There Will Be Time, III, WITHIT'S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY.
I have discussed Jack Havig's Pamphlet before.
There Will Be Time is a rich sf novel and a worthy successor of HG Wells' The Time Machine. However, I dislike Chapter III and have usually skipped past it when rereading.
"Black: Of whole or partial sub-Saharan African descent; from the skin color, which ranges from brown to ivory. Not to be confused with Brown, Red, White, or Yellow. This word replaces the former 'Negro,' which today is considering insulting since it means 'Black.'" (p. 27)
What is being satirized here? There is universal use of words for skin color that do not correspond to other uses of the same words. White people are pink. Color terms are contextual. White coffee can be the same color as black skin.
"Negro" is considered insulting because it has been used insultingly, not because it means "Black." Racism is a serious issue. Flippancy is inappropriate.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We have argued about Chapter III of THERE WILL BE TIME before. I did not find it at all flippant, being instead spot on accurate. Because there were and are radical leftists who do think and talk in the grotesque ways that chapter satirizes. And, living as near San Francisco and Berkeley as he did, Anderson had plenty of opportunities for familiarizing himself with such nonsense.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But ridiculing the use of "Black" instead of "Negro" is unhelpful.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, but there are cranks of the kind described above who are obsessional bores about "Negro," "Black," or "African-American."
Ad astra! Sean
"Negro" was the original -polite- term for black people in the US: it was used by the educated, including educated black people.
Negro was what abolitionists used; it was the term Frederick Douglas, Brooker T. Washington, Martin Luther King and others used.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly! "Negro" was the polite term used for "blacks" down to the 1960's. I never did understand why or how it became somehow bad.
Ad astra! Sean
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