I’m not sure I understand the problem here. If I was sitting amongst a load of people and the colour of my skin was the most obvious difference, I’d have no problem with someone calling me the white guy.
I’d understand it if she said “The African guy” – clearly just because someone is black doesn’t mean they’re African. But he *is* black.
On this basis, can Fiona Bruce no longer say “the ginger guy” or “the blonde woman”?
need to call him “IC3 Male” cuz apparently you cant say black now XD
need to have codes to make it harder to understand
“Question from the man in the front row.”
“No, not that one.”
“Not him, either.”
“Yes, that’s the one!”
Fucking nonsense.
You are a black guy. It’s not an insult.
Fuck sake I mean get a grip. I hate this fucking world
This was my fear in work. Someone came in asking for one of two black guys in the office. I had to gingerly direct them to him, rather than just saying “the black guy in the back row”.
This is reminiscent of a trope that occurs in boxing, of all things, if a white fighter is fighting a black fighter. As most of their skin is exposed, by far the best way for the comms to explain to the viewers who is who is to refer to their skin tone.
But no, we get “Smith is in the red corner wearing the black trunks with yellow trim and Jones is in the blue corner wearing, err black trunks trimmed with gold.”
Why? It was a distinguishing characteristic like hair colour, short/tall height, clothing colour.
Is it offensive to call black guys, black guys now?
I’d this BBC presenter worth £1m a year of tax payer money?
Sometimes I wish when situations like this (PC gone mad) people would say “no I aren’t apologising”
Well…she is a Brexit endorsing Tory girl, so I’m not really surprised if she insulted someone.
My son, when he was very young, liked blackcurrant to add to water to drink.
Only problem was he couldn’t pronounce it correctly.
It was embarrassing at times so we always bought orange from then on.
Plenty of people in here calling this ridiculous, which is nice, but I’d also like to say that the politics that created the climate we live in which means that this is considered an affront worthy of an apology should be criticised.
When I was volunteering at the 2012 Olympics, during the training, the booklet said it was perfectly fine to refer to someone as “the black man over there” particularly in the context of him being in a group of white and colleagues.
I don’t see the problem with this. I’m a fairly dark skinned mixed race person who regularly hangs out with lots of white people, so I have been pointed out as “the brown guy” before and I don’t find it offensive – it’s an obvious, distinguishing physical feature and the terms “brown” or “black” are purely descriptive, they aren’t pejoratives.
There’s a difference between saying “he’s the black/brown/white guy” (which is fine) and something like “he’s the darkie” or _constantly_ referring to someone just by their skin colour (which obviously is not).
I think a lot of people here seem to be missing that the issue is probably with the ‘guy’ part rather than the black ‘part’ as I’m fairly certain she has never referred to a white person as ‘the white guy’ but uses terms like ‘the gentleman with the blue shirt’ or the ‘man with the glasses on the second row’
‘Guy’ is an informal term of reference on a program that ordinarily carries a fairly formal format of conversation, and i see it as a slip that she uses it in the context of a black man.
My criterion for situations like this is whether other people would get described the same. If we got white guy, brown guy, yellow guy every other week fine. If once in ten years of broadcast there’s a single black guy who gets described by his colour, then it does strike me as odd. Not offensive, but odd.
I think you’ll find the correct term to use is “audience member of colour” (of course that might have changed this week).
To avoid this kind of embarrassment, why not give all the poor sods there a sign with a number on it, like they have at auctions?
“As such the recorded version on iPlayer has been edited to remove this.”
I weirdly find this more disturbing than her apology.
*People complain and take offence over the most trivial of things, says a bunch of people complaining and taking offence over a trivial thing…*
Well this is the world we have created, deal with it. It will only get worse from here on out.
My husband from Ghana hates the term person of colour and regularly corrects people to say I’m black just say black
It’s not difficult – just describe what people are wearing.
People will inevitably react to this and say “the world has gone mad” but every week she says “the lady in the blue dress” or “the gentleman with the black glasses” when she is pointing out an audience member.
For her to say “black guy” just seems….odd. Why not “black gentleman” or “the gentleman with the white t-shirt”?
“Black guy” is very informal, and she’s already assumed this man is below her on the social ladder, because otherwise she would have said “black gentleman”, which is how she refers to all the white people.
I think it’s more the bluntness of it. She could have said the black gentleman.
I think it interesting that people feel comfortable calling one person ‘white’ or even another ‘black’, but not at calling someone ‘yellow’ (save perhaps a coward). Frankly, I think unless we’ve to remove any reference to colour, we need to bring back ‘yellow’ to refer to Asians of a non-brown variety.
Wasn’t there a Harry Enfield Question Time sketch back in the day taking the piss out of racial hypersensitivity by having the David Dimbleby character “I’m now going to take a question from the only black man in the audience while making sure not to say he is black”?
27 comments
I’m not sure I understand the problem here. If I was sitting amongst a load of people and the colour of my skin was the most obvious difference, I’d have no problem with someone calling me the white guy.
I’d understand it if she said “The African guy” – clearly just because someone is black doesn’t mean they’re African. But he *is* black.
On this basis, can Fiona Bruce no longer say “the ginger guy” or “the blonde woman”?
need to call him “IC3 Male” cuz apparently you cant say black now XD
need to have codes to make it harder to understand
“Question from the man in the front row.”
“No, not that one.”
“Not him, either.”
“Yes, that’s the one!”
Fucking nonsense.
You are a black guy. It’s not an insult.
Fuck sake I mean get a grip. I hate this fucking world
This was my fear in work. Someone came in asking for one of two black guys in the office. I had to gingerly direct them to him, rather than just saying “the black guy in the back row”.
This is reminiscent of a trope that occurs in boxing, of all things, if a white fighter is fighting a black fighter. As most of their skin is exposed, by far the best way for the comms to explain to the viewers who is who is to refer to their skin tone.
But no, we get “Smith is in the red corner wearing the black trunks with yellow trim and Jones is in the blue corner wearing, err black trunks trimmed with gold.”
Why? It was a distinguishing characteristic like hair colour, short/tall height, clothing colour.
Is it offensive to call black guys, black guys now?
I’d this BBC presenter worth £1m a year of tax payer money?
Sometimes I wish when situations like this (PC gone mad) people would say “no I aren’t apologising”
Well…she is a Brexit endorsing Tory girl, so I’m not really surprised if she insulted someone.
My son, when he was very young, liked blackcurrant to add to water to drink.
Only problem was he couldn’t pronounce it correctly.
It was embarrassing at times so we always bought orange from then on.
Plenty of people in here calling this ridiculous, which is nice, but I’d also like to say that the politics that created the climate we live in which means that this is considered an affront worthy of an apology should be criticised.
When I was volunteering at the 2012 Olympics, during the training, the booklet said it was perfectly fine to refer to someone as “the black man over there” particularly in the context of him being in a group of white and colleagues.
I don’t see the problem with this. I’m a fairly dark skinned mixed race person who regularly hangs out with lots of white people, so I have been pointed out as “the brown guy” before and I don’t find it offensive – it’s an obvious, distinguishing physical feature and the terms “brown” or “black” are purely descriptive, they aren’t pejoratives.
There’s a difference between saying “he’s the black/brown/white guy” (which is fine) and something like “he’s the darkie” or _constantly_ referring to someone just by their skin colour (which obviously is not).
I think a lot of people here seem to be missing that the issue is probably with the ‘guy’ part rather than the black ‘part’ as I’m fairly certain she has never referred to a white person as ‘the white guy’ but uses terms like ‘the gentleman with the blue shirt’ or the ‘man with the glasses on the second row’
‘Guy’ is an informal term of reference on a program that ordinarily carries a fairly formal format of conversation, and i see it as a slip that she uses it in the context of a black man.
My criterion for situations like this is whether other people would get described the same. If we got white guy, brown guy, yellow guy every other week fine. If once in ten years of broadcast there’s a single black guy who gets described by his colour, then it does strike me as odd. Not offensive, but odd.
I think you’ll find the correct term to use is “audience member of colour” (of course that might have changed this week).
To avoid this kind of embarrassment, why not give all the poor sods there a sign with a number on it, like they have at auctions?
“As such the recorded version on iPlayer has been edited to remove this.”
I weirdly find this more disturbing than her apology.
*People complain and take offence over the most trivial of things, says a bunch of people complaining and taking offence over a trivial thing…*
Well this is the world we have created, deal with it. It will only get worse from here on out.
My husband from Ghana hates the term person of colour and regularly corrects people to say I’m black just say black
It’s not difficult – just describe what people are wearing.
People will inevitably react to this and say “the world has gone mad” but every week she says “the lady in the blue dress” or “the gentleman with the black glasses” when she is pointing out an audience member.
For her to say “black guy” just seems….odd. Why not “black gentleman” or “the gentleman with the white t-shirt”?
“Black guy” is very informal, and she’s already assumed this man is below her on the social ladder, because otherwise she would have said “black gentleman”, which is how she refers to all the white people.
I think it’s more the bluntness of it. She could have said the black gentleman.
I think it interesting that people feel comfortable calling one person ‘white’ or even another ‘black’, but not at calling someone ‘yellow’ (save perhaps a coward). Frankly, I think unless we’ve to remove any reference to colour, we need to bring back ‘yellow’ to refer to Asians of a non-brown variety.
Wasn’t there a Harry Enfield Question Time sketch back in the day taking the piss out of racial hypersensitivity by having the David Dimbleby character “I’m now going to take a question from the only black man in the audience while making sure not to say he is black”?
Truth following satire.
was he black? was he a guy?
if yes no problem ffs.