Might Be A Sensitive Topic But Here Goes!

I'm not the eyeglass clerk. But it sounds like an inept attempt to communicate in what she thought was your "lingo". I doubt it was blatant racism, it was racist in not recognizing you as an individual. She addressed you as a "colored woman", not as a woman of color. Maybe, she'd be shocked if someone accused her of racism. It's my opinion that most whites in the US see "colored people" rather than people of color, and they don't recognize that as somewhat racist. They, too, would be shocked to be called "racist".
BTW, I include myself in that.
 

Jan14 said:
I will sometimes call my girlfriends “girl”. This post kind of puts me in my place. I will be careful from now on. I’m sorry you were offended. I don’t think the clerk meant to offend you. I notice being older now and being referred to by “honey” and sweetie by younger people. Some take offense to this as well. I think sometimes we need to just show each other grace and move on from things. We are all human and make mistakes. We ALL get our feelings hurt from time to time.
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My feelings were not hurt. I have no emotional investment in a perfect stranger, so I couldn't be bothered to be hurt. I was curious to hear others input on the behavior. :)
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I'm not the eyeglass clerk. But it sounds like an inept attempt to communicate in what she thought was your "lingo". I doubt it was blatant racism, it was racist in not recognizing you as an individual. She addressed you as a "colored woman", not as a woman of color. Maybe, she'd be shocked if someone accused her of racism. It's my opinion that most whites in the US see "colored people" rather than people of color, and they don't recognize that as somewhat racist. They, too, would be shocked to be called "racist".
BTW, I include myself in that.
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I agree. And I appreciate your honesty. Sometimes, when we think of as racism, we think of the more blatant types, but tend to overlook the smaller examples.

As seniors here, I am sure we have encountered moments of wtf? When someone raises their voice to address us because they assume we are deaf, or we feel invisible because we are seniors, or someone speaks to us as if we are in the late stages of senility. All because of how we look. I guess it is food for thought.
 

carouselsilver said:
My question is, do you think people should change their speech in a way that they think a person from another culture might like, or should people just speak in their normal way?
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I always try to be respectful of what I think the person I am speaking to feels best about. However I do have some trouble with just speaking normally. It is often just what comes out. I am never really sure how the person I am speaking to takes it.

I grew up white and redneck in the deep south, but fortunately did not pickup some of the more offensive language, don't use it no matter who I am talking to.

I do call many of my lady friends "girl", but don't use it with people I am not very familiar with. Mostly white women. I don't think its in any way demeaning, or I sure don't mean it to be.
 
carouselsilver said:
Here's a link. As you'll see, he is famous for playing exaggerated versions of older black women in a comical way.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1347153/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
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I was going to post that link but you beat me to it.

Speech patterns aside, his most famous character, Madea, actually reminds many white people of various ethnicities in our age bracket of their own elders, a Grandmother or Aunt. For me her strength, independence and yes bossiness but out of familial love, reminded me from first time i saw the character of my Irish Grandma, Nell.

My daughter suspects that the older Irish visitor in "Madea's Homecoming" was inspired by the the many white fans who said the dynamic matriarch reminded them of one in their own families.
 
My mother, my daughter and i all cursed/blessed with what Mom called a 'mimics ear'. Exposed to an accent or distinctive speech pattern for five minutes or so we unconsciously fall into thinking and speaking it. But it results from hearing whatever patterns, not by visual cues. So don't know what set the lady you spoke to off. (Haven't read all comments yet, you might have explained.)

Because most (some? Can't recall how common it is) of us hear words we read in our heads for me just reading dialectical text can set me off. Like Paul Laurence Dunbar's dialect poetry. In the the sixties the pretty much the only poetry by Black people in English textbooks was dialect poems. I had one English teacher who introduced students interested in poetry to Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay.

I discovered a greater variety in a storage room of my High School library. Dunbar actually wrote a good deal in beautiful formal english (more proper English than many white people of his time or mine spoke/wrote). Only exposing students to dialectical Black poetry was a form of institutional racism perpetuating stereotypes.

Can be embarrassing, Mom was waitress for many years in mixed neighborhood, and often found herself apologizing for it. Once we catch ourselves or someone mentions it we can, with conscious effort tone it down and mostly off. Confuses our pets when we've watched shows with lots of one accent, we don't always notice when we first slip into it.
 
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Alligatorob said:
I always try to be respectful of what I think the person I am speaking to feels best about. However I do have some trouble with just speaking normally. It is often just what comes out. I am never really sure how the person I am speaking to takes it.

I grew up white and redneck in the deep south, but fortunately did not pickup some of the more offensive language, don't use it no matter who I am talking to.

I do call many of my lady friends "girl", but don't use it with people I am not very familiar with. Mostly white women. I don't think its in any way demeaning, or I sure don't mean it to be.
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You sound very thoughtful. I wish more people were like you!
 
@feywon.I grew up in New Jersey. As a child I got picked on by other students, who had come up from the South, during the Civil Rights chaos. They always wanted to know why I spoke so "properly." They thought I was putting on an affectation. I merely spoke the same way my mother did. DH has mentioned that I sound like a female version of Denzel Washington, lol. So this is why I was puzzled at the way this woman was speaking. I do suspect she meant well, and may have assumed that she was putting me at ease, but it was kind of embarrassing!

As for the use of "girl," I have heard other women of color use it in an affectionate way with close friends, but not strangers. I personally don't use it and don't like it used. TBH, I felt moved in a spiritual way to speak of this in this forum. In these troubled times, I am feeling more of the need to understand others before getting angry or offended,and sometimes I can't understand, so I like to discuss.
 
I have also noticed that if I am around a certain accent it will "rub off," so I can relate to what others said. When I was younger, I had the gift of mimicry and I could perfectly imitate various accents for fun. But it was really hard not to sound like the people I was around. An interesting thing about aging is that it doesn't happen anymore and my NJ accent gets a little more distinct. I spent ten years in Florida and did not pick up an accent.
 
carouselsilver said:
@feywon.I grew up in New Jersey. As a child I got picked on by other students, who had come up from the South, during the Civil Rights chaos. They always wanted to know why I spoke so "properly." They thought I was putting on an affectation. I merely spoke the same way my mother did. DH has mentioned that I sound like a female version of Denzel Washington, lol. So this is why I was puzzled at the way this woman was speaking. I do suspect she meant well, and may have assumed that she was putting me at ease, but it was kind of embarrassing!

As for the use of "girl," I have heard other women of color use it in an affectionate way with close friends, but not strangers. I personally don't use it and don't like it used. TBH, I felt moved in a spiritual way to speak of this in this forum. In these troubled times, I am feeling more of the need to understand others before getting angry or offended,and sometimes I can't understand, so I like to discuss.
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At my age if someone i barely knew called me 'girl' i'd probably make some joke about it--- 'Not for decades now.' Or 'No thaks. Been there, done that, happier NOW'. I never cared for anything that seemed overly familiar (sweety, honey) from people who weren't family even when i was a child.

Buddhism tells us that taking offense can be as bad deliberately giving it, but agree with that only up to a point. And my general !
response to those who are clearly trying to insult me that while i'll remember their rudeness, i'd have to care about &/or respect them more for their opinions about me to matter to me.

In my 30 and 40s i could say 'Excuse me?!' In tone of voice that made clear they needed to walk back their attitudes. But i more often just ignore things said by people have no relationship with these days.

As for Black people catching flack from their own, or the questionable 'compliment', "You don't sound Black." from White people for how they speak i'd like to see the faces of those critics if they went to Surinam (formerly Dutch Guyana). The population is some 40% Black, but the language they grew up speaking was Dutch, so even when they speak English is not as fluid sounding or easy on the ear. Had a plane change there in 1970 and it really caught me off guard.
 
feywon said:
At my age if someone i barely knew called me 'girl' i'd probably make some joke about it--- 'Not for decades now.' Or 'No thaks. Been there, done that, happier NOW'. I never cared for anything that seemed overly familiar (sweety, honey) from people who weren't family even when i was a child.
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Same here. I was raised in a way that I would never have dreamed of calling an older person by terms reeking of such familiarity. So it's even more odd when a person roughly my age (she had graying hair) carries on in such a peculiar manner.
feywon said:
Buddhism tells us that taking offense can be as bad deliberately giving it, but agree with that only up to a point. And my general !
response to those who are clearly trying to insult me that while i'll remember their rudeness, i'd have to care about &/or respect them more for their opinions about me to matter to me.
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I agree. I didn't take offense, but was just put off guard by her manner of speech. Maybe I should have thanked her for the entertainment?;)
feywon said:
In my 30 and 40s i could say 'Excuse me?!' In tone of voice that made clear they needed to walk back their attitudes. But i more often just ignore things said by people have no relationship with these days.
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Agreed again! I pick my battles. If she were a co-worker that I had to deal with every day, I would have addressed that right away.
feywon said:
As for Black people catching flack from their own, or the questionable 'compliment', "You don't sound Black." from White people for how they speak i'd like to see the faces of those critics if they went to Surinam (formerly Dutch Guyana). The population is some 40% Black, but the language they grew up speaking was Dutch, so even when they speak English is not as fluid sounding or easy on the ear. Had a plane change there in 1970 and it really caught me off guard.
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That sounds interesting! I once overheard a young black woman speaking an Asian dialect and like you said, it caught me off guard!
 
@carouselsilver said:
"That sounds interesting! I once overheard a young black woman speaking an Asian dialect and like you said, it caught me off guard!"

That reminds me about first time i saw comedian Henry Cho who was raised in a Southern state. If i just heard him talk i'd of thought he was another 'Blue collar, redneck' comedian as long as it wasn't one of his 'bits' about how the Asian face and Southern accent confuses people.

 
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carouselsilver said:
I have also noticed that if I am around a certain accent it will "rub off," so I can relate to what others said. When I was younger, I had the gift of mimicry and I could perfectly imitate various accents for fun. But it was really hard not to sound like the people I was around. An interesting thing about aging is that it doesn't happen anymore and my NJ accent gets a little more distinct. I spent ten years in Florida and did not pick up an accent.
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I am fairly sure I pick up accents, or words/phrases typical or characteristic of areas of the UK almost all the time, and guess its a way of trying to fit in wherever I go, or I'm just prone to it, (most folks can still tell where you really come from though, even if you try to disguise your accent!).
 

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