Speaking as an extremely white dude who doesn't care about the nomenclature, but just doesn't want to offend anyone unintentionally (I'm more than happy to offend everyone on purpose), I sure wish that we could all negotiate an acceptable, politically correct term.
I elaborated on this subject in my review of Black Spring Break:
Actually, I learned a useful new euphemism from this movie. The box calls this an "urban comedy." I am now aware that "urban comedy" means "comedy featuring people with skin much, much darker than Rose McGowan." That has to be the meaning, because there was nothing urban about this. The locale was Daytona Beach, which is about as urban as the Okefenokee Swamp, and the kids were college students from a mixture of demographic and geographic backgrounds. Since "urban" in this context cannot mean "taking place in a city" or "featuring city dwellers," it must therefore mean "featuring black people." I guess that makes some sense. The marketers can't call this a "black comedy" because that term means something else altogether.
As it turns out, I find this new term very handy. I am very uncomfortable using the normal nomenclature for People of Dark African Descent. I mean I normally type "black guys" and then delete it because I don't know if that term is still PC. Besides, people are rarely dark enough to evoke the word "black." The darkest skin tones are mostly brown. Then I change it to "African-Americans," and I cross that out because that term includes many people who are very white (South Africans of British or Dutch ancestry), or other non-blacks like Egyptians and Libyans. Then I type in "people of color," and it just sounds silly. Plus guys my age know that "colored people" used to be a demeaning term, and we can't really bring it or anything similar back into our vocabulary. I just never know what to say.
So now I know. The correct term is "urbanites."
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Some blacks insist: 'I'm not African-American' | ajc.com
Some blacks insist: "I'm not African-American"
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Scoop, are you serious? Dude, you can't have been involved in media for as long as you have and remained unhip to "Urban" as the code for "ALL Negros (didn't that word used to be acceptible?,) regardless of their actual heritage or locale." Same for "Immigrant" meaning "ALL Mexicans, Panamanians, Ecuadorians, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, South Americans, all-them-other-'Hispanics', and Actual Americans who have brown-but-not-THAT-brown-skin-and-aren't-Middle-Eastern." Same way "Asian" covers what used to be "Oriental," even if - again - they are geographically-born Americans. Same way that "Middle Eastern" means "terrorist." Dude, this is Texas. Surely you know that "American" only refers to white folks. You guys don't get the hyphen, you're just "American." It's only we hued people who get the hyphen. Incidentally, the hyphen doesn't mean anything. People only hear "African," "Mexican," "Asian," or whatever differentiates us from being plain old Americans when we say "X-American." When you say "Irish-American," "German-American," "Franco-American," or whatever, people hear "American." They hear what they see. Hell, most white folks don't even consider "Native-Americans" to be real Americans. Just the folks who happened to be here when the "Real Americans" showed up. Amerigo Vespucci must be proud. Damn Dago.
ReplyDeleteI wrote that review long ago, when the "urban" thing was more emerging than established.
ReplyDeleteHell, in Hawaii we just call 'em "popolo". Nobody really cares.
ReplyDeleteExcept maybe the haoles.