#racial history

[newhistorybooks]

"In Imperial Island, Charlotte Lydia Riley shows us that Empire’s legacy is soaked into Britain’s landscapes and built into its cities. From immigrant woes and racial tensions to the way in which imperial mindsets still color relations among black, white, and brown Britons, Empire is inescapably in the country’s national DNA. An eye-opening study of the Empire within."

[isawthismeme]

[writingwithcolor]

Non-offensive Historical terms for Black people in historical fiction

@pleasespellchimerical asked:

So writing historical fiction, with a white POV character. I'm not sure how to address race in the narration. I do have a Black main character, and I feel like it'd feel out of place to have the narrator refer to her as 'Black', that being a more modern term. Not sure how to do this without dipping into common historical terms that are considered racist today. Thoughts on how to handle this delicately, not pull readers out of the narrative? (fwiw, the POV character has a lot of respect for the Black character. The narration should show this)

There are non-offensive terms you can use, even in historical fiction. We can absolutely refer to Black people without slurs, and if slurs is all one can come up with, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. I cannot say which terms are best for your piece without knowing the time period, but hopefully the list below helps.

Historical terms to use for Black people (non-offensive)

African American documented as early as 1782 (documented in an ad in the Pennsylvania Journal). Note the identity isn’t accurate for non-American Black people.

African could refer to African people or “from 1722 as ‘of or pertaining to black Americans.’”

The place of origin could also be used. For example, “a Nigerian woman”

Africo-American documented as early as 1788.

People of Color documented as early as 1796 (with specific contexts, usually mixed people)

Afro American documented as early as 1817, 1831 (depending on source)

Black American documented as early as 1831 

Black was used in Old English to refer to dark-skinned people. Black was not capitalized until recent years, so “She was a young black woman.” would make sense to say, though “She was a young Black woman.” is the better standard today, although not universally adopted. I personally prefer it capitalized. 

Moor was used as early as the late 1400s for North African people, but had a somewhat flexible use where anyone visibly Black / Of African descent or the Afro Diaspora might be referred to or assumed as a Moor. Note, it has other meanings too, such as referring to Muslim people, but that doesn’t mean the person using it is going by the dictionary definition. Not really the way to go today, but okay in a historical setting (in my opinion).

Biracial (1860s), mixed race (1872), multiracial (1903) and multicultural (1940s) are also terms to refer to people of two or more races.

Occupation + description. Throughout history, many people have been referred to as their occupation. For example, the Carpenter, The Baker, the Blacksmith. Here’s an example of how you might go about using occupation and traits to identify a Black character in history. Here’s an example I came up with on the fly.

“You should go by Jerry’s. He’s the best blacksmith this town’s ever seen. Ya know, the real tall, dark-skinned, curly haired fellow. Family’s come here from Liberia.”

Offensive and less-sensitive terms for Black people 

Blacks was used in plural more, but this is generally offensive today (Even writing it gives me **Thee ick*)

Colored was mostly used post-civil war until the mid 20th century, when it became unacceptable. This is not to be conflated with the South African Coloured ethnic group.

Negro/Negroes were also used as early as the 1550s. Capitalization became common in the early 20th century. I'm sure you know it is offensive today, though, admittedly, was not generally seen as such until around the 1960s, when Black replaced it. It does have its contexts, such as the trope “The Magical Negro” but going around using the term or calling someone that today is a lot different. 

Mulatto referred to mixed people, generally Black and white, and is offensive today. 

The N-word, in all its forms, is explicitly a slur, and there is absolutely no need to use it, especially in a casual manner, in your story. We’ve written about handling the N-word and alluding to it “if need be” but there are other ways to show racism and tension without dropping the word willy-nilly.

Deciding what to use, a modern perspective

I’m in favor of authors relying on the less offensive, more acceptable terms. Particularly, authors outside of the race. Seldom use the offensive terms except from actual direct quotes.

You do not have to use those offensive terms or could at least avoid using them in excess. I know quite famous stories do, but that doesn’t mean we have to so eagerly go that route today. Honestly, from teachers to school, and fellow non-Black students, it’s the modern day glee that people seem to get when they “get a chance to say it” that makes it worse and also makes me not want to give people the chance. 

It goes back to historical accuracy only counting the most for an “authentic experience” when it means being able to use offensive terms or exclude BIPOC from stories. We’ve got to ask ourselves why we want to plaster certain words everywhere for the sake of accuracy when there are other just as accurate, acceptable words to use that hurt less people. 

Disclaimer: Opinions may vary on these matters. But just because someone from the group cosigns something by stating they’re not offended by it, doesn’t mean a whole lot of others are okay with it and their perspectives are now invalid! Also, of course, how one handles the use of these words as a Black person has a different connotation and freedom on how they use them.

~Mod Colette

The colonial context

Since no country was mentioned, I’m going to add a bit about the vocabulary surrounding Black people during slavery, especially in the Caribbean. Although, Colette adds, if your Black characters are slaves, this begs the question why we always gotta be slaves.

At the time, there were words used to describe people based on the percentage of Black blood they had. Those are words you may find during your searches but I advise you not to use them. As you will realize if you dive a bit into this system, it looks like a classifying table. At the time, people were trying to lighten their descent and those words were used for some as a sort of rank. Louisiana being French for a time, those expressions were also seen there until the end of the 19th century.

The fractions I use were the number of Black ancestors someone had to have to be called accordingly.

Short-list here :

½ : mûlatre or mulatto

¼ or ⅛ : quarteron or métis (depending on the island, I’m thinking about Saint-Domingue, Martinique and Guadeloupe)

1/16 : mamelouk

¾ : griffe or capre

⅞ : sacatra

In Saint-Domingue, it could go down to 1/64, where people were considered sang-mêlé (mixed blood for literal translation, but “HP and the Half-Blood Prince” is translated “HP et le Prince de Sang-Mêlé” in French, so I guess this is another translation possibility).

-Lydie

Use the 3rd person narrative to your advantage

If you are intent on illustrating historical changes in terminology consider something as simple as showing the contrast between using “black” for first person character narration, but “Black” for 3rd person narrator omniscient.

-Marika

Add a disclaimer

I liked how this was addressed in the new American Girl books it’s set in Harlem in the 1920’s and there’s a paragraph at the beginning that says “this book uses the common language of the time period and it’s not appropriate to use now”

-SK

More reading:

NYT: Use of ‘African-American’ Dates to Nation’s Early Days

The Etymology dictionary - great resource for historical fiction

Wikipedia: Person of Color

[alwaysbewoke]

On March 5th, 1959, 69 African American boys, ages 13 to 17, were padlocked in their dormitory for the night at the Negro Boys Industrial School in Wrightsville. Around 4 a.m., a fire mysteriously ignited, forcing the boys to fight and claw their way out of the burning building. The old, run-down, & low-funded facility, just 15 minutes south of Little Rock, housed 69 teens from ages 13-17. Most were either homeless or incarcerated for petty crimes such as doing pranks. 48 boys managed to escape the fire. The doors were locked from the outside and fire mysteriously ignited on a cold, wet morning, following earlier thunderstorms in the same area of rural Pulaski County. The horrific event brought attention to the deplorable conditions in which the boys lived. The boys all slept in a space barely big enough for them to move around & theyre one foot apart from one another & their bathroom was a bucket at the corner where they had to defecate in. In an ironic twist, the land in which the school stood is now the Arkansas Department of Correction Facility Wrightsville Unit. In 2019 a plaque was finally placed after 60 years.

PURE EVIL!!! MY GOD!!

[useless-englandfacts]

remembrance day seems like a good day to remember that in 1937 churchill rejected the arab wish to stop zionist jewish migration to palestine by saying:

I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'American continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here'. They had not the right, nor had they the power.

[liberaljane]

Black Futures Matter

Digital illustration of a large diverse group of Black people of different ages, genders, sexualities, and ability. The color palette is orange and green. Text reads, 'Black futures matter.'

[timaeuslover001]

colonization wasn't started by the europeans in the 1500s.

so stop trying to demonize Europe and America for what they have don't that MANY cultures around the world have already done.

and yes using the term "colonizer" is a racial slur and stop suing it.

[newhistorybooks]

"Rachel Jean-Baptiste’s study of racially mixed people in colonial French Africa is not just the story of the making of a category but of the men and women who inhabited it, who tried to make their lives within a colonial racial order, and who acted collectively to challenge that order. Her deeply researched account brings out the ambiguous and contested meanings of race, colonialism, citizenship, and community."

[taliabhattwrites]

Understanding Third-Sexing

Crossposted from my Troonsky account.

[menlove]

man the other thing that drives me crazy abt the whole "claiming judaism is an ethnicity and religion is race science just like the NAZIS" is that like....

what the nazis believed in was a mythical race of white europeans who were stronger and better than everyone else. they had 0 scientific, historic, or archeological proof of this. it was just a crackpot theory proposed to explain why white europeans were "better" than everyone else and provided an ideal for them to strive back to bc they thought that "pure" race had been tainted by racial "interbreeding"

jews saying judaism is an ethnicity is not bc it's in the fucking tanakh that they came from judea. it's bc there's MOUNTAINS of historical and archeological proof that jews came from that area. there's historical proof of people encountering jews in the middle east. there's firsthand accounts from jews themselves that survived diaspora that lived in that area. jewish DNA, regardless of other race, has a great deal of similarity w arabic DNA. there's MOUNTAINS of historical and archeological evidence that traces the movement of jews OUT of the area and into the rest of the world and the subsequent movement of jews for the next few thousand years as they kept getting kicked out or murdered

does any of that mean that israel should have displaced the people already living there and subjected them to decades of inequality and atrocity? fucking obviously not. but 1) denying historical and archeological fact to throw around your pet antisemitic conspiracy theory makes you sound like a qanon fuckass and 2) comparing that to white supremacists making up a mythical pure white race is just fucking insane and incredibly deeply antisemitic

like you don't have to make shit up to condemn what israel is doing, I promise you. you can acknowledge the nuance and hardship of history without condoning what israel does. israel doesn't need to be made up of pure europeans for you to criticize it. bc believe it or not, europeans are not the only people on earth capable of committing atrocities or having enough autonomy to do so.

[rhetoricsofraceandidentity]

[afriblaq]

How many people need to die at the hands of police before we realize promising to give police total immunity is a dangerous idea? (warning: distressing)

@NowThisImpact.

[vandaliatraveler]

Thomas and Douglas share a common legacy as historic coal mining and lumber towns, both of which reached their zeniths in the first half of the 20th century. The artifacts of area's industrial past, some of which are now being reclaimed by nature, are still evident along Douglas Road, which forks out of Thomas and follows the North Fork of the Blackwater River to Douglas. These include the beehive coke ovens that once lit up the night nonstop to produce coke for local blast furnaces. In addition to the abandoned structures, a number of coal company buildings have been preserved and added to the National Register of Historic Places, including the Davis Coal and Coke Company Administrative Building and the Buxton & Landstreet Company Store, which is now home to the Buxton & Landstreet Gallery and Studios. The area's bittersweet past includes a legacy of human exploitation and racial injustice. Like its brethren, the Davis Coal and Coke Company paid its miners in company scrip that was only redeemable at the company store, which charged inflated prices for goods and ensured it could reclaim their wages at a premium. The area was also home to the Coketown Colored School, a segregated school at the center of an important civil rights victory in 1892, when Carrie Williams, a teacher at the school, teamed with J. R. Clifford, the state’s first African-American lawyer, to defeat an effort by Tucker County to reduce the school’s term. The victory ensured equal pay and terms for African-American schools in West Virginia. The Coketown Colored School closed in 1954 when segregated schools were found unconstitutional.

[alwaysbewoke]

[punkeropercyjackson]

Radical feminism as a form of feminism is fundementally flawed because it relies on erasing women's experiences to be more palpable,not on supporting women with different experiences with misogyny and the positive aspects of girlhood.It reduces women down to their biology,an inherently male thing to do historically,and silences our voices so that only the whitest and most privileged and digestable for 'biological men' as they put it can be heard.Terfs are malecentric and woman-hating and the ultimate form of pick mes,the original meaning of that term being misogynoiristic white women who hate black women to chase after black men.Terfs are white supremacists and a fostering ground for sexual abuse apologia and normalization as seen by their extension in Swerfs and the denial of corrective rape being a thing that happens to transgender people as much as does lesbians,this not being common knowledge because terfs refuse to let it spread out of,again,their need to erase the wide range of female experiences but also that their group does the rape often enough it's a pattern and they consider it morally correct because according to them,trans women are 'confused amabs who need to be put in their places that they have no right to exist as women' and trans men are 'confused afabs who need to learn women are their genitals and for men to hate and nothing else' and they're also child groomers that target vulnerable teenage girls.Radical feminism is not feminism.It's white cis eurocentric women wanting to be men in power