Quote:
Originally Posted by MIJB#19
If I were to be that "white" person in that exact example, I'd have to restrain myself the way Pierre Webo did too, because people intentionally called me "white" clearly meant to try to hurt me too much in my life that I decided to no longer let people get away with calling me that without getting a "please, don't call me or anybody else that ever again".
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Personally wouldn’t have a problem if I thought they said the word white, and I was the only white guy.
If I thought they had used a racial slur however, very different story... I was (relatively mildly) racially abused for being white once while in Malaysia in 2003, and it still rankles with me. That was once, 17 years ago, and I remember it vividly, so I can’t begin to imagine what that must feel like if it happens regularly.
So yeah, on that basis Webo and Ba were pretty restrained considering, and there is undoubtedly an issue that this incident has further increased the focus onto, but I don’t think there is an issue with describing someone as black if they are black, and there are no derogatory or negative tones or words with it.
For example if you are describing a suspect to a police officer, or a blind date to a friend, is it wrong to say whether the person was white, black, Asian, Hispanic? You might say he was a white guy wearing a dark T-shirt and shorts, or the black guy over there in a white shirt and blue jeans, or whatever.
It’s purely an adjective, nothing negative or discriminatory in this instance no different to describing the only girl with fair hair amongst a group of brunettes as the blonde girl, or the only person over six foot amongst a group of shorter people as the tall guy.
There is an issue, but a white person describing someone as black is not racist in itself, in fact it’s what we’ve been asked to do for the past 25 years or more by the black community, here in the UK at least.