#8 Let’s just call a spade a spade
The history of “calling a spade a spade” is complicated. The expression has its roots in ancient Greece and was originally known as “calling a fig a fig and a trough a trough.” The racial connotations were added on later.
Originally, the gardening equipment was meant to be the spade in this expression. This relationship changed to indicate the playing card suit during the late 1920s. The term “spade” started to be used as a slang term for black people around the same time.
With these two linguistic changes, the innocent Greek idiom “call a spade a spade” was transformed into an uncomfortable racist phrase.
2 Responses
what you are really saying is don’t speak truth as it might be too much for someone to handle. Unfortunately, saying someone is learning challenged is less offensive than the so called R-word? While we should be aware of peoples feelings, naming something something else or pretending something doesn’t exist doesn’t make it so. Stop it.
Black Lives Matter is discriminatory and offensive to all others. It is exclusionary. The BLM organization is a bunch of scammers who used donations to buy expensive homes. The saying divides the races and implies that those of other races, many of which were discriminated against throughout the years, are of less value than black people. Martin Luther King’s entire message could be summed up by saying ALL people, regardless of color or ethnicity, should be evaluated on their character and NOT immutable characteristics. When we stop diving human beings by color and ethnicity, his dream will have been realized.
In many countries, white people have been discriminated against and enslaved throughout history. So have people of every single color and ethnicity. Would you be as accepting of WHITE LIVES MATTER, or SPANISH LIVES MATTER? I doubt it. How about the Irish? Though they were not technically slaves, they were treated in the same manner and many of them came to the USA under ‘servitude’ contracts which were traded among ‘masters’. In many African countries, slavery of one type or other is still normal. And exactly who do you think ran most slave ships? African tribes captured and sold other black tribes to the mainly black slavers who sold other blacks to white masters. Look into the actual history. Read books written during that time…and then tell me those words are only proper when spoken about blacks.