Timeline for What is the right way to refer to someone with dark brown skin who is not African American?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
33 events
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| Jun 18, 2020 at 8:27 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| Sep 18, 2018 at 11:28 | comment | added | Flater | @AndyT: Notice the last lines of my last comment. Your feelings are your own and don't need to be logical, but when giving advice to others, your feelings are not an objective standard either. | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 11:27 | comment | added | AndyT | @Flater - I'll refer you to my previous comment: I agree logically with your points, but my feelings aren't controlled by logic. | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 11:26 | comment | added | Flater | @AndyT: There is a vast difference between not discriminating and ignoring (e.g. outlawing sexism does not entail making all bathrooms unisex or striking every mention of gender/sex from legal texts) It's an overapplication of political correctness to the point of actually introducing new problems. Rather than needlessly focusing on something, you're now needlessly ignoring it. While I do understand that you're referring how other people think of you (even if you agree with me); you're now extending that to telling others to basically fold to what other people might wrongly assume. | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 11:16 | comment | added | AndyT | @Flater - Look, I don't disagree with anything you or FiatLux have said, but the society I've grown up in (or my interpretation of it anyway) is that skin colour should be ignored. I agree logically with your points, but my feelings aren't controlled by logic. | |
| Sep 18, 2018 at 10:49 | comment | added | Flater |
@AndyT but rather I don't want to be thought of as racist for using the person's skin colour as an identifying characteristic To extend my first comment, the issue here is in thinking that someone who mentions a person's race (in every possible context) proves that they must be a racist. The issue is not in having mentioned a person's race.
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| Sep 18, 2018 at 10:47 | comment | added | Flater | @AndyT: When you're already on the 3rd round of describing the person and the other person still doesn't know who you're talking about, mentioning they're black is well within reason. There's a difference between leading with race (which suggests that that's your main discriminator between people), as opposed to mentioning it as one of many discriminators (e.g. the old friendly black bald guy). The latter doesn't mean you can't mention their race, it just means that you shouldn't lead with it or use it as the single descriptor. | |
| Sep 14, 2018 at 20:21 | answer | added | empty | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 10, 2018 at 5:51 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Jul 20, 2018 at 9:12 | comment | added | FiatLux | @AndyT Well, if he is the only white person in a company, then you surely would use this parameter to identify him. You don't think of it because you usually have more than one white guy to choose from, don't you? In this case this characteristic is not particularly useful indeed. So, no, it is not racial discrimination, you are overthinking it too much. | |
| Jul 20, 2018 at 8:04 | comment | added | AndyT | @FiatLux - See the last line of my previous comment: "I would never think to use "white" as something to help identify Dave, and so I feel uncomfortable that I notice that Stuart is black." That means I treat white people differently to how I treat black people. That's racial discrimination. | |
| Jul 19, 2018 at 14:45 | comment | added | FiatLux | @AndyT What's the problem? Skin color is the most easily identifiable characteristic. It's no more "racist" than using hair color or beard shape for identification of a person. | |
| Dec 12, 2017 at 11:17 | history | unprotected | NVZ | ||
| Nov 14, 2017 at 15:48 | history | protected | NVZ | ||
| Aug 31, 2017 at 10:59 | comment | added | AndyT | You're asking the wrong question unfortunately... if I was your co-worker, the reason your I wouldn't want to say it aloud is not that I don't know what the correct term is, but rather I don't want to be thought of as racist for using the person's skin colour as an identifying characteristic. I would never think to use "white" as something to help identify Dave, and so I feel uncomfortable that I notice that Stuart is black. | |
| Aug 29, 2017 at 15:37 | answer | added | user2135 | timeline score: 4 | |
| Aug 29, 2017 at 14:44 | answer | added | BACKPFEIFENGESICHT | timeline score: 2 | |
| Aug 29, 2017 at 14:10 | answer | added | English Student | timeline score: 1 | |
| Aug 23, 2017 at 23:02 | vote | accept | Thunderforge | ||
| Aug 12, 2017 at 5:45 | answer | added | Tom Au | timeline score: 3 | |
| Aug 12, 2017 at 2:55 | answer | added | Catija | timeline score: 8 | |
| Aug 12, 2017 at 2:51 | comment | added | NVZ | @Catija I think that link supports my answer. Its upvoted comments do. | |
| Aug 12, 2017 at 0:54 | comment | added | Thunderforge | @Catija Wow, that's pretty much the same exact situation! Guess it's a lot more common than I realized. | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 23:40 | comment | added | Catija | Amusing... you're not the first one in this situation: theracecardproject.com/dont-describe-black-people-black | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 23:21 | answer | added | apaul | timeline score: -1 | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 20:37 | comment | added | Catija | It's difficult for anyone. I've seen many discussions of it over the years - what terms to use... and which terms are preferable aren't even unanimous within a group. As you point out, "African-American" has problems when it comes to non-Americans (though the Caribbean is part of "the Americas") but also because it makes it sounds like they're a subcategory of American rather than a full American. I'm "Italian", not "Italian-American" but I'm not from Italy. | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 20:33 | comment | added | Thunderforge | @Catija Possibly, although I think that if there was a word that could have been used with a neutral or positive connotation, they might have used it. | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 19:55 | comment | added | Catija | I would hazard to guess that your coworker's discomfort wasn't due to saying "black" but due to having to resort to mentioning the man's race at all... but that's not what you're asking here. :) | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 19:32 | history | edited | Thunderforge | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 62 characters in body
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| Aug 11, 2017 at 18:37 | answer | added | NVZ | timeline score: 26 | |
| Aug 11, 2017 at 18:32 | history | edited | Kate Gregory | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
there's no such thing as "an African appearance"
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| Aug 11, 2017 at 18:17 | review | First posts | |||
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| Aug 11, 2017 at 18:12 | history | asked | Thunderforge | CC BY-SA 3.0 |