Scandal! Bigotry in the dessert case!

What on earth is wrong with Dallas County that the people put this man in office? Really, this is too much.

He must have had a reason to bring this up with the culinary establishment. There must be a backstory. I'm a really open-minded person able to see these things, and understand both Price's rage and accomplishments. We can only assume he knows the makers of refined flour have been contributing to the type two diabetes epidemic of his community. Thus we would be expecting Christ-like forbearance on his part were he to resist pointing out how *they are telling us about their own racism* with their selection of names.

When this maladroit montebank begins a boycott of toothpaste manufacturers for not offering products to make teeth blacker, then I'll believe he's honestly (and deliriously) serious. Until then I'll mark him down as the race hustling poverty pimp he has always been.

No, he's not stupid at all. He's a demagogue, and wacky on the subject of race. But stupid? No.

Remind me never to ask him if he wants cream in his coffee...

I thought some of you might enjoy this conversation about THE conversation. http://www.wylieview.com/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi?s=5f02f4c9226592cb76e14737a517e814;act=ST;f=28;t=47097;st=15

As for the Angel Food cake versus Devil's Food Cake topic. I'll bet the hole against the donut that a lot of the people who are laughing their butts off about this are the parents that scream "good job" everytime their kiddo does anything because they're worried about kiddo's self image.

Now, one has to wonder how many black kids have at one time or another wondered at one time or another why white cake was considered angel food and black cake was labeled devil's food.

Even more importantly than the question, what was their conclusion? And how did that conclusion affect their life?

Because of people like Price, I am so glad that all the affirmative action gains on the school board, in the city, etc., that Blacks in Dallas have made over the last few decades are going to be co-opted and usurped by the growing Latino population. I can see/hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth as he and others of his ilk know that their days of power are numbered.

Oh, the depths of this black man's complete stupidity.

Bring it on! The more such politicians who make themselves into objects of ridicule, the better.

rofl, how are those racist?

Indignation over black hole was silly, since it was an apt description of how things disappear, based on astronomical reality, but the councilman does have a point about the other stuff. That said, I wouldn't make a federal case out of it.

Merriam Webster:

black: wicked, evil, sinful
white: pure, innocent, good, not intended to cause harm

blacklisted, blackmail, black magic, blackhearted, black cowboy hat, blacken (in the sense of defame) = bad

white lie, white magic, white hope, white knight, white cowboy hat = good.

And let's not forget that lovely old-time expression "that's very white of you."

ETC.

I don't know the origins of the black/white dichotomy in language and if it predates English encounters with darker-skinned peoples but in this day and age the use of such terms do me wonder, esp. in our culture where race is such a loaded issue. Does this "black is bad, white is good" type of language shape our thoughts in some subtle way?

Some of those terms do stick in my craw and I refuse to use them. I would say "evil-hearted" rather than "black-hearted" for example. Black-hearted is rather archaic anyhow. There's no substitute for "blackmail" or "blacklist" so I use those when necessary, although my husband jokes and will say "okay he's on my whitelist now" when he decides he doesn't like somebody. The black folks I know laugh at some of those terms and when we have to use them, we use them ironically. My dad used to always say "little white lie" with a roll of the eyes and a chuckle, for example.

Then don't be surprised when whites avoid you. If you're asking people to filter every color metaphor to avoid nettling you, then they'll (rightly) decide it's not worth the effort.

Nowhere in my post did I say that I've asked people -- white or otherwise -- not to use those terms around me. I just said that I don't use them myself. Read more carefully before you respond to people's posts next time.

Rod, we are the most politically incorrect family on Earth. You'd fit right in and are welcome anytime you're in my neck of the woods (upstate NY). I have friends of many different stripes -- granola white yoga-type lefties, gun-toting Republicans, black conservative Christians, etc. -- and everyone is welcome to speak their mind, no eggshell-walking necessary.

I'm always sensitive to lexicon and its shifting (don't get me started on the lexicon shift towards making "very" and "really" mean the same), but there is lexicon shift and there is self-serving, asinine and arbitrary proclamations. BD provides an example of the former, Price of the latter.

Does anyone know the definition of "faggot"*? The origin of "gypsy"**? Is anyone aware of the vast body of literary work wherein the word "gay" is a synonym of "happy"?

I'm not even tempted to bite my tongue when a devout believer says to me some variation of "that was very Christian of you". I accept the intended compliment, and I do not think to point out that not only was I never a Christian, I am a pagan and the target of much acrimony from some sources. Call me biased, but I would expect something like that from my dark-skinned fellow citizens around the ubiquitous usage of "black" in our lexicon that not only predates the racist connotations, but the vast majority of the time is not even an unconscious connection to them.

* A piece or bundle of wood, intended for use in a cooking or heating fire. Tolkien used it in his The Lord of the Rings books.

** It's a corruption of "Egyptian", Egypt being where Roma were assumed to come from. They actually originated on the Indian subcontinent and their language is a close cousin of Sanskrit.

[mild sarcasm]

Hey! I protest the assumption that "black" is always negative. My father was born in Montenegro, a literal translation of Crna Gora: black mountain. My ancestors were very proud of their geography. Anyone familiar with Russian culture might know the song "Ochi Chornyi", an ode to a beautiful woman with black eyes.

In desert cultures, the night is much friendlier than the day.

I'm just sayin'... :-)

And let us not forget Lord Byron:

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

As I said in the other thread, the difference between 'light' and 'dark', metaphorically, has always had to do with the fact that the dark is more dangerous, and nothing at all to do with skin color. The dark is where you are attacked by pumas, or, more recently, muggers.

The religious association is much the same way. Heaven is bright, hell is dark. Jesus is 'the light' because he's illuminating the path, not because he's white. (As we all know, he probably was rather swarthy, so it would be flatly absurd for that to be implied.)

Light vs. dark is not a racial metaphor, and it's not going away because some people have decided that it's somehow related to skin color. No, it's one of those metaphors that is so old it probably dates back to the first language invention, or at least the first metaphor invention, and hence ironically back to a time when pretty much everyone was the same color.

Angel food cake and devil food cake, OTOH, is a joke. As other people here pointed out, devil's food cake was a gag name based on the popular-at-the-time angel food cake. Angel food cake is the lightest cake, and devil's food cake is one of the richest. Angel food cake, OTOH, was probably named as such because weird little religious references were all over the place when it was invented, the Victorian era. They were just crazy for angels and other stuff like that.

(Incidentally, are we ever going to get our names-saving working again?)

Nowhere in my post did I say that I've asked people -- white or otherwise -- not to use those terms around me. I just said that I don't use them myself. Read more carefully before you respond to people's posts next time.

I read your post, and it was a long complaint about how terms stick in your craw. Do you literally ask people? No, but you wrote an extended post complaining about long-standing non-racial definitions. If you think that attitude doesn't manifest itself, you're wrong. In other posts you've had no problem imputing racism to others based on gestures, actions and emotions, and that street works both ways. If we have to watch every word to avoid upsetting your delicate craw, we're just not going to bother. It isn't worth the effort.

The ancient Egyptians used imagery that called black evil and white good. I suspect that as long as human beings are afraid of the dark, that will continue.

And that wasn't Lord Byron, it was one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets. Was that a whoosh?

Dangermom, you'll have to take that up with Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875.

I'm taking the website I linked to in my post at face value. I, too, remembered it as being from Shakespeare before doing a search. The website also has the complete poem; I posted only the first six lines.

I respectfully caution you about applying strict dualism to the ancient polytheisms. Just as an example, the ruler of the underworld/afterlife was not considered evil, and the ruler of the pantheon on high was not considered good. Both received their devotions, both had attributes that were worthy of fear in mortals. Indeed, my personal POV is that the ancient gods matched the human personality rather closely with and despite their archetypal attributes. Hades kidnapped Persipone, it's true, but he loved her; Zeus was a randy SOB who rarely gave a hoot for the offspring he sired on mortal women. ;-)

As an addendum, I should note that BD was striving to be charitable to whites in the post I referenced in my previous post. But it's still attests to the difficulties that come with interacting with blacks, and it's why most whites just simply avoid those difficulties by avoiding blacks altogether.

A woman who locked her car door is tagged as acting as an irrational racist

Please quote specifically where I called anyone a "racist."

You can't because I never said that. Because I'm not one to throw the words "racism" or "racist" around carelessly.

I am done with this conversation until such time that you actually respond to what I said, and not what you think I said.

From the same post I referenced above:

I won't even go into the number of times they have had people click all their car doors shut when they've walked by. That happened to me too once in Cambridge MA, and I'm a 120-pound woman.

You are imputing racism to these people, BD, as I said in my post at 2:40 p.m. If you try to tell me otherwise, then you're not being honest, either with me or yourself. You can decide that one.

One error I made is that I thought it was woman who locked her car door in MA, but you never specified the person's gender. It could have been a man, and, if so, please change what needs changing.

You are imputing racism to these people, BD, as I said in my post at 2:40 p.m.

No I'm not, and that's a mighty conclusion for you to jump to. First you say that I tagged someone as an "irrational racist," which I did not. And now in this most recent post you've changed that to say that I'm "imputing racism."

What I DID say was that white folks are oftentimes acting quite reasonably in their fear of young black males, based on statistical reality, and that the downside to this fear is that decent, law-abiding black folks often become the object of this fear. That is a far cry from calling someone a racist.

"BD and Jason, it would be interesting to see what color metaphors occur in various African languages. Do those languages also equate darkness and night with evil and danger?"

A question that I also had in college. Once in an art history class, we were studying the arts and craft of a particular group in Africa (I forget which one, that knowledge has been replace with child-rearing knowledge). White came up as a symbol of purity. I grilled our prof--is this is a symbol from post-Christian influences? Why, in a society without bleach would white=purity? It is, in fact impossible to know if the symbolism was pre-Christian since Christianity of various forms in Africa predates European colonial activity there.

I would second DavidTC's explanation about light and darkness. I would also speculate about something else. Natives of melanin-rich cultures may not associate their own skin color with the idea of "black" and "dark." It may simply not occur to them for a variety of cultural and linguistic reasons (not to mention very few "black" people are, in fact, "black"). All that being said, I understand that skin-color-based racism exists within dark-skinned groups--where gradations of tone make for division between neighbors.