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Black Hole is a racist term
Submitted by Jonathan Wilde on Wed, 2008-07-09 11:51.
A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon.
County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.
Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."
That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term. A black hole, according to Webster's, is perhaps "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."
Other county officials quickly interceded to break it up and get the meeting back on track. TV news cameras were rolling, after all.
If there were cameras rolling, then this might show up on Youtube sooner or later.
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Bad Move
"Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term."
He just kept digging. Everyone knows that science is a racist.
I was going to say that "white hole" doesn't even make sense, but I guess that's why I'm not a theoretical physicist.
Attention all citizens:
Also, funerals' attendance is now expected to wear bright green.
The Mgt.
Also, funerals' attendance
Also, funerals' attendance is now expected to wear bright green.
As a Martian American, I find this offensive.
As funny as it may seem to
As funny as it may seem to some of you, associating "black" with bad and "white" with good when these same terms are also used to separate people into racial groups does lead to some social problems, no?
The fear of ninjas ?
The fear of ninjas ?
Not funny.
Not funny.
Ninjas are funny
I think I mentioned before that for some reason ninjas these days are used for comic relief. I don't think it was always that way. I wonder when the switch happened. Maybe it was just all those really bad movies that had ninjas in them as a cheap plot device. Eventually, the ridiculousness of the movies rubbed off on the ninjas.
I didn't say ninjas weren't
I didn't say ninjas weren't funny, I said that Arthur's dismissive comment was not funny. There is a reason stories like the one described in this thread continue to pop up. It is worth taking seriously the problem that we use value-laden terms to label different racial groups.
I wasn't challenging you
Not everything I write in response to you is a challenge. In this case, I was taking the opportunity to talk about the funniness of ninjas, and I needed to reply to your comment and not Arthur's for that because Arthur mentioned the ninjas but you mentioned the funny.
It's not funny!
Found a picture for that.
Only insofar as people are
Only insofar as people are looking for reasons to be offended. No one thinks that the fact that the color green is associated with both envy and environmentalism means that environmentalists are envious.
Besides, the "black" in "black hole" doesn't reflect a value judgment. It refers to the fact that light can't escape from the event horizon. In fact, only one of the examples Jesrad gave (Black Tuesday) uses the term "black" in a normative sense.
Picking nits
Nitpick: that's actually two examples, counting "black market" ;)
Actually, four
Actually, four examples:
Black Death:
Black Friday:
Okay, two and a half.
The "black" in "black market" means hidden, not bad. I always thought that it was called the black death for the first reason, but I'll grant you that one. "Black Friday" is half and half. It may have negative connotations for bus drivers (this is the first I've heard of it), but it has positive connotations for retailers.
Whitewash
Yeah, don't let these guys whitewash this away. Obviously this is the white elephant in the room. Don't let anyone complain that you are making a white whale of this as that's just white noise. Terms and phrase like white power, "That's white of you", etc. are all positive terms. They are going to wipe out in the white water of your argument. Soon they be putting up the white flag.
With positive phrases like, White lightening, white heads, white trash, white as a ghost, dumpling white, white as a sheet, he turned white, and white cracker it's no wonder whites do so well.
White Power
I am so glad my bank account is in the white. I am going to wear basic white to the next formal dance I go to ,if ever.
Dave
Ach, you stole my lines! All
Ach, you stole my lines! All of them! :)
heh, a "white hole"...
heh, a "white hole"... wow
So he responded to a racist comment with another racist comment? Where are those "two wrongs don't make a right" people when you need them? Somehow I doubt anyone is going to ask Mr. Price to apologize for his insensitivity.
What I find more concerning is that a judge is siding with this nonsense and demanding an apology. I really hope the apology doesn't happen, but sadly many people have become slaves to political correctness.
Responding to (a perceived
Responding to (a perceived to be) racist comment by inserting a different race isn't an expression of racism. It's a way to demonstrate his point. This is essentially the same method used in this essay criticizing gendered language.
Granted, it seems pretty clear that he wasn't familiar with the concept of black holes in science, which is why this all seems silly to us. But it isn't surprising why this happened. The term was being used to describe something in a negative way, and he didn't like the association of "black" with something bad.
Don't be Ni--ardly
It all reminds me of the controversy concerning the word niggardly
Where the African/American on the commission didn't understand the derivation of the term and reflexively went into overdrive because of the way it sounded,thereby showing his ignorance. He wasn't the one who had to apologize. Then things got silly.So don't use this word anymore. I am not running for office so I will.
Dave
Racist Remarks
I think that Commissioner Price needs to explain his racist reaction. The fact he made the white hole comment proves he's a racist and uneducated. And the idiot judge that stuck up for him is also an idiot.....
Intent matters
In his case there was an intention to be racist. So it was the only race conscious and negative statement used in the whole affair.
There is only one way to describe this
and it matches the color of the Commisioner's complection.
THE first popular use of "black hole"
was to describe a city of white people.
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