I am not sure where I was going with this old post draft.
About twenty years ago while driving Mother somewhere on one of our motorways, a driver did something bad in front of me and in the presence of Mother, who had slapped me as child for saying bloody, I dropped the c word. You c***. It is not a word I normally use. I can't remember using it since. I immediately apologised to Mother, who continued on telling me about her medical woes without seemingly to notice. Nearly twenty years later, Mother was correct and her medical woes proved to be fatal, with a lot of medical woes along the way.
While I've never mixed among the lower classes in England, apparently they use the c word without abandon. The word becomes boring with overuse and loses its effectiveness. But like gay men embraced homophobic terms, so too are women embracing the c word. I recall a beggar calling me a fucking old poof. He stated the obvious. His insult was a fail.
I am never sure if is appropriate to describe a black American as being black. I think the preferred term is African American. That's fine with me. Whatever. But I laugh when I hear stories of Americans who visit England describe black English people as African Americans, even though the black English have no connection to America. In Britain, you are British, and your colour and racial heritage is not so publicly important. You are British first. The plight of disadvantaged African Americans in the US is the equivalent in Britain of the plight of the disadvantaged British.
It is a queer thing that so called African Americans, many who have been in the US for far longer than their British counterparts have been in Britain, yet they need to be distinguished as Afro Americans, and not just Americans.
Whatever, black American, black British and black Australian, they all face discrimination. It is just not so in your face in Britain and Australia, and there are programmes to promote an inclusive workplace. That has just disappeared in the US. This Afro American term is very queer. The first black slaves arrived to America in the early 1600s, yet they need to be name qualified beyond just an American by the colour of their skin. I am not naïve enough to suggest your best mate is a black person, yet here, I do see socialisation between the Indian immigrants and white Australians, through work, neighbours and of course food.
The leader of Australia's His Majesty's Opposition Party is one Peter Dutton, an extreme conservative, and he would like to do many of the things that #47 has been doing in the US. I gave some thought to a insulting adaption to his name and the best I could do is Duttrump. Yes, the wrongly named conservative Liberal Party leader is Peter Duttrump.
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Growing up in a 1950s and 1960s West London suburb, I wasn't really aware of racism as a child. Our next door neighbours were an Anglo-Indian family and the kids down the street were Jamaican. We all played together without any awareness of race, although of course we knew we were all different but it didn't matter to us then.
ReplyDeleteIt all seemed so innocent back then.
JayCee, undoubtedly attitudes come from parents and society in general. I've seen the same in my family with the cafe latte coloured twins. They don't see the twins as being different. None of the greats have race issues with classmates from various parts of the world.
DeleteWith our election just called I really, really hope that Dultrump fails. And yes there is racism here but not I hope/believe to the extent that it is in other countries.
ReplyDeleteDultrump, EC. I like it. Australia has done pretty well at making overt racism unacceptable.
DeleteDuttrump???????????
ReplyDelete"Looney Bin" would be better.
IF only your followers knew what the ex-cop of Terry Lewis
was thought of in the Joh/Flo years of utter chaos!
Cheers
Colin
I remember Colin. Lewis was gaoled, as I remember. If the ABC tv programme Moonlight State had never been made, I wonder how things would have ended up. It was a shocked and I remember watching it entranced with my jaw slack. Yet, it was no surprise.
DeleteThe Canadians are routing the political ambitions of the extremist and Trump supported Pierre Polievre and in a seismic upset supporting Mark Carney to defend Canada’s freedom and sovereignty. Australians better follow Canada’s example before Trump demands your country be annexed as a vasal state of America just as Trump would like to do with Canada. Trump promised Americans a booming economy like your Dutton promises Australia, don’t you believe it ! He is just like our Trump with economic promises never kept and economic and foreign policies that are ruinous.
ReplyDelete-CA jock
Yes CA jock. The political change in your country has been remarkable, all because of #47. Good luck to the new Liberal leader. I doubt there could have been a better choice than him.
DeleteThe c word is pretty banned throughout my life. Peter Dutton wants to cut fuel exercise by 50%. It should never be put on by John Howard
ReplyDeleteRoentare, Howard reduced exercise for a time, but it did go back to its usual level.
DeleteI am pretty sure the term is African American, not "Afro" which is a hairstyle. It seems perfectly ridiculous to me to make someone's life miserably simply because they are differently coloured.
ReplyDeleteThe c word is never said in my world, even when I was a child and didn't know the meaning it sounded vile and vicious.
River, yes you are correct about African American. It is interesting how younger women are embracing the word and removing it as a powerful description or noun. But we are of a certain age and it doesn't sit comfortably with us and I doubt it ever will.
DeleteBlack people in the USA are called as R says as far as I am aware.
ReplyDeleteWe are not born racists we are taught it. I don't care for swearing in any form, and never did.
Margaret, they are, my mistake.
DeleteI am not a swearer either, and it was a surprise to me I uttered the word. I don't know where it came from and I haven't used the word since, about 15 years later. .
Well talking of swearwords (I only use one) the 'c' word is gross because it is normally used at women and the way it rolls of your tongue is hard and nasty. As for the colour of our skins. As someone who sees the person first and the nationality second I do not see them as belonging to the whole world we are supposed to have constructed for them.
ReplyDeleteYes Thelma, that is how it is for we older people, but like gay men embraced derogatory words and made them their own, and black men in the US freely call each other nigger, so are younger women are doing the same with the c word, taking the insulting power of the word away.
DeleteIt's difficult to know the right description to use. Not all black people are of African descent - some are Caribbean. Why do we have to label and categorise people?
ReplyDeleteJB, just American would surely be enough.
DeleteThe politics of words is complicated. We did a staff diversity survey, that asked respondents to voluntarily identify race. The survey used African American, overlooking the fact that our international development team has a dozen staff members who were born in Africa, and another dozen black staff from the Caribbean. Trying to get that changed took several years of debate.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting TP. I think unless they are American citizens, it is fair enough to call people African. But otherwise, unless there is something where race is relevant, such as discrimination, African American seems silly when used to describe black people who have been in America almost as long Europeans.
DeleteThe black people in Canada come from many different places, the US as former slaves that escaped to Canada, Africa, and the Caribbean. I think there is more discrimination in Canada than we realize. One of our radiologists is Jamaican and he is the only black doctor in the building, that's got to feel isolating. Maybe one day we will stop looking at the colour of someone's skin to define them. People are people.
ReplyDeletePixie, I guess once out of Toronto and Vancouver, black people would be quite thin on the ground, and your point about being the only black person in a workplace might be difficult for some people.
DeleteI belong to my UU church's anti-racist task force, and in the first meeting I attended I asked whether I should use "African-American" or "black". I was told either/or, so I just use the one with the least syllables.
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to say black too, Kirk. Of course using the word in an anti-racist task force is absolutely necessary.
DeleteI'm a little lost on why the color of skin means you must be also labeled with ancestral origin country. Should I be labeled Welsh American then? Why not? I have Welsh ancestry (among other ancestral origins). Yeah I don't get it at all. American or British or German to me describes the country a person lives in, or is a citizen thereof.
ReplyDeleteStrayer, you've put it better and simpler than I did. Ancestral origin country. Why? Btw, do you like leeks?
DeleteI just smile and say hello to all folks, which I've been informed is unwelcome in many regions both in the United States and elsewhere. Lucky for me, we live in an area where face-to-face encounters are most often super polite.
ReplyDeleteA strange deviation happened after I went swimming today. An older woman emerged inappropriately stark naked after showering and, while I tried not to react beyond a polite nod, she gave me a bug-eyed stare.
Her glare still gives me the creeps hours later. Was she a pod person? lol Anyway, best wishes to you and yours.
Don't most people emerge from a non enclosed shower naked, Darla? The glare sounds really weird. Perhaps she fancied you.
DeleteUgh. There's a Trump wannabe in every country, it seems.
ReplyDeleteHe probably isn't, but to accuse him of wanting to implement similar policies may soften down his more extreme edges.
Delete