Is using "colored girls" as an incidental example offensive or unwelcoming?

Question

A recent answer demonstrates its point with lyrics from a Lou Reed song.

This has prompted a flag to be raised, calling the lyrics "offensive and unwelcoming".

There is also a comment, with 20 comment votes, that suggests using the lyrics to "the wheels on the bus" instead of Lou Reed's lyrics.

So one (or more) of us has been upset by the lyrics and there is a valid alternative.

My question is: are the lyrics a problem?

To me they don't seem to be, but Lou Reed himself changed the lyrics when he performed live, later in his career, so perhaps they are.

I need help from the community determining the correct action.

Answer 1

I flagged it.

I'm a woman of color (but not Black), and find the use of this example offensive and, in particular, unwelcoming.

Americans do NOT use "colored" in the twenty-first century, and we don't refer to grown women as "girls". If you think that the fact that those terms were considered socially acceptable by some people in the past means that no one will find them "jarring and uncomfortable" when encountering them out-of-context now, I refer you to Ralph Northam et al.

I don't find the existence of the lyric offensive (it is a product of its time, though that's not at all clear from the answer). I do not find discussion of the term offensive (this is a site dedicated to discussing the English language, and discussion of offensive language is part of that).

What I find problematic, and the reason I raised the flag, is that it's a cherry picked example, out of many possibilities, specifically chosen to illustrate a point about a language construction used mainly with children (the question is about the construction dog goes "woof"). There's no commentary on the lyric, or even a date to show just how long ago it was written—literally before I was born.

WHY? Why use this example in this context? What possible utility does this example, which contains language known to be hurtful to a large swathe of people and which could easily be replaced by dozens or even hundreds of other examples of the construction [people] go [sound], serve?

Maybe [I think to myself] it's just the first example the poster could find, and they didn't want to put too much effort into the answer. I'll be as helpful as I can, and find a possible alternative! The answer is focusing on song lyrics, so I'll look for some that match. Oh, hey, here is a song lyric in the same general genre as the question's lyrics, which contains examples of the usage for a thing making a sound, a person saying words, and a proto-person making a sound! I'll offer it up.

The suggested alternative is not taken up, or commented on in any way. I raise a flag, which ends up in a Meta question where the main response so far is "eh, history. Language police are stupid."

To me this feels very much like the author of the post and the community in general don't give a hoot (maybe that should be won't go "hoo") about whether women or people of color who come across this site feel that they can use it.

I imagine one of my children asking me "Mama, why does this book say 'the dog goes woof' and my other book says 'the dog says woof'?" If I didn't have a good explanation off the top of my head I would google it. I would find that page. I would read the top-voted answer, which starts out sounding very useful but ends with a slap in the face. And I would immediately move along, resolved not to use the site again.

Or, wait, maybe I'm a non-native speaker, or a white man! So instead of realizing there was a slap in the face, maybe I share the answer with my child, who could then go to school saying "My heart goes boom! Colored girls go doo doo!" Explosions and poop and cooties and a relic of America's abhorrent past, all rolled into one "English" lesson.

Once again, this isn't about "policing people's language". This is about thinking about what we write, and how it will affect other people. Of course it's harder to think about how it will affect people who aren't like us than people who have the same reactions we do. But every day when I come to this site I am reminded, in ways small and large, that it's mostly a bunch of highly educated, high income, racial majority men, who mostly don't much care if that's deeply uncomfortable for those of us who don't tick all those boxes.

Answer 2

The problem for Lou Reed was, "people of color" just didn't scan. Apart from "the N word," the casual use of which should always be discouraged, the way to refer to African-Americans has changed over the years.

The NAACP is The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used the word "Negro"; "black" was the easy, catch-all term one heard chanted and saw on signs promoting "Black Power" ... yet now black people use the term "people of color" and, in the U.S., "African-American" quite a lot. It's been hard to keep up.

The problem for us seems to be "What words are safe and respectful to use?" I'd suggest that on this site, quoting what a songwriter wrote in 1972, which was certainly not thought of as offensive at the time (for comparison, see also the 1976 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, written by an African-American woman and first performed four years after the Lou Reed song), should not be considered offensive.

I feel we are not responsible for legitimate references our users employ in their answers if those appear to be well-intentioned and offered in the spirit of inquiry (i.e., not written to troll the site).

On the other hand, if we had received 42 flags calling something in an answer offensive (as compared with the 42 up votes and two down votes the answer received), there would be cause for concern. I'd chalk this up to hyper-vigilantism on the part of whoever complained, and I would hope we don't react to censor in this case.

Let's bookmark this discussion and resurrect it when someone starts talking about a certain Joseph Conrad novel.

Addendum The OP had a different example originally, and it was my comment that caused him to add the Lou Reed lyric. Apparently it was the easiest thing he could think of off the top of his head where "go" was demonstrably used to mean "said".

Answer 3

If you get feedback that someone finds an example you used offensive, and the bit they find offensive isn’t crucial to your answer, you should find another example. For every person that feels comfortable speaking up, there are likely many more not saying anything being distracted instead of helped by your example.

Even though I like the Lou Reed example because the song conjures warm memories for me, as an illustration it may not be the most suitable example because for some it detracts from instead of enhances your point.

Just to be clear, I don’t think it is necessary to determine whether the lyrics meet or don’t meet some threshold of offensiveness in this context. That they are controversial to some, and easily replaced should be enough reason to change them out. A question about the offensiveness of “colored” in modern usage might be interesting as an English question on the main site though.

Answer 4

First of all I'd like to thank everyone involved in the discussion here for their respectful behaviour.

Before I asked the question I was thoroughly conflicted. On the one hand there was an answer with a quote that didn't seem controversial to me, and on the other there was a flag that clearly stated the quote was unwelcoming. For some reason I could not make a decision. I even asked other moderators their opinions about the quote, which eventually led me to asking the question here.

The problem as I see it is that the question has never been about the quote in isolation. Without the wider context of the answer and the question it is posted on, the context of how words affect other people, and the context of how our members see themselves, evaluating the quote is nonsensical.

Basically my initial understanding of the situation was ignorant, so I asked a question to get less ignorant.

Having interacted with many of our more academically minded members in chat, I knew some people would decry the idea of censoring a quote. What I needed was the perspective of people I hadn't already interacted with.

I'm very grateful to 1006a for speaking up, as well as ColleenV. Thanks to them and others I was able to get a more rounded view of the situation.

The understanding I've come to is that there is no catch all for this sort of flag. As a moderator I need to try and understand the context of the situation. I can't just say "someone is upset" and change or remove the quote, and at the same time I can't just say "quotes relevant to the post are benign" and dismiss the flag.

In this instance, because there is a valid alternative and because the language has upset at least one of us, the best course is to ask the person who posted the quote to change the quote to either the one suggested or something else without language that demeans a marginalised group.

Answer 5

We completely support everything Matt said in his answer and want to point out that he led proactively and diligently by asking for help when he knew he needed to hear more voices. We will be giving moderators even more information about the emotions that come with having the perspective of being a person of color, or non-binary, or Latinx and a myriad of others. We'll be giving this to the Internet as a whole, as we're able, and adapting it to the caveats of our system in guidance on how to apply and interpret it. It's okay to not know everything as long as, if you lead, you know when to ask for help.

I can't add much more to the current context than what 1006a did in her answer. In fact, you don't need to hear me reiterate her answer, what matters is I support it.

There were other thoughtful answers posted as well.

There were things that weren't ideal. There will always be things that aren't ideal. Let's just keep getting progressively better at having these discussions and responding to these issues.

A few thoughts from a more general sense, based on concerns folks vocalized:

Our language is the road to culture past, and what we use to push forward. Papering over words that were once bad is bad, because it looks like an attempt to try to hide the hurt and harm that words once caused.

We should talk about language that was a problem in the context of why it was problematic; the history of our language is often just as problematic as the events that led to it.

Academic discussions are different than everyday speech.

And we should, as far as sensibilities allow, be able to objectify a word for the purposes of talking about the problems it created. You can't talk about racial segregation or the Jim Crow period without talking about "Colored" entrances. And there's a whole lot of literature around it.

Some exceptions could apply, our need to talk about stuff has to be carefully weighed with people's need to not have unnecessary emotional triggers in their daily lives. If the front page was dominated with questions surrounding rape, murder, torture, etc - well, I think you see how unlikely that would be, but it's unlikely because we understand discretion.

We do not, however, couch insensitive phrases in pretend objectivity.

No post is worth the harm that it does in the forms of people not feeling supported and made safe by this community, or by us as a company.

Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or any other language that goes against our code of conduct needs to be removed once pointed out. Our position is that providing people with an environment that doesn't deliberately make them feel unwelcome isn't a political one, but a moral one, and such things violate our shared moral contract that forms the basis of our expectations and our accountability as a company.

Censorship was a red herring here.

We're not a government, we're a community with rules on what you can and can't post. If your contributions violate our code of conduct but seem like they were made in good faith, we're going to point out what's wrong and help you find a way to make your contribution lasting.

If that doesn't sit well with you, then we're happy to remove your contribution because we wouldn't want your name on something that doesn't represent your views. We're just not under any obligation to provide a platform for those views, especially if they're misaligned with our sense of social accountability as an organization.

Answer 6

My question is: are the lyrics a problem?

Yes. This discussion illustrates why they are a problem, and it should have been clear that they were a problem from the first complaint.

If one is trying to write an instructive answer, clarity and focus are two key rhetorical demands. A broad readership needs to be able to understand answers on this site. A little humor in a selected example can help emphasize a point. In contrast, a controversial example may distract from the answer, diminishing the level of focus that answer has.

When an answer's example leads to an extended comment discussion (or meta question) about that example, or when I notice that the usage may inadvertently alienate readers, that should be a sign for further review. At that point, I'd propose three criteria for moderators to decide on the appropriateness of the example:

1. Is the controversial word / phrase / idea integral to answering the question? (Some questions could conceivably be valid in themselves but require the treatment of distasteful content. If its importance is unclear, the answer needs revision.)
2. Can no other examples be used to make just as effective an illustration of usage? (Sometimes examples may be rare or in a context that lends itself to no better example. If other examples are available, the answer needs revision.)
3. Does the phrase cross the Code of Conduct on bigotry below? (If it does, and the answer does not adequately address its example's potential to alienate its readers, then the answer needs revision or deletion.)

We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion — and those are just a few examples. When in doubt, just don’t.

In this case, my own reckoning of this example would work like so:

1. No, the controversial word is incidental to whether go can be used to introduce direct discourse.
2. No. Other examples are available. There are at least hundreds of popular examples of "go" being used in this manner, and many more common ones, like several verses in "The Wheels on the Bus."
3. This has offended or alienated people (including 1006a) on the basis of race, and it's neither integral to the answer nor unique in its use. As of this writing, the answerer makes no effort to address the elephant in the room.

Therefore, the lyrics are a problem. At minimum, I would downvote the answer and recommend it be edited in the comments. If the comment were not already under scrutiny, I would also flag the comment. Finally, if the answerer did not respond, I would be able to edit the answer myself, just as someone may edit my answer for formatting, typos, or information to make it more effective.

Answer 7

This answer really should have been a question, so I posted it here:

Does cited material merit special consideration when the content is offensive or unwelcoming?

I’m going to add another answer because I think it would be worth getting community feedback on the idea in this comment

"offensive or unwelcoming", that's POB. Does it violate the be nice policy? Can anything "quoted" ever violate it? If an answer doesn't align with your views, it is at your discretion to DV it. But if at anytime I'm disallowed to cite what someone else once said, that's censorship.

Vote on this answer (and comment if you like) based on your agreement with the idea that citing what someone else has said is held to a different standard than original text from the author of a post when it comes to violating the CoC.

Let’s assume the citation is not gratuitous. For the sake of discussion, the citation is relevant to the answer and the author feels that particular citation is critical to their answer but a significant number of people find it unwelcoming.

Let’s also not get hung up on the “censorship” part of the comment and focus on whether we should treat citations differently. Are there any mitigating qualities, like length, historical significance, etc that would cause us to keep a citation that we would remove if it wasn’t written by someone other than the author of the post?

Answer 8

@Tim Post

I hope I don't run the risk of being suspended myself if I ask why guest271314's account has been banned across the entire network for five years.

From what I can tell, the suspension seems to stem from their long, often rambling, at times controversial, posts on EL&U and on Politics SE. The two answers posted by @guest271314 have been deleted by Tim, (only visible to 10K users); however, the contents of their posts didn't appear to be harmful or disrespectful to any minority group in particular. As a contributor they posted questions on EL&U that interested them and in comments they simply aired their opinion. If several people disagree strongly with someone or dislike their contributions that should not make them liable to suspensions. Well… not for five years.

I would like to add that I disagree with the company's decision to suspend said user for that length of time and the brusque and abrupt deletion of the incriminating EL&U post which this discussion led to.

On Thursday (28/02/2020), the EL&U community was suddenly made aware that the SE team was following the contentious issue closely but instead of allowing us to arrive at a resolution at our own pace, you (Tim Post) took command, and informed everyone:

We don't want to pressure you, but this is an issue that demands an extremely high sense of urgency, so a consensus on how to move forward needs to be clear to us by Friday afternoon. I have 100% trust that you'll do it

If we had known beforehand that there was a time limit maybe, maybe, the EL&U community would have reached a compromise or greater consensus sooner.

Please remember that thousands of users and visitors saw the incriminating answer and didn't find anything objectionable about it. In fact, it was highly upvoted despite the c-expression (colored girls). There were no comments chastising the author. None. If the quote had been interpreted as abuse or an insult, rest assured more than one user would have openly voiced their disgust or expressed their concern and reservation in the comments. The answer would have been downvoted and then, possibly, deleted.

Interestingly, some may not be aware that the song, Walk on the Wild Side, talks about transgender people, homosexual prostitutes, drag queens, and drug addicts.

The song is all about acceptance and recognizing those who were considered “weird” or “different” as being “normal”.

When Reed wrote "then he was a she", "Little Joe never once gave it away", "Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the streets", "Jackie is just speeding away", and “coloured girls go ‘Doo do doo do doo do do doo…’ he was not insulting black American women, or any of the characters in his song, he was celebrating all of them.

If SE sites start deleting posts that contain quotations that were cited in good faith, the company will be digging itself a deeper and deeper hole. Delete a post that was utterly and completely non-racist for quoting a Lou Reed's quote then where do we draw the line?

Saying that, I want to apologise to 1006a if my numerous comments hurt or caused her any pain or distress, it was the very last thing on my mind. She has my uttermost admiration (for putting herself on the frontline) and respect, I am but a clumsy middle-aged clot who has still a lot to learn about people and about Americans.

But whenever I see something, which I consider unfair or biased I cannot shut up. This is going to be a problem in the near future, I can tell. And, frankly I'm worried, it seems that the environment on EL&U and SE is quite oppressive and intolerant (see the Twitter Vs. HNQ debacle back in October) despite all the reassurances about inclusivity and mutual respect for every person.

Answer 9

Preliminary Thoughts

I somewhat disagree with 1006a's rationale. Objectively speaking, although there was a drop in usage after 1970, Google ngrams shows that colored people is still used in the 21st century, and it is used almost as often as it was during the 20th century:

I restricted this to multi-word phrases predicated on the assumption that single words tend to be more popular than phrases in general, and generally more polysemous. Minorities is far more popular than any of these terms, and has applicability to mathematical contexts for instance.

By 2008, we can see that minority groups is almost on par with people of color, and people of color is far more popular than the closest equivalent, which is ethnic people, despite the fact that minority groups can include other classes of people. Moreover, unlike other racial terminology, the term's purpose was never inherently offensive. I do not think that use of the term in and of itself merits a flag, especially considering that it is much more popular than the closest equivalent, ethnic people, which almost flatlines. Also, considering how usage of black people and minority groups also dipped in a similar timeframe to colored people, the reason colored people is used less often today than it was in the past seems likely to be that we are discussing race less often than we were back then.

The closest thing I have found on our website to suggesting colored people is offensive is attributed to William Safire writing an unspecified October 28th 2001 article for the New York Times:

It's possible that the president coined the phrase; if so, it was on the analogy of women of color, a description adopted by many nonwhites. (Though colored people is dated and almost a slur, people of color is not in the least offensive.)

Suggesting that the term is dated seems almost contrary to my findings on ngrams, but more importantly there is a considerable difference between what is almost, and what is. It is a true statement, just as much as colored people isn't a slur. It does not presently show up on Wikipedia's List of Ethnic slurs, which makes sense since, insofar as I know, it was never meant as a slur.

Far more popular than the questin citing William Saphire is this answer citing George Carlin, who suggests that colored people and people of color should be considered equally offensive (or inoffensive), and prefers that we refer to africans in particular as black people.

What I take from all of this is that if we are going to appeal to contemporary sensibilities, you should use black people to refer specifically to africans, but colored people is probably acceptable in a broader sense. In my opinion, people of color and colored people are at worst, on the level of minced oaths, which makes sense considering that they were seemingly devised as euphemisms.

We're not talking about words that are as inherently offensive as the ones mentioned the last time a similar issue came up recently, and I don't think we should react anywhere near the same way.

What I Think Should Be Done in This Particular Case

I nevertheless suggest editing that example out of the post, despite my preliminary thoughts. Preferably after doing the poster the favor of replacing that example with a nonracial equivalent so that voting is not adversely impacted, or at least a comment explaining the edit. Minimally, a comment should be left.

Rationale for The Suggested Course of action

I do think that this is a minor transgression, likely made by accident and undeserving of any punitive action or answer deletion, but that it is nevertheless a transgression in need of editorial remedy in accordance to our policies. The quote should be removed, and preferably replaced with an equivalent context (pop song lyrics in this case) by the editor. I am less concerned about the language being used, and more concerned with how it is being used.

My overall interpretation of Stack Exchange's code of conduct is that we have very, very low tolerances for prospectively rude or demeaning behavior. Strictly speaking, the code of conduct has zero tolerance wording:

No bigotry.
We don’t tolerate any language likely to offend or alienate people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion—and those are just a few examples. When in doubt, just don’t.

However, sometimes analytical need overrides that in the academic community because our first responsibility is to accurately representing the truth as we understand it, whereas politeness is our secondary responsibility. I think it would be detrimental to our credibility have a zero tolerance policy and I believe Jeff Atwood afforded us some amount of leniency in recognition of this while he was in charge which we may interpret to be standing orders unless and until instructed otherwise, but in consideration of the zero tolerance language of the Code of Conduct, I do think we need strict compliance guidelines, similar to the ones we have for lack of attribution and misattribution: Edit to fix as a first resort if possible.

You may be wondering why I am referencing this policy if I do not think the word is likely to offend. Well, it is not so much what words are being used, and how the words are being used which I find to be problematic.

In Random House Webster's Dictionary, Second Edition there is a basic manual of style, with a subsection called Avoiding Insensitive and Offensive Language that Excludes or Unnecessarily Emphasizes Differences spanning from page 2223 to 2225, and this guidance given on page 2225 seems like the compromise we should use:

Reference to age, sex, religion, race, and the like should only be included if they are relevant.

The racial example given is:

Instead of[__________________________________]Use
Arab man denies assault charge[_________________]Man Avoids Assault Charge

In this example a racial epithet is being removed because it is irrelevant to the principle message, despite the fact that, at least in and of itself, Arab is not considered an offensive word in English, and especially not so when this was likely to have been written, between the years of 1989–2001 (initial and final copyright dates of my copy), meaning that was likely written in a pre-9/11 world. Given that this section is not part of the addenda, I think it is even probable that the provision was written in '89.

Now yes, an assault charge is different from saying "doo doo doo", but that merely affects the severity of the generalization, and I don't see why colored people would be used except to emphasize a distinction. Such generalizations are often considered offensive, even in nonracial contexts, and the fact that a racial generalization is being made transgresses these guidelines.

So in accordance to this guidance, we should weigh the prospective offensiveness of the term to the necessity of its use. First of all, in context, the necessity of the racial epithet, the manners of the time and the history of the word may render the quotation mostly, if not completely inoffensive, but that does not necessarily translate into the here and the now at Stack Exchange. We are not lyricists; we are analysts of the English Language.

In our capacity of analysts of the English Language, I think that it is necessary to accurately quote external sources in order to accurately analyze the language, but that the selection of quotations is also subject to the code of conduct, which would mean that the analytical necessity of the quotation the answer must also be considered when considering our code of conduct. If the quotation is not needful, then the use of the racial epithet in the post is not needful by proxy. Since our first responsibility is to analyze th English Language.

The question does not specifically regard that particular quotation, racial language in general or historical use, and the answer makes no effort to uniquely analyze that specific quotation to explain how the word go is being used on context or even how the usage pertains to personal experience with the language. As it stands, the answer makes no effort to analyze or explain the presence of any of those quotations at all in fact, and merely provides them as evidence of usage and axiomatic applicability. As a matter of fact, I have trouble seeing the utility of the answer, since it is simply General Reference, with a couple of seemingly random examples of usage added to disguise the fact. That makes them all interchangable with quotations from similar contexts of similar fame and quality, and means that the meaning of the answer is not impacted by the removal or replacement of the quotation.

If any effort to integrate the quotation into the answer was made, I would suggest leaving it in this case, especially since the choice of words is not especially offensive, but since no attempt to integrate it into commentary was made, I really see no reason for this answer to contain a racial generalization of any sort.

Only the quality of the answer would be adversely affected, since this would constitute the removal of evidence, and only if no replacement is furnished. In order to avoid this changing the results of voting, on an otherwise well received answer, the courteous thing for an editor to do would be to:

A. Explain why the edit is being made in the editing summary, so that a the answer isn't rolled back without due consideration.
B. Find an equivalent quotation to replace it so that the answer can be rated just the same as it would be prior to the edit.

Answer 10

It was a completely gratuitous choice of example.

Looking at #1006a's answer,

I flagged it. I'm a woman of color [ ], and find the use of this example offensive

I'm saying the same thing, but in a couple of words.

We (we, society) avoid choosing (say, incidental examples) of historic language that contains historic-offensive language.

Here's an interesting example totally unrelated to racism. The agricultural plant oilseed is also called "rape". Around small children, I don't refer to it as "rape" - I just use the word "oilseed". It's just a word coincidence, but for what possible reason would you use a very adult, disturbing, word around 7 year olds? It would be silly and pointless to do so.

Similarly, yes, in today's world when you choose an incidental example, indeed don't choose one that contains historically racist language -

For example - very simply - when you choose an incidental example, you don't choose one that is vulgar.

The situation is that simple.

Today, you no more choose incidental-examples that include historic-racist language, that you would choose incidental-examples that are vulgar.

Of course you can - if you're Beavis & Butthead. Hah hah, I got to say "Arse" in front of Teacher .......... because I was quoting Churchill.

You know?

I mean it's that level of immaturity, or just lack of style.

Answer 11

Another sortie in the ancient battle between prescriptivist vs. descriptivist models of language.

• The prescriptivists wish to make the world a better place, and believe this can be more efficiently achieved in part by deprecating certain "bad words" and ignorant constructions believed to transmit bad thoughts and wrong ideas, thus helping prevent a multitude of bad deeds. For them, Language is man-made, artificial and ever more controllable, so it would be reckless and irresponsible not to employ it to prevent needless future evils.

  In which spirit many of the users on ELU firmly believe, (as taught in many academies), that the censoring of words like "colored", et al, (and censuring insensitive usages of such words), is the most ethical policy.

• The descriptivists doubt that such methods can ever be feasible, and consider Language as a natural object in of itself, no more generally controllable than the oceans or dreams, but hope that through close and careful observation it might be learned how to better to navigate within it.

  For them such konmari diction is much like the sort of germaphobic overindulgence in antibiotics that weakens gut flora and breeds super-bugs.

Once there were no descriptivists, only prescriptivists that disagreed with other prescriptivists. Side X is disgusted by things Side Y says, and vice versa, and so on for every set of opposing factions since creation. Their respective strengths wax and wane, endlessly, and that day's victorious wincers pay the piper and call the tune. An oscillatory stasis.