seriously? tbh, I thought it was the pretty obvious association of black = bad; white = good that people object to on that one.
Well people wear black at funerals, and people dying is a bad thing, what more proof would anyone need?
It reminds of how many years ago a girlfriend of that time tried to convince me, bless her, that the term “traffic blackspot” could be seen as racist because black was being used a negative context.
The problem I reckon is that people like Richard Littlejohn make absurd suggestions that certain terms have been deemed as unPC, then well meaning politically correct herberts jump in and argue in support of an argument which only previously existed in the imagination of some right-wing journalist looking for a story to write.
There was a time when the term “black man/woman” was deemed offensive, after all black people aren’t actually black, and then there was a mood change and black people, quite rightly, declared that they were proud of being black, and started calling themselves “black”.
All well and good, and long may it continue so. But there’s no point wanting to change the English language and scrapping words such as blackboards, blacklist, blackspot, etc, because you don’t like the negative association with black. If you think black has such negative connotation then choose another word, don’t try to force everyone to speak differently.
How about the term “coloured” as in the The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)[/url] the United States foremost civil rights organisation for black people ?
