return of "colored"

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 29, 2012, at 9:49 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Once trendy? Once trendy?

Well, it *was* once trendy; doesn't mean it can't have retrended.  As the late Mitch Hedberg was fond of pointing out, "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too."

As for "person of color", I was surprised to see it invoked in a letter written (possibly by John Quincy Adams, I forget) on view in a museum exhibition on the Amistad case, from 1840 or earlier.

LH




>
> You too need to watch more TV news!
>
> BTW, I've raised my estimation of the cartoon to triple dumb, because it
> was double dumb from the jump.
>
> JL
>
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: return of "colored"
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I wonder if users of the once-trendy term "people of color" have had any
>> inclination to adjectivize the noun phrase as, simply, "colored"?
>>
>> --Charlie
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Amy
>> West [medievalist at W-STS.COM]
>> Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 8:53 AM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> -STS.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: return of "colored"
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On 3/29/12 12:02 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
>>> Date:    Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:02:06 -0400
>>> From:    Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject: Re: return of "colored"
>>>
>>> It's double dumb. (The little girl's wearing a totemic football on her
>>> shirt, but I don't mean that.)
>>>
>>> The left-wing, PC, moralizing, Obama-linked, lamestream
>>> Yankee-Jew media would*never*  refer to a "young black male" as a
>> "colored
>>> boy," "handsome" or otherwise.
>>>
>>> That cartoonist needs to watch more TV news!
>>>
>>> PS: If you can trust Google Books (and in this case you can because I
>>> checked with the NY Times) Jessica Tandy was the original "vision of
>>> alabaster loveliness" as Abigail Masham in the play "Anne of England,"
>>> which opened on Broadway on October 7, 1941.
>>>
>>> JL
>>
>> I just remarked on a student paper's that "colored" is an old-fashioned
>> term and so should be avoided. But then I had to think about the "C" in
>> NAACP: is it not marked there?
>>
>> --
>> ---Amy West
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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