Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 06, 2017

Funny. I guess Frazz was like that as a kid with Mrs.Olsen.

This is cute

“Oho!” said the pot to the kettle;

“You are dirty and ugly and black!

Sure no one would think you were metal,

Except when you’re given a crack.”

“Not so! not so!” kettle said to the pot;

“’Tis your own dirty image you see;

For I am so clean – without blemish or blot -

That your blackness is mirrored in me.”

Anonymous poem – St. Nicholas Magazine – 1878

My, my, my…..

Said the cat to….whom?

I had a student who thought it was racist for a white person to use the word black. I took her to the window and pointed to my car and asked her how I should describe the color. I also showed her a picture of my kitten and asked what color I should use to describe her. The words black or white are no more or less than any other color names. They are not somehow “owned” by any group of people.

FontLady – interesting reply. You are right. It is not the word but the person using it and the meaning that person wants to convey. Is it too much instant communication, too many people living too close, why have we become so sensitive to the point that we are afraid to say or do anything without offending another.

I understand that in German they say the donkey calls the rabbit long-ears. (Or is it the other way around?)

I seem to recall a story some time ago of a young school teacher who had her very first black student in class. Wanting to be politically correct, she asked the little girl “Please let me know what you want to be called—do you prefer Negro, Black, or African-American?” The little girl quietly replied, “I want to be called Martha, because THAT’S MY NAME.”

A Marina Carr character spoke of “the kettle calling the pot white.”

Brillo used to have a commercial based on this saying. With a reggae beat it said

“You know de pot was calling the kettle black,and the kettle was ashamed to answer back,but then the kettle got shined by a Brillo pad,now it’s de pot that’s feeling bad!”

Like two narcissistic peas in a pod, these two…

When my son, somewhere around three, encountered his first black (this was the time of Jim Crow), he was curious. “What color are you?” my wife asked him. He looked at his arm and replied, “Sorta beige.”

Oh dear God, I have been Offended. By what used to be a great comic.