Let's Call a Spade a Spade: Is this racist?

[JamesSD]

I'm guessing most people have seen the phrase "call a spade a spade", and I've seen it used online by otherwise non-racist people. My understanding, assuming it is correct, is that the spade in this phrase refers to a Black person, and is essentially one step up from saying "Let's call a N____ a N_____". (Fill in the racial slur, I'm not comfortable using said word).

My question, is is this phrase racist, or has the understanding of its meaning surpassed its literal roots? English has a number of expressions that live on, which children know the meaning of, but would be hard pressed to actually explain the literal context of.

Do old-fashioned racial slurs lack power? If you called an Irish American a "Mic", they're unlikely to take much offense. But I'd imagine most Jewish American's wouldn't enjoy being called a "Kike". Watching Deadwood opened my mind to a whole new world of outmoded pejoratives, like "Square-head" for Swedish people (of which I am heavily descended from).

So, is Spade a racial slur? If so, should "Let's call a Spade a Spade" be retired/changed, or should we just assume it's talking about a shovel or the playing card suit?

 

[wehstar]

Here's me all this time thinking that the phrase referred to shovels in some way, and their similarity to spades.

dammit.

 

[slyc_willie]

There are numerous racial slurs out there that have changed over time or simply disappeared. 'Spade,' as referring to an African-American, is pretty outdated, and I doubt many of them would get the original intended reference. For a long time, I thought the phrase, 'call a spade a spade' was a gambling term refering to those who cheat at cards. I wasn't alone in that assumption.

I never knew what a 'Moolie' was, either, until someone explained it to me. I just remember hearing it in a movie, in a comedic way, and started using it to refer to people acting stupidly. I never realized 'Moolie' was another racial slur.

 

[flavortang]

I was called a "pineapple eatin' sonuvabitch" by a big black guy in Airman school when I was in the Navy because I'm half-Filipino. I didn't really take it as racist because we always joked around. I've always thought that racial slurs were racist because of their context.

I had a black friend in middle school who used to tell me to call him 'a nigger' if I wanted to, because it didn't matter. I never did, but I think the context is what's important in making that determination.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

from a Random House dictionary web site, http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970115:

What is the origin of the expression "call a spade a spade"? Is this a politically correct expression?

Let's get two things straight here: first, the expression to call a spade a spade is thousands of years old and etymologically has nothing whatsoever to do with any racial sentiment. The second is that in spite of this, some people think it is a racial statement, and therefore it should be treated with some caution.

To call a spade a spade, which means, ironically for this discussion, 'to speak plainly and bluntly; to speak without euphemisms', is first found in Ancient Greece. The exact origin is uncertain; the playwright Menander, in a fragment, said "I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade," but Lucian attributes the phrase to Aristophanes. Later, Plutarch notes that "The Macedonians are a rude and clownish people who call a spade a spade." (It is worth noting that the Greek word translated as "spade" seems actually to mean something like "bowl" or "trough"; the "spade" may be based on a Renaissance mistranslation. In this case the original expression was "to call a bowl a bowl," and thus the "spade" expression is "only" 500, rather than 2,500, years old.)

After it first appeared in English in the sixteenth century, the saying became quite common, and was used in various forms and allusions. My favorite English example:

Cecily: When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen: I am glad to say I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.

--Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Spade meaning 'a black person' is far more recent; it is first found in the early twentieth century. It derives from the black color of the suit of spades in a deck of playing cards.

Clearly our expression to call a spade a spade was very well established long before the word spade had any racial sense. However, today the word does have a racial sense. If the expression is assumed to be offensive, it should be used with caution even if there's no real basis for the assumption. This is not an unusual event. The word bloody, for example, does not derive from a profane oath such as "by our lady," but that's what people thought, and the word was considered quite offensive. The incorrect etymological assumption did not change the word's offensiveness. Few people today would object to call a spade a spade, but some people might, and one should at the very least be aware of that.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It derives from an ancient Greek expression: _ta syka syka, te:n
skaphe:n de skaphe:n onomasein_ = "to call a fig a fig, a trough a
trough". This is first recorded in Aristophanes' play _The Clouds_
(423 B.C.), was used by Menander and Plutarch, and is still current
in modern Greek. There has been a slight shift in meaning: in
ancient times the phrase was often used pejoratively, to denote a
rude person who spoke his mind tactlessly; but it now, like the
English phrase, has an exclusively positive connotation. It is
possible that both the fig and the trough were originally sexual
symbols.
In the Renaissance, Erasmus confused Plutarch's "trough"
(_skaphe:_) with the Greek word for "digging tool" (_skapheion_;
the two words are etymologically connected, a trough being
something that is hollowed out) and rendered it in Latin as _ligo_.
Thence it was translated into English in 1542 by Nicholas Udall in
his translation of Erasmus's version as "to call a spade [...] a
spade". (_Bartlett's Familiar Quotations_ perpetuates Erasmus'
error by mistranslating _skaphe:_ as "spade" three times under
Menander.)
"To call a spade a bloody shovel" is not recorded until 1919.
"Spade" in the sense of "Negro" is not recorded until 1928. (It
comes from the colour of the playing card symbol, via the phrase
"black as the ace of spades".)

This, of course, does *not* necessarily render the modern use of
"to call a spade a spade" "politically correct". Rosalie Maggio, in
_The Bias-Free Word-Finder_, writes: "The expression is associated
with a racial slur and is to be avoided", and recommends using "to
speak plainly" or other alternatives instead. In another entry, she
writes: "Although by definition and derivation 'niggardly' and
'nigger' are completely unrelated, 'niggardly' is too close for
comfort to a word with profoundly negative associations. Use
instead one of the many available alternatives: stingy, miserly,
parsimonious..." Beard and Cerf, in _The Official Politically
Correct Handbook_, p. 123, report that an administrator at the
University of California at Santa Cruz campaigned for the banning
of such phrases as "a chink in his armor" and "a nip in the air",
because "chink" and "nip" are also derogatory terms for "Chinese
person" and "Japanese person" respectively. In the late 1970s in
the U.S., a boycott of the (now defunct) Sambo's restaurant chain
was organized, even though the name "Sambo's" was a combination of
the names of its two founders and did not come from the offensive
word for dark-skinned person.


Source: [Mark Israel, 'Phrase Origins: "to call a spade a spade"', The alt.usage.english FAQ file,(line 4562), (29 Sept 1997)]

 

[NoJo]

I used to hang around with spayed cats

 

[M's girl]

People who use the N word most are black people amongst themselves... It's funny how that seems to be OK and then when "white" people use the exact same word it's a racist remark all of a sudden. I'm not a racist at all, but I find this to be odd.

I had a collegue once who was a (lovely and otherwise smart) girl. She was (is) black. We worked in different offices down the same hallway and one day someone walked into mine asking where they could find her. Since I did not know her room number I said I thought it was two or three doors down the hall and added to look for the black lady in the red outfit.

She was furious I had referred to her as being a black girl. Mind you; she was the only black girl/woman in our office at the time! Don't we all refer to the most obvious feature of someone (no disfigures of course) when we want to make ourselves clear? She could not and would not understand that I meant nothing racial .... and there I was... I thought I knew her well...

She said "I am not going to refer to you as the white girl, now would I?" Well, uh.... no... that would make no sense since there were at least 15 other "white girls" in the office. She just did not want to get that concept!

Sigh

 

[IrezumiKiss]

There are numerous racial slurs out there that have changed over time or simply disappeared. 'Spade,' as referring to an African-American, is pretty outdated, and I doubt many of them would get the original intended reference.

You got it dead-on, pun intended. The phrase itself is archaic and the term "spade" is metaphorically "soft" as a contemporary slur. It'd only make sense in a certain context and/or understood by those thinking in a literary vein instead of a purely vulgar state of mind.

I was called a "pineapple eatin' sonuvabitch" by a big black guy in Airman school when I was in the Navy because I'm half-Filipino. I didn't really take it as racist because we always joked around. I've always thought that racial slurs were racist because of their context.

That's kinda amusing to find out. I would've taken that to be a dig at being Hawaiian, not Filipino. Filipinos have a lot of culture-specific ethnic foods to target for being a possible slur. Pineapples are a little too ubiquitous.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

A few years ago there was a news story about a workplace supervisor who got fired for using the word "niggardly."

 

[kendo1]

As Roz said, on this side of the pond it means - call an object by its name.

The difficulty arises when you substitute 'person' for 'object' and people interpret this as racist.

 

[flavortang]

You got it dead-on, pun intended. The phrase itself is archaic and the term "spade" is metaphorically "soft" as a contemporary slur. It'd only make sense in a certain context and/or understood by those thinking in a literary vein instead of a purely vulgar state of mind.


That's kinda amusing to find out. I would've taken that to be a dig at being Hawaiian, not Filipino. Filipinos have a lot of culture-specific ethnic foods to target for being a possible slur. Pineapples are a little too ubiquitous.

I didn't say the guy was smart. I'm thinking he bunched up Hawaiians, Samoans, Filipinos and any South Asian culture. He said he couldn't figure out what the hell I was. lol

Personally, I'm more a mango person.

 

[slyc_willie]

Roxanne, thank you. I always like to learn something new every day. Perhaps, if I had ever read Oscar Wilde, I might have known that.

As for racial slurs and racism, et al, I think that's a topic difficult to tread on without ruffling a few feathers. Being caucasian, and having lived in cities and neighborhoods that were heavily Hispanic, Latino, Black, etc., I've heard all sorts of slurs tossed at me just because of my skin tone.

Square, monty, whitey, white boy, pink . . . I don't know where most of those terms come from, but I've heard them.

 

[Grushenka]

Plutarch notes that "The Macedonians are a rude and clownish people who call a spade a spade." (It is worth noting that the Greek word translated as "spade" seems actually to mean something like "bowl" or "trough"; the "spade" may be based on a Renaissance mistranslation. In this case the original expression was "to call a bowl a bowl," and thus the "spade" expression is "only" 500, rather than 2,500, years old.)

According to the OED the earliest attribution is from Plutarch's Apophthegmata 178B; it was Erasmus who mistranslated the word to spade. The original Greek word meant trough, basin, bowl, boat, etc., and Plutarch's phrase simply meant "to call things by their real names, without any euphemism or mincing of matters; to use plain or blunt language; to be straightforward to the verge of rudeness."

"Black as the ace of spades" is where some might infer racism in the ancient phrase, but until this thread I'd never have associated the two.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

People who use the N word most are black people amongst themselves... It's funny how that seems to be OK and then when "white" people use the exact same word it's a racist remark all of a sudden. I'm not a racist at all, but I find this to be odd.

As a Black person, I can tell you that when you hear Black people using it, it's most likely out of laziness and stupidity, which, to my ears, more or less underscores the original meaning of the word to begin with. Go figure. I have to permanently live with it being a delusionary term of endearment and a psuedo "reverse-engineered" synonym for "person," but don't get it twisted. A semantic, grey-area type war is being fought right now over how relevant this word needs to be for serious concern, thanks to its near ubiquitous use in the mentally impressionable hip-hop generation, but when you get right down to it, there's no need for ANYONE to be using that word outside of a literary context...and even then one better be on point with what one really wants to say.

I had a collegue once who was a (lovely and otherwise smart) girl. She was (is) black. We worked in different offices down the same hallway and one day someone walked into mine asking where they could find her. Since I did not know her room number I said I thought it was two or three doors down the hall and added to look for the black lady in the red outfit.

She was furious I had referred to her as being a black girl. Mind you; she was the only black girl/woman in our office at the time! Don't we all refer to the most obvious feature of someone (no disfigures of course) when we want to make ourselves clear? She could not and would not understand that I meant nothing racial .... and there I was... I thought I knew her well...

She said "I am not going to refer to you as the white girl, now would I?" Well, uh.... no... that would make no sense since there were at least 15 other "white girls" in the office. She just did not want to get that concept!

Sigh

I think she was in the camp that would've preferred to be described as "African-American." That's the safe "no-miss" way to describe someone "Black." Personally I can go either way, but I understand those who prefer it AA like your friend.

 

[cloudy]

my personal favorite is "wagonburner."

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

Wow... I can honestly say... Call a Spade a Spade to me always meant...

Tell it like it is, don't sugar coat it. If something sucks it sucks, don't say it doesn't suck that bad. If it's green, it's green, not lime.

I never thought it was racial... damn, I guess I'm either ignorant in racial issues, or I'm just stupid and naive or too innocent for my own good. . . Yeah, innocent. I'm sure that is it.

 

[kendo1]

my personal favorite is "wagonburner."

Love it!

I can't really see a time when I could use it though.

 

[JPMMURPHY]

Yep, I always knew what it meant. Never knew the origin. I don't know how many times I've heard it in negotiations (the terms are really what they are, nothing more) or when speaking of the actions of someone (don't try to make this more or less than it really is).

 

[3113]

my personal favorite is "wagonburner."

Oh, I *love* it! And it suits you, Cloudy. No flaming arrows though. You'd go marching right up to the settlers, one brow lifted, and say, "Ex-cuse me! Did you miss the No-trespassing signs?" and then, flick-of-a-bic and up would go the wagon

As for "spade is a spade"--as I never call a "shovel" a "spade" it always seemed more racial to me. I think we have to keep in mind how words are used. Few people go into the hardware store asking for a "spade" rather than garden shovel.

 

[NoJo]

In the village where I grew up we would call a spade a "slutchet". Funnily enough, we also called a black person a "slutchet", but I never saw any black people as a child.

We had a rhyme:

Mary Mutchet
Married a Slutchet
Her children are Grown
Their Skin is Light Brown


(there was a tune to go with this)

 

[Chantilyvamp]

I never knew it was anything more than call it what it is type thing. Then again I've lived 3 years in England and just now tonight watching a program and found out there is a whole lot of people that hate other people with ginger hair??? They were saying people got seriously bullied for it and a lot of women would not date a man with ginger hair.

So i've learned two things today!

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I think she was in the camp that would've preferred to be described as "African-American." That's the safe "no-miss" way to describe someone "Black." Personally I can go either way, but I understand those who prefer it AA like your friend.

I'm not attacking you when I say this. I am attacking the phrase.

Does "African American" even make sense?

If you were born in the USA you aren't an African American. You are just black. If you are from South America, it makes even less sense. How about Austrailian natives? What if you are of white decent from Africa? That has nothing to do with skin color.

I have always found that Black is a skin color, and nothing more. It has nothing to do with culture, heritage, personality, or anything else other than how well your skin absorbs sunshine. It's not good, it's not bad, it just is.

 

[starrkers]

Seems to me, some people hunt for racist epithets everywhere. Taking the moral high ground by pointing out possible racist slants in common phrases that have been around for centuries has to be its own form of racism.

Calling a spade a spade has always meant telling the truth without sugar coating it.

 

[SeaCat]

Staying out of this conversation. Anything I say will be taken wrongly.

Cat

 

[TriggerHippie]

I have always found that Black is a skin color, and nothing more. It has nothing to do with culture, heritage, personality, or anything else other than how well your skin absorbs sunshine. It's not good, it's not bad, it just is.

Well, then, technically, wouldn't "brown" be a better descriptor? And if you're going to describe people by color, per se, are Asians yellow? American Indians red? Just curious. Race and nationality and ethnicity are three very distinct things, even if our understanding of them becomes blurred by not understanding the terms, yes? I know this is off topic, but personally I think that ethnicity and ethnic identity are a very important and I envy people who have the immediacy of those connections. JMHO.