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Wednesday's Digressions
- Last night ( today is 05/21/2016) I had a super realistic dream in which I caught a wild turkey. It had a strange, strong smell. I can still smell it.
- Two male mockingbirds are fighting like mad on the the other side of the fence.
- Recently I have been seeing a lot of very light colored Eurasian collared doves (there are 2 on the fountain as I write this which are nearly white). Whether nature has selectively changed their coloring or it was done by humans before they became feral I do not know- but they are different.
- Day before yesterday a nursing buddy returned to work after a surgery. She was not able to tie her shoes before leaving home. I tied them for her. She is hot but I would have done it for were she a pig; as I am nice and she is nice. Nice people should watch out for each other.
- While I know a little about why she had the surgery and what was done; I do not know why she is required to use an inflatable doughnut when sitting for extended periods. She held it up and said, Nice huh? Well, no one could pull off an inflatable doughnut like you! You still got it going on. I replied playfully.
- Bloody Kisses is still one of my favorite album names.
- One of my friends has done karaoke only twice in his life. He and his friend's wife once did Afternoon Delight and on another occasion performed Crazy. For some reason that was hilarious to me and as he recounted those times I laughed like crazy.
- Recently, I heard a friendly aquaintance from another country use the word, negro in a sentence. Was she being racist or at best horribly insensitive? Nope- in context she was speaking of a time long ago and she was really not sure where the person she was speaking of was from. She actually caught herself in mid word using the term, African and searching her bilingual mental database came to the unfortunate term, negro instead of, black.
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2 comments:
Yeah, I'm not sure how we're supposed to refer to people of color anymore. I think we're just supposed to ignore whatever they are and that extends to bad habits and risky behavior too. I always thought "negro" was sort of formal. "Black" is descriptive and therefore functional as a language device. "African-American" doesn't really work as a descriptor for obvious reasons except for those who immigrated.
There you have the three most commonly used adjectives for referring to negroid individuals.
Negroid (also known as Congoid) is a grouping of human beings historically regarded as a biological taxon. The term has been used by forensic and physical anthropologists to refer to individuals and populations that share certain morphological and skeletal traits that are frequent among most populations in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Negroid was first introduced in the 19th century in early concepts of race and anthropometry. It has traditionally been used to denote one of the three purported major races of humankind (Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid). Some social scientists have argued that such analyses are rooted in sociopolitical and historical processes rather than in empirical observation. However, Negroid as a biological classification remains in use in forensic anthropology.
IMO, the running debate over the color or race label represents a triumph of form over substance, and an impediment to actual amelioration of quality-of-life challenges of the affected populations.
With the possible exception of the 'n' term, the falling out of favor of other descriptors seems as much a negotiating gambit - a means to frame or control the discussion - as anything, as in "We will not let someone outside of our leadership structure choose our label", resulting in much worthless debate over semantics instead of actual socio-economic progress.
Increasingly, African-American is a misnomer, inasmuch as most such persons have no more connection to the dark continent than I have to Scotland, England, Germany, or Cherokee. As well, with homogenization, black as a descriptor may in the future be replaced by brown, bronze, or 'well-tanned'.
Although widely hailed as a hero for his civil rights legislation, I think the long view of the 36th President will cast a more negative light on his legacy, showing the cynicism underlying many of his programs which gave fleeting succor at the expense of long-term dependency, for the purpose of creating political hegemony for his party.
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