trousers

I thought you'd posted in the wrong thread there for a spilt second

1st

People who think they're some kind of comic genius by continually trotting out 'highly amusing' play on words for political parties and politicians.... "ConDems" (ha ha ha) "Camoron" (chortle) "B-liar" (actually, that one's pretty good)

Stop reading the Daily Mail and posting links to it FFS. I'm desperately trying to wean myself off it and your infatuation with it is not helping me one iota. Thank you kindly sir.

I found it neither funny nor offensive.

It pains me to be fair to Bob Crow but this strike isn't to do with his union; this is ASLEF action rather than RMT. That isn't to say he wouldn't be calling out the drivers if they were RMT members.

"I agree Dr. Smith, best to keep him in here for a couple of weeks. Letting him out to post on that Southampton forum 3 times a day just isn't having the desired effect"

Yay. Agreement! Huzzah :-) Or, as us oldies say: "cushty"

That's fine. Young people typically use black, older people typically use coloured. Both inoffensive terms that can co-exist. Ah, harmony at last.

Ah, but it's more patronising to lecture to people what is patronising. Point to us old folk. ;-)

Except that "coloured" is still acceptable to the majority of people in the country. Probably.

No more questions your honour...

That's not a like-for-like analogy. "spastic" was hijacked to become an overt derogatory term. "coloured" has never been used in a derogatory sense.

Yes, it may be silly when you look at it logically (sigh) but human beings aren't always logical. If every word in the English language has to be justified logically then we'd have to update half the dictionary. FFS.

Exactly. So "coloured" is fine for the 40+ generation and the 60+ generation and "black" is fine for the 40- generation. Or, are you saying that the younger generation usurp anything that the older generation still deem acceptable? Surely generations can co-exist with each having equal say as to what is right or wrong...?

Source?

No doubt you'll be having this same debate but in reverse when you're 40+ with the next generation. "Dad! You can't use that outdated term "black" to refer to brown people!"

Who decides what is acceptable?

Yes, when it's analysed it is 'stupid' but that's my point....your average man in the street sees things in a much simpler fashion - they see something that is quite close to White and call it white and they see other things that are various shades of colour and call them....erm...coloured. If human beings were to analyse every aspect of how current day language has evolved then language wouldn't evolve organically in the first place. There must be thousands of words in the English language that, if you analysed them, wouldn't technically fit their usage, but that is the beauty of language....it's not always scientifically 'correct'.

More 'stupid' than calling people with brown skin "black"?

Yes, scientifically 'white' is a colour (or rather a surface or structure that doesn't absorb any light) but your average human being tends to generalise things like 'colour' rather than psycho-analyse it. To your 'average Joe' anything 'non-white' is a colour (whether we are talking about skin, walls, duvet covers or whatever. There was never anything sinister when it was 'normal' to call non-white people coloured. It was all very innocent. What changed an entirely innocent phrase into something derogatory? Alf Garnett perhaps?

Sigh

But the question people are asking is when and/or why it became 'wrong' to call someone who is non-White 'coloured'.

£15

My skin is neither white nor black so please don't refer to me as either 'white' or 'black'. Thanks.