be imported to other countries, because anywhere else the idea of “black people” is meaningless. But, then again, I don’t know everything about every other country in the world, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But from where I sit, it’s weird for a country to have a term that arbitrarily lumps Trinis, Somalians, and black Americans together for no reason other than skin color. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/43 "2004-11-06T04:52:46Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Sorry, I guess that didn’t clarify anything. My obtusely made point was that black (or Negro or whatever) is a political and cultural title here because of circumstances unique to the U.S., and not just a superficial physical descriptor. That’s why I don’t think it can really be imported to other countries, because anywhere else the idea of “black people” is meaningless. But, then again, I don’t know everything about every other country in the world, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But from where I sit, it’s weird for a country to have a term that arbitrarily lumps Trinis, Somalians, and black Americans together for no reason other than skin color. It’s no different, from my point of view, as saying “Whites” or “Asians” or any other very general descriptor. The word for black people in (some) other languages is “black”, so I doubt that it’s an American sociopolitical thing. Negro itself just means black in Spanish. Black _is_ a physical descriptor, albeit an inaccurate one (because they’re not actually black, obviously). Now if you said “African-American” didn’t make sense in any other culture (and I have heard black Europeans referred to as African American) then I could understand. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/44 "2004-11-06T05:16:21Z")
> [@TellMeI'mNotCrazy](#): > > It’s no different, from my point of view, as saying “Whites” or “Asians” or any other very general descriptor. Well, white is a political term here too, naturally. In Europe, do people refer to foreign whites as white before they’d refer to the person’s nationality i.e., does the average Italian think of a French person as a fellow white before he’d think of him as French or even European (I really don’t know, so I 'm asking)? ---
**Author:** ![Burnt\_Sugar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee59a6/32.png) [@Burnt\_Sugar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Burnt_Sugar)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/45 "2004-11-06T05:41:21Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > Sorry, I guess that didn’t clarify anything. My obtusely made point was that black (or Negro or whatever) is a political and cultural title here because of circumstances unique to the U.S., and not just a superficial physical descriptor. That’s why I don’t think it can really be imported to other countries, because anywhere else the idea of “black people” is meaningless. But, then again, I don’t know everything about every other country in the world, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But from where I sit, it’s weird for a country to have a term that arbitrarily lumps Trinis, Somalians, and black Americans together for no reason other than skin color. _Imported_ to other countries? HAHAHA! Did you know that, in other countries, things are _not_ automatically thought of in reference to the US? The US isn’t the centre of the world. The mind boggles. For me, a black person is simply someone of African origin, who has dark skin at least to a degree. It’s irrelevant to me whether it is a legal term in America or not. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/46 "2004-11-06T05:55:16Z")
Yeah, I suspect they were called “black people” or something similar all over Europe when our baby of a country was still wetting it’s nappies. (Remember, “old buildings” over there are numbered in centuries, not decades!) Not that I don’t see what you’re saying. It is a silly label, but it’s not a uniquely or originally American silly label. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/47 "2004-11-06T06:11:40Z")
> [@Burnt Sugar](#): > > _Imported_ to other countries? HAHAHA! Did you know that, in other countries, things are _not_ automatically thought of in reference to the US? The US isn’t the centre of the world. The mind boggles. But “black” hasn’t always been the most popular term, so fact that the entire English-speaking world adopted term right after we did tells me that yes, you did import it, and yes, the US IS the center of the world. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/48 "2004-11-06T06:14:37Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > But “black” hasn’t always been the most popular term, so fact that the entire English-speaking world adopted term right after we did tells me that yes, you did import it, and yes, the US IS the center of the world. Sure. There’s no way it’s derived from the (at least) 16th-century ‘blackamoor’, is there? ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/49 "2004-11-06T06:16:06Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > … it’s weird for a country to have a term that arbitrarily lumps Trinis, Somalians, and black Americans together for no reason other than skin color. No more weird than to lump all black Americans together under one label. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/50 "2004-11-06T06:21:53Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Sure. There’s no way it’s derived from the (at least) 16th-century ‘blackamoor’, is there? No, because I’ve never heard of that. > [@](#): > > No more weird than to lump all black Americans together under one label. Yes it is, because it has a legal and political meaning here and it doesn’t over there. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/51 "2004-11-06T06:28:37Z")
**pizzabrat** , Shakespeare calls Othello “black” all over the place, as well as calling him a “moor.” According to [The American Heritage Dictionary cite](http://www.bartleby.com/61/22/B0292200.html), “The Oxford English Dictionary contains evidence of the use of black with reference to African peoples as early as 1400, and certainly the word has been in wide use in racial and ethnic contexts ever since.” 1400 was well before there \*was \* a United States of America. No harm, no foul. You just didn’t know. That’s why we’re here, right? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/52 "2004-11-06T06:32:36Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > No, because I’ve never heard of that. That’s definitive proof, is it? > [@](#): > > Yes it is, because it has a legal and political meaning here and it doesn’t over there. Suuuuuuuuuure…because the issue of colour never ever enters politics outside the USA. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/53 "2004-11-06T06:33:43Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Suuuuuuuuuure…because the issue of colour never ever enters politics outside the USA. Yes, but here we have the issue of **color** , so it’s clearly different! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/54 "2004-11-06T06:37:56Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Yes, but here we have the issue of **color** , so it’s clearly different! 😃 Hey, don’t discriminate!! ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/55 "2004-11-06T13:22:07Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > No harm, no foul. You just didn’t know. That’s why we’re here, right? 🙂 I guess its been reinforced that I’m the only one who holds that specific definition of “black”. One time I was in a shared houseing situation where one of the roommates was Madagascan (Malagassi?). Whenever I had company over, they’d eventually meet that guy, and then later ask about “that other black person in the house”. I’d stand there confused for a few seconds until I realized who they were talking about, and then promptly correct them, “Oh! He’s not black, he’s from Madagascar”. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/56 "2004-11-06T13:56:49Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > I guess its been reinforced that I’m the only one who holds that specific definition of “black”. One time I was in a shared houseing situation where one of the roommates was Madagascan (Malagassi?). Whenever I had company over, they’d eventually meet that guy, and then later ask about “that other black person in the house”. I’d stand there confused for a few seconds until I realized who they were talking about, and then promptly correct them, “Oh! He’s not black, he’s from Madagascar”. And did ya notice people looking at you a little strangely? You can’t simply co-opt a word and make it mean what you want it to. (Not without a good marketing division, anyway.) Words have meaning because people agree on what these strange sounds coming out of our mouths or shapes on a monitor mean. If you’re the only one with a particular definition, then the word becomes noise. Large groups of people, for hundreds of years agree: your friend was black AND from Madagascar. If I was at your house, and someone asked if there were any other white chicks there, would you say, “Oh! She’s not white, she’s from Chicago”? Or “She’s of mixed English/French/Irish/Welsh/German/Candian/Native American heritage?” By your definition, “white” is just as much a political term in the US as “black.” “White” connotes privilige, social standing and history that “black” doesn’t. It was used historically for hundreds of years before it came to America. And it’s just as useless when determining someone’s origins. But common usage has agreed that those of us with genetically pinkish or yellowish skin not generally disposed to deep epicanthal folds in our eyelids are called “white.” That lumps me in with grandmothers from Poland, Catherine Deneuve, Tony Blair and Nicole Kidman. What the heck do we all have in common? Common usage also agrees, in the US and outside of it, that “black” refers to people of a genetic line disposed to brown or blue skin tones who tend to have very curly hair that’s flattened along it’s shaft. Yes, there are black people from Georgia and Nigeria and Uganda and Jamaica and Trinidad and the Ivory Coast and Egypt, but they’re still black. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/57 "2004-11-06T14:17:53Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > And did ya notice people looking at you a little strangely? No, I didn’t. That’s why I kept my definition. Why, even before then, I worked with woman who I was surprised to find out was Nigerean. When I found out she was actually foreign, I said “Oh, I thought you were black”, and she said something like “that’s because I hang out with black people all the time”. So apparently, my definition is A definition, it’s just not the only one. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/58 "2004-11-07T01:08:59Z")
It’s my theory that people with curly hair want straight hair, and people with straight hair want perms. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/59 "2004-11-07T01:38:18Z")
> [@ouryL](#): > > It’s my theory that people with curly hair want straight hair, and people with straight hair want perms. You have to be more specific. To just about everyone I know, a perm is a way to straighten your hair. ---
**Author:** ![Tabby\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tabby\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tabby_Cat)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088/60 "2004-11-07T08:48:28Z")
> [@ouryL](#): > > It’s my theory that people with curly hair want straight hair, and people with straight hair want perms. Eh, my hair is Lucy Liu straight, and there’s no way that I’m going to get a perm. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-hair-may-be-un-pc/273088.md?page=4)