But, if you're thinkin' about my baby....

....
I was quite shocked to read the other day an article from USA Today announcing "London Breed to be sworn in as San Francisco's first black female mayor." What shocked me in that headline is the Ms Breed was referred to as "black" and surely that wasn't acceptable language in country that for a long time had preferred to use the term "African American."

This got me to thinking (a dangerous pastime I know) about the use of Black and White to describe someones ethnicity and my deliberations were even more of a shock to me than that USA Today article and subsequently made that article even more shocking. But let me start at the beginning of my thoughts:

Black and white is not an accurate way to describe the colour of ones skin! I'm not white, i'm a sort of browny, pinky, blemished, hairy kind of colour. I could never have been described using a colour in the same way as one wouldn't describe glass as white. It just doesn't make sense! My wife is paler than me but she isn't white but again a paler browner, pinky colour with more freckles, less blemishes and definitely less hair. Even my whitest of white Celtic and Scandinavian friends could never be describe as white (although a couple get close to 'transparent'), they again are on a scale of browny, pinky (with various degrees of blemish and hair). My children, when they were small babies probably classified as pinkish but never white! Apparently people from Scandinavia have the fairest skin of all (well duh!) but if you look at this Sami girl from that area then she isn't white, even here lightest skin can only safely be described as pale pink!
Image result for scandinavian people

So what about the use of the work 'black'? I have seen some pretty dark-skinned people in my time but I am yet to see someone with black skin. Even the darkest of dark-skinned people, such as the Sudanese and the Australian Aborigines are merely the darkest shade of brown! Here Mr Malik Agar of the South Sudanese people, the Ingessana is very dark skinned but not black . 

Indeed, there is even a scale of skin colour called the Von Luschan's scale (after the chap who developed it) which although not very accurate helps establish the fact that we are all different shades of colour on the same spectrum, there is no 'black' or 'white'. 

So the use of the terms 'black' or 'white' to describe a persons skin colour or ethnicity is complete tosh, yet it gets a lot more sinister than that if one looks at what those colours stand for:

- White: goodness, purity, clean, heavenly, honest, desirable, etc. etc.
- Black: evil, soiled, dirty, dishonest, devilish, undesirable etc. etc.

And I am guessing that back in history the first person who used 'black' and 'white' to differentiate between peoples had those very things in mind the perfection of 'white' and its antonym 'black'.

So the use of the colour of ones skin to describe a person, especially if one is using 'black' could be seen as divisive, derogatory,  and in some cases down-right racist and USA Today got this article so wrong. If they wanted to point out that this was a positive movement in the fight against racism then couldn't they have used African-American? But why propagate any division based upon race, creed or skin colour when we use language? Yes its use is ingrained in our society and the global society, but what is the alternative is ask you? We could stop referring to someone as that 'black man' and just say that man? But then we get into the whole argument of gender identity and that is somewhere I choose not to go at this time........i'll leave you with the late, great Michael Jackson who confused everyones idea of black and white with both his song and his own desire to have lighter and lighter skin.




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