Timeline for What is the right word to refer to a black person, when you don't know their name?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 10, 2014 at 23:13 | comment | added | Sammitch | While using 'person' instead of 'guy' is marginally more respectful, in this day and age it is difficult to indicate the race of anyone without offending someone. You can either awkwardly dance around the issue like most people and risk confusion, or you can just say 'black/white/brown/asian/native' and risk someone being mildly offended. The truly ridiculous part is you're more likely to offend someone by proxy than directly. eg. If you were talking to the black guy when you said it I doubt he'd care, but his white colleague on the other hand... | |
| Sep 10, 2014 at 16:09 | vote | accept | Terve | ||
| Sep 10, 2014 at 15:48 | comment | added | AbraCadaver | Black is not disrespectful. You can increase the description and have it less likely to be perceived by morons as disrespectful: the tall black gentleman with the goatee. | |
| Sep 9, 2014 at 18:44 | comment | added | IMSoP | @JBentley Good point, and made me want to pose this further hypothetical example: "Hans, Juan, Jacques, and the English guy". It does still single someone out on a single characteristic, though; indeed, there is the assumption that he is the only person matching that description, rather than it being one of several characteristics which might narrow down the possibilities. In the OP's case, there may be several black men working for the agency, but they didn't happen to be in the office on that day. | |
| Sep 9, 2014 at 16:16 | comment | added | JBentley | @gnasher729 That depends entirely on context. The French guy would only be offended if your acquaintance with him is such that he would expect you to know and remember his name. Even so, his being offended is about the fact that you didn't bother to learn his name, not about the fact that you called him French. | |
| Sep 9, 2014 at 9:41 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @JBentley: If I named three people by name but not the French guy, of course the French guy would be offended. Rightfully so. Three names + one identifying description is offending. Four identifying descriptions is not offending. | |
| Sep 9, 2014 at 7:07 | comment | added | Raestloz | @Gala it has a useful side-effect of marking which people have narrow vision. For example, Japan has strict rules regarding calling people by their first name (reserved for close people only) but modern Japanese can forgive foreigners for not knowing that and accidentally call new acquaintances by their first name (especially tourists), the ones that don't are the ones you definitely should not piss off | |
| Sep 9, 2014 at 1:57 | comment | added | Gala | @JBentley Is there an actual difference? If you know something will be perceived as disrespectful in a given context, it is disrespectful to do it nonetheless. And of course, meaning and connotation depend on culture and history but that's a trivial point. | |
| Sep 8, 2014 at 23:53 | comment | added | JBentley | @gnashery729 I agree that it is perceived as disrespectful, but not that it is disrespectful. It is only seen that way because the race issue is a sensitive one for historical reasons. If you were to say "Fred, John, James and the French guy" nobody would be offended. The fact that "and the Black guy" is singled out as offensive is itself a form of discrimination that shouldn't exist. In an ideal world skin colour or race would be so unimportant that you could refer to it without anyone caring. I realise that what I'm saying is more philosophical than practical however. | |
| Sep 8, 2014 at 21:18 | comment | added | Mooing Duck | @Lembik: Usually, one starts with the most obvious difference from whatever is "common" in the potential set. There exist places where some people are mostly white, making "black skin" a very obvious difference. | |
| Sep 8, 2014 at 16:12 | comment | added | Simd | This is a much more sensible answer than the most upvoted one. The point is why are you describing a person only by their skin colour? I would think about how you would identify someone of your own skin colour and try to describe everyone in that way. | |
| Sep 8, 2014 at 14:25 | comment | added | gnasher729 | "Fred, John, James and the black guy" is very disrespectful. "The blonde guy, the guy with the earring, the one with the big nose and the black guy" isn't. | |
| Sep 8, 2014 at 12:05 | review | First posts | |||
| Sep 8, 2014 at 18:08 | |||||
| Sep 8, 2014 at 12:01 | history | answered | nekomatic | CC BY-SA 3.0 |