GUYS.

I have a friend, a woman incidentally, who is always finding gray smudges in her house. On the walls, on the refrigerator, in the food. It's no mystery how they get there - her husband works with vehicles and he's always coming home with filthy hands because he's something of a slob.

Nothing weird there. Nope, nope, nope.

But my friend is ALL the time bitching about these "black" smears. Hubby comes home, his hands are "black." Touches the cheese with dirty hands, the cheese is "black." Smears gray stuff on the front door, the door is "black."

This kind of microaggressive behavior falls into a pretty gray area. Even a lot of black people are hesitant to say whether this is really problematic, because it's so commonplace and nobody really thinks that black skin = dirty, do they? (At least, not anymore... not most of them, anyway.)

I'm going to stick my white foot out here and say YES, this is problematic. YES, calling something "black" when it is dirty will breed racial prejudice. For exactly the same reason that calling something "gay" or "retarded" when it is wrong, meaningless, or just plain unliked breeds prejudice. Calling something "dark" when it is, in fact, morbid or morally wrong breeds prejudice - how can we associate darkness with things we are afraid of and not become afraid of things that are dark?

If my white audience isn't convinced, picture this - a small, black child listening to my friend, or any other human adult in earshot, exclaiming "This is black! It's disgusting!" Remembering what my life was like as a fat child, I can guess how xe would feel. Unclean. Unwanted. A burning urge to jump in the bathtub and scrub xis blackness away so that xe could be clean and white and right. The idea of putting a child through that kind of identity trauma is nearly enough to give me flashbacks to my own.

It's not harmless, it's not meaningless, and the kid sure as heck isn't going to figure out that when you said it you didn't mean "black-black." So please, for the sake of a child's innocence and self-worth, KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.