Alan Hansen uses racist language on live TV

xibinim said:
I have heard my grandfather* and his pub mates use the term 'darkies' :eek::p - OK you wouldn't be using words like that on TV etc but I know they aren't racist merely a little misguided.


*This is the same man who after not seeing him for years (only met him 4 or so times in my life) asked me if I had a bomb in my bag when saying hello (non practicing Muslim) :p:D.
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I don't really think that is offensive either. No more offensive than if someone said "whities" about white people. If people have dark skin then what's the problem? Is there some sort of racist/slavery connotation or something that I am unaware of?
 
grimm said:
I don't really think that is offensive either. No more offensive than if someone said "whities" about white people. If people have dark skin then what's the problem? Is there some sort of racist/slavery connotation or something that I am unaware of?
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Poor answer but not too sure. It just doesn't feel quite right and I am a highly liberal (in the PC sense) mixed race* person. Often with things like this, context has a lot to do with it.

*recently heard that is out now, mixed heritage I believe. When does it stop :rolleyes:?
 
elmarko1234 said:
In the UK in unaware of it being used specifically as a slur.....
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Read Samuel Selvon's 1956 novel The Loneley Londoners or Colin McInnes 1958 novels City of Spades and Absolute Beginners for examples.
Read the often inflametory statements made by the British political right during the late 50s and early 60s and the multiracial dislike of the Race relations board of the mid 60s and it's language (immigrants saw it as lacking powers and white British saw it as having to much). Add that with too many other reasons to mention (danger of becoming tl:dr) and the endemic institutional racsim that existed and I'm afraid the word 'coloured' has become a very loaded word and rightly or wrongly has to be used carefully.

Unfortunately words are not just words, they carry with them their history as this is what gives them their meaning. In this case Hansen has been guilty of nothing more than a bit of ignorance but he is in the public eye so unfortunately the crusading idiots with too much time on their hands and an axe to grind will jump on him.
 
All getting a little stupid imo, when I was young, which granted was a long time ago now ;) , I was brought up under the sticks and stones, names will never harm me belief. As such, I've spent my whole life not caring in the slightest what words someone used to describe me. Call me whatever you want, cant say that I will start crying about any word used towards me. For a nation reknowned for our strong backbones we dont half seem to have developed into a society of whingers. Its like that whole kerfuffle over the dog in The Dambusters remake being renamed because the dogs name (which became one of the code words for the mission) was now considered offensive, just a movie of course but its almost like a rewriting of historical fact just so nobody is upset.
 
It is increasingly difficult to know what word to use when somene isn't whie anymore, is white a racist word? Or should I say sun tanned challenged people?
 
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