The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #117716 Message #2546917
Posted By: Phil Edwards
23-Jan-09 - 08:41 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: Blacking up for morris - origin?
Subject: RE: Folklore: Blacking up for morris - origin?
Language changes - Henry Louis Gates called his memoir _Colored People_ to highlight the way that the phrase "colored people" had been replaced by "Negro", which was then replaced by "African American", which was finally replaced by... "people of color". But "colored people" was offensive because of the demeaning attitude it conveyed - and the degrading practices with which it was associated - rather than because there's anything intrinsically offensive about combining those two words. If "black" ever was offensive here*, it isn't any more, because it's been reclaimed by people calling *themselves* black (or 'Black British').
*I'm not convinced, actually - those polite circumlocutions like 'dark-skinned gentleman' always struck me as *more* offensive than 'black'.