Christmas day 1999
After christmas I found this note from my 6yr old niece tucked in the cover of a book I’d been reading. It now marks a poem drawing parallels between life and staying on a hospital ward where we do not make our beds but we do lie in them by Roger McGough in his book “The way things are”.
The note cleverly demonstrates that the word hasea hoase house, unlike home, is terribly tricky to spell. Probably because there are three of those infamously tricky vowels conglomerating in ‘house’.
conversation soon after first arriving in the US
Wendy: “he was the shiniest blackest man I’ve ever met”
USA people nearby: “ __________________________________”
USA person: “Wendy… …..you can’t say that”
Wendy: “say what?”
USA Person: “shiny black, it’s like saying greasy monkey, its offensive”
Wendy: “oh, can I say shiny without the black or black without the shiny?”
USA person: “you can say people of color or African Americans
Wendy: “and shiny?”
USA person: “best avoided altogether”
USA linguistic correctness is complicated. More complicated than spelling words with triple vowels. Apparantly there are white people and people of colour. White people and everybody-else . All skin shades lumped into one category ’not-white’. This is complicated especially if you want to describing different qualities of non-whiteness, or even the different shades of white, which are really colours. I’m probably repeatedly offending people here all over the shop. Hopefully they’ll let me know my social faux pas’ like the above fellow…
people of color = not-white
