Undergraduates were always revolting.
This picture shows the battle of St Scholastica's Day, which took place in Oxford in 1355. It was a battle between students at the university and the citizens of the town. It started in a pub, escalated into a battle with bows and arrows, and scores of people were killed.
This puts into context a minor kerfuffle at the University of Manchester, where some of the students are asking for the words blackmail, black sheep, black list and black market to be banned because these expressions for nasty things might make people think that all black things are nasty.
None of these words has anything to do with the shade of anyone's skin, obviously, but the use of these words may have some effect. I doubt it, though.
Still, I suppose it's better that the revolting students are squabbling about words rather than setting out to murder people.
Perhaps we have made some progress, after all.
Words To Use Today: black belt, blackberry, blackbird, blackboard, black bottom, black cohash, black currant, black diamond, blacking, blackjack, black japan, black lead, black pudding, blackstrap molasses, black tie, blackwood. All nice things!
The word black was blæc in Old English. It's related to the Old Saxon blak, which means ink, and also the Old High German blakra, which means to blink.
The modern students are demonstrating about real inequality and real discrimination. The word black is used to package and publicise their issues. These issues have to be described through language - how else can they do it?
ReplyDeleteThese students are raising issues of real inequality and discrimination. Their discussion of the word "black" is just one way of creating, crystallising and hi lighting these issues through prose and language. They have to use adjectives and there is no other way of doing this. I think using the work "black" is a good way of doing this. Of course if the word "black" was banned, the inequalities and discrimination would still exist. It's just a start.
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