(01-12-2018 11:45 AM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(01-12-2018 11:42 AM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(01-12-2018 11:36 AM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(01-12-2018 11:18 AM)Crebman Wrote:  

(01-12-2018 10:33 AM)Fitbud Wrote:  President Trump is a racist.

This isn't news to anyone. Everyone on this forum knows it. Some people don't care.

But let's call a spade a spade.

People are going to be on this forum all day trying to deflect, point the finger at other people and say things like. " But Hillary this" and "but Obama that".


Let's not pretend anymore. The man's immigration policy comes from a personal hatred of the browning of America.

Please define for the the term I just bolded. Just what is a "spade"??

I guess I find it a bit ironic that you would use what MANY would term as a racist saying - and you aren't part of the group that would howl so you're not off the hook that way.

Now, because I'm not looking for something offensive under every rock and on every word, I really don't care - but a guarantee you there are people that would accuse you of being racist while saying someone else is racist just by what you typed in the bold above.......

Care to defend yourself?

Sorry I had no idea you had never heard the phrase.

Perhaps this will help.

To "call a spade a spade" is a figurative expression which refers to calling something "as it is",[1] that is, by its right or proper name, without "beating about the bush"—being outspoken about it, truthfully, frankly, and directly, even to the point of being blunt or rude, and even if the subject is considered coarse, impolite, or unpleasant. The idiom originates in the classical Greek of Plutarch's Apophthegmata Laconica, and was introduced into the English language in 1542 in Nicolas Udall's translation of the Apophthegmes, where Erasmus had seemingly replaced Plutarch's images of "trough" and "fig" with the more familiar "spade." The idiom has appeared in many literary and popular works, including those of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, W. Somerset Maugham, and Jonathan Swift.

call a spade a spade
To address or describe the true nature of someone or something, even if it is unpleasant. The term originated from a translation of an ancient Greek phrase, but is considered offensive by some due to the later use of the word "spade" as a racial slur

I didn't call anyone a spade.

I used the entire phrase in it's original context.

The fact that you and others are attempting to claim I am a racist because I used this phrase is absolutely pathetic.

You used it in the below context. It does not matter what you though...only what others take it to mean. Isn't that exactly what you did with the President's word and in this thread?

In the late 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance, "spade" began to evolve into code for a black person, according to Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman's book Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. The Oxford English Dictionary says the first appearance of the word spade as a reference to blackness was in Claude McKay's 1928 novel Home to Harlem, which was notable for its depictions of street life in Harlem in the 1920s. "Jake is such a fool spade," wrote McKay. "Don't know how to handle the womens." Fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Wallace Thurman then used the word in his novel The Blacker The Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, a widely read and notable work that explored prejudice within the African-American community. "Wonder where all the spades keep themselves?" one of Thurman's characters asks. It was also in the 1920s that the "spade" in question began to refer to the spade found on playing cards.

The word would change further in the years to come. Eventually, the phrase "black as the ace of spades" also became widely used, further strengthening the association between spades and playing cards.

Wolfgang Mieder notes that in the fourth edition of The American Language, H.L. Mencken's famous book about language in the United States, "spade" is listed as one of the "opprobrious" names for "Negroes" (along with "Zulu," "skunk" and many other words that I can't print here). Robert L. Chapman struck a similar note in his Thesaurus of American Slang (1989). "All these terms will give deep offense if used by nonblacks," warned Chapman, listing "spade" in a group that included words like blackbird, shade, shadow, skillet and smoke.

The British author Colin MacInnes, who was white, frequently used the term in novels like City of Spades (1957) and Absolute Beginners (1959) about the multiracial, multicultural London of the 1950s and '60s. MacInnes has been criticized for his exotification and sexualization of black culture in his books. MacInnes also coined the cringeworthy word "spadelet" to refer to black infants.

As with many other racialized terms, there were efforts to reclaim the word after it had become a slur. Four years after Malcolm X was killed in 1965, poet Ted Joans eulogized him in his poem "My Ace of Spades." The artist David Hammons also explored the negative connotations to the word in his 1973 sculpture "Spade With Chains." Hammons once told an interviewer that he began to incorporate spades into his work because "I was called a spade once, and I didn't know what it meant ... so I took the shape and started painting it." And a character in 2009's Black Dynamite (a spoof of the blaxploitation films of the 1970s) tells a rival that he's "blacker than the ace of spades and more militant than you."

So what does all of this mean for people who want to, well, "call a spade a spade"? I urge caution. Mieder concludes his case study with the argument that "to call a spade a spade" should be retired from modern usage: "Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together."