The NAACP announced Monday the group will not invite President Donald Trump to its national convention next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, the first time the prominent civil rights organization has opted to exclude a sitting president in its 116-year history.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson announced the move at an afternoon press conference, accusing Trump of working against its mission.

“This has nothing to do with political party,” Johnson said in a statement. “Our mission is to advance civil rights, and the current president has made clear that his mission is to eliminate civil rights.”

  • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    My mom’s first cousin never said anything but “colored” and she traveled to Nigeria to marry her second husband who was black and spent many years with him.

    Some things I heard her say, “oh they just don’t like me because my husband is colored.” “If you see a colored man in a yellow shirt that says reading rainbow on it, tell him to get to the car or I’m leaving him here.” “I’ve never seen a white man more handsome than the ugliest colored man.”

    “People of color” is also pretty much the same thing, and it’s almost universally used these days. What’s the difference between person of color and colored person?

    I don’t know. Language changes and evolves, and it’s definitely falling out of fashion, I’ve never personally heard “colored” as an insult. If someone wants to be insulting they generally wear their hate on their sleeve.

    I have a stamp that says, “Retarded children can be helped.” and it really isn’t that old. When it came out I doubt it shocked anyone, but when I first seen it my jaw hit the floor.

    • Machinist@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      Yeah, that tracks. She sounds like a sweetheart . It’s deprecated, but it’s not like a memo went out. It was much more common when I was a kid, I remember my grandfather griping about it and trying to make the change.

      We moved North recently and I’m having the same problem with a different term. Lots of Italian in the area. I’ve always pronounced it eye-talian, it’s not a racist thing, I’m just a redneck and that’s what I learned. Some people find it offensive, so I’m trying to change it.

      Well, I guess they find it offensive when they can understand me. Feels like I’m speakig a different language from everyone around here a lot of the time. I have an easier time talking to black folks than I do white, dialect is much closer. I regularly get jaw-drop suprise when I’m in public and say something.

      Also having a hell of a time with Yes Ma’am/Yes Sir as there is high trans/enby representation in my social scene. I just apologize and move on. Southern charm and politness is a huge help.

      I’m mostly self educated and my speech patterns are so stereotypically deep southern that most people assume I’m backwards. I was mostly raised in a Sundown town. All those inbred jokes and such. Black folks pick up that I’m not backwards faster than white because they understand me better. I find language and dialect fascinating, do a lot of involuntary code switching. When bullshitting with a group of white men around here, when I get comfortable, I unconsciously drop into full redneck speech and they really have a hard time understanding me.

      As for colored, the below image is a good representation of why the term is problematic, it was used on Jim Crow signs. Calling a black man, “colored boy” is fighting words and roughly equivalent to the N word. I refer to white men as boys all the time but unless it is a mixed race group, I do not refer to black men as boy.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      “People of color” is also pretty much the same thing, and it’s almost universally used these days. What’s the difference between person of color and colored person?

      Left aiming to be holier than thou. Idea is to put “people” before their defining trait. Which is admirable, but in this specific case achieves nothing.

    • seralth@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      Feels like to a degree, at some point you just have to accept reality as facts and no fancy language is going to get around that.

      Some people are white, some are tan, some are olive, some are black. We have different colored skin. In an area predominantly of white folk, asking for a black or colored man just makes sense.

      Frankly the only problem with color in the situation at hand is it could also refer to a tan or maybe a darker olive toned man.

      It’s just a descriptor of obvious usefulness given the context.

      Plenty of words are bad given history as it is. And best avoided with out reason. But we do still need some words to use and using the simplest words is best. Leaves little room to brook an argument over the intention.