To that end, I spent some time scouring the internet for references. I came up short and found only one article about the word (http://www.bartleby.com/59/17/blacklist.html) which mentions that it was spawned from the McCarthy era to refer to someone who was placed on a list due to their suspected communist connections. An entry at Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=blacklist) also fails to mention any racial connection.
Just to be sure, I sent the question to Ask Yahoo! (http://ask.yahoo.com/) and I'll let you know if I get a response.
If the word is "clean" of racial involvement, then I think it says a lot about our society that some people feel that the word black can only refer to race and not any of the other possible meanings:
- Being of the color black, producing or reflecting comparatively little light and having no predominant hue.
- Having little or no light: a black, moonless night.
- Very dark in color: rich black soil; black, wavy hair.
- Soiled, as from soot; dirty: feet black from playing outdoors.
- Evil; wicked: the pirates' black deeds.
- Cheerless and depressing; gloomy: black thoughts.
- Being or characterized by morbid or grimly satiric humor: a black comedy.
- Marked by anger or sullenness: gave me a black look.
- Attended with disaster; calamitous: a black day; the stock market crash on Black Friday.
- Deserving of, indicating, or incurring censure or dishonor: “Man... has written one of his blackest records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands” (Rachel Carson).
- Wearing clothing of the darkest visual hue: the black knight.
- Served without milk or cream: black coffee.
- Appearing to emanate from a source other than the actual point of origin. Used chiefly of intelligence operations: black propaganda; black radio transmissions.
- Disclosed, for reasons of security, only to an extremely limited number of authorized persons; very highly classified: black programs in the Defense Department; the Pentagon's black budget.
- Chiefly British. Boycotted as part of a labor union action.
I know this is a sensitive issue and I hope I didn't offend anyone. If I did, please comment and let mknowow!!!
2 comments:
The person who accused your friend of making a derogatory comment was in this case uninformed (and a bit self-righteous). Some expressions or terms can be truly threatening to the groups historically associated with or denigrated by them. Many such expressions do get tossed about thoughtlessly, so I think it's great that you'd take the time to give this some thought and do some research (unlike the would-be whistle-blower, who is unfortunately helping to give political correctness a bad name).
Thanks Laura! You said what I meant much more eloquently! I'm all for avoiding things that will make people uncomfortable (or are downright offensive!) but I draw the line when people take innocent words and think their something they aren't. Interestingly enough, someone once told me that the word "denigrate" was derogatory since it derrived from an offensive slang term for Black people (not true, it comes from the latin denigrare, to defame (http://www.bartleby.com/61/17/D0131700.html)). When will the madness end?? :)
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