whothefisAlice
Well-Known Member
Look at that picture of the lady above (beautiful lady, reallllly beautiful lady at that), and tell me what colour that lady is. Someone (not on Bluemoon) was rambling on before about why African-Americans can't just be called black, and why don't we just call them Americans and why do they have to be called African americans etc. etc.
We got into how white people from Africa who have parents in America or they were born in America etc are still African-Americans regardless of colour, and how if you want to take it all the way back, literally, we are all African-Americans or Afro-British, since we all came from somewhere else originally.
Either you are one of a small minority of English who were there thousands of years ago, or you have descended from Germanic, French, Scandinavian, Jewish, or some other tribe or people who invaded/moved to Britain at one point. So in all fairness, a child born in Britain today could potentially be classified as Afro-Euro-Jewish-British.
Anyway, I digress, so, again look at the picture of the lady above and tell me what colour she is. I say she is brown, and that her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are the only things black about her (strictly from looking at that picture).
Why are black people called/labeled as being black, when in all honesty, the vast majority are a shade of brown.
Obama, is he black? Micah Richards is he black? Denzel Washington, is he black? How about an albino born into an African-American or Afro-British or African family? They certainly aren't black.
How are the colours black and brown so blatantly misused and misrepresented? This conversation about the labeling of African-Americans and the fact many 'black' people who you ask about such a subject claim to be simply American, had got me thinking about why it is we use the words we do to describe the colour of peoples skin.
Alternately, think about white people and why we are called/labeled as white.
Why exactly are we called white people? Is that lady in the picture above white? Some say that 'white' is the absence of colour, yet some say that 'black' is the absence of colour. The background upon which I am typing (albeit not what this ends up on once submitted) is what we call white. Using that/this background as a template, and a piece of A4 paper, or a tin of white paint, how many white people do you know?
Lot's of questions there and lots of responses I hope Blues. Cheers.