OT: 'Pied noir' [was: McWhorter on "Negro"]

[Damien Hall]

Robin said he had been '(mis)reading "noir" as if it mapped directly onto
English "black"'. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the misunderstanding, but it
seems to me as if that _is_ a direct mapping. Algerian-born children of
French settlers there, like Camus, were referred to as 'pieds noirs'
because they were said to have one 'black foot' - ie a small proportion of
their body which had black (in the skin-colour sense) skin - as a result of
their having been born to white-skinned parents but in an area where the
natives were dark-skinned. It's a while since my undergraduate dissertation
on Camus, but I believe the designation 'pieds noirs' was only applied to
people born in Algeria, not to their French-born parents as well.

How appropriate that this should have come up ten days or so after the
fiftieth anniversary of Camus' death!

Damien

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
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