Colour Blind

My plans to record another edition of The Sleazecast have been stymied by the return of my cold - having had one edition constantly interrupted by my sniffing, I have no intention of repeating the experience. So, instead I've turned my attention to something I was going to write about last week, before I got caught up in the Christmas festivities. As you may recall, BBC Match of The Day pundit Alan Hansen was forced to apologise for using the term 'coloured' to describe black footballers whilst discussing the issue of racism in the game. Now, this raises an interesting matter of linguistics. I have no doubt that Hansen isn't a racist, but, as I've discussed here before, his use of language now seen as racially inappropriate is a generational issue. Whilst I'm somewhat younger than Hansen, like him I grew up at a time when the term 'coloured' was still considered a less offensive term than 'black'. For one thing, it was considered to be more racially 'inclusive', being used to describe both negros and Asian people. For some reason - I can't recall why - 'black' was seen as a more racially charged term, likely to cause offence if used in public. Ultimately, I think it all came down to the fact it was an era, (the late 1960s and early 1970s), when racial equality was still a relatively new concept. People were only just beginning to accept that the racial stereotypes being perpetuated in popular culture weren't 'harmless fun', but highly offensive, reinforcing unacceptable attitudes toward race. The fact was that even well-meaning white people didn't have a clue as how to relate to other races in terms of language.

Anyway, over time the situation with regard to the use of 'coloured' and 'black' were reversed, as it was more fully understood that both the apartheid regime in South Africa and the slave economy of the US's southern states had given the word 'coloured' so many unpleasant connotations. 'Black' was a more neutral word, being purely descriptive. Most importantly, it was the word that black people had claimed for themselves - unlike 'coloured', it wasn't applied to them by oppressors. However, for those of us who grew up being told that it was OK, indeed polite, to use the word 'coloured', it is sometimes difficult to avoid the odd lapse, where no offense is intended. So, I suppose I'm answering the question I posed a couple of weeks ago with regard to the defendants in the Stephen Lawrence trial - is it possible to claim not to be a racist, despite using language which would be considered racist? - in the affirmative. Under certain very narrow circumstances, at least. Of course the other issue this touches upon is the thorny one of the way in which the meaning of words can change over time. Usage alters them - only dead languages are unchanging, as Wittgenstein would tell you. Which is why Latin is favoured by both the scientific community and the Roman Catholic church - the meaning of anything written in it is unchanging and cannot be 'reinterpreted' as the ideas the individual words and phrases represent cannot be altered. Which, in turn, is why the claim that 'sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me', is utter bollocks. Words are always more than just words, they define ideas, often unpleasant ones, which is why language can be such a potent weapon.