According to the Daily Mail, Scotland Yard has banned the use of the word “blacklist” because – you’ll never guess – it’s racist. They have instructed fellow police to use the terms “red list” or “green list” instead.
A few years ago I published a book titled Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror. Banned in the UK? Fortunately, no. When the book was reissued in paperback with some additional chapters it was retitled Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine: The Perils of Coming out Conservative in Tinseltown.
That was for cheesy commercial purposes – not for PC – but never mind. I got off Scot (or Scotland Yard) free. Otherwise I might have to rename the book Green Listing Myself: Memoir of a Tennessee Senator Cheated Out of the Presidency or something equally loathsome. Sometimes you get lucky.
Meanwhile, next time you’re in England, watch what you say. You might get blacklisted. I mean red listed. (Hey, isn’t that McCarthyite?-ed. No, it’s McCarthyist.)
Uh, aren’t those insulting to Native Americans and Environmentalists.
How about puce listed?
No, that would insult hungover drunks.
The only good solution is “British Listed”, because they are too dense to realize they are being insulted.
If I carry my copy over there, will I be arrested for racist reading?
What should I do with my “Red Badge of Courage”, if I hum Yellow Rose of Texas, or Brown Eyed Girl will I be confined to quarters?
Is there an English to Color Coding translation book I can purchase? A Rosetta Stone course I can take?
Heaven knows, I would not want to be lime-listed for offending British uber-nanny sensibilities.
What about a “bright” idea or a “white paper?” Can I still call something a “greengrocer?”
Frankly, if the UK has the A-Bomb, they’d save themselves a lot of trouble and enhance their eventual chances at survival by setting them all off at once.
Either that or cellophane the Third World.
I wouldn’t. It might raise a red flag somewhere, after which the yellow-dog journalists would be all over you (like white on rice, no doubt). You could wind up having a “blue Monday,” if not a “black Friday.”
(The only safe color for metaphors is indigo, because virtually no one knows what it looks like.)
They can’t use “red list,” cause that’s racist against “Native Americans.” “green list” is specist against any animals who are green, like poor, downtrodden Kermit. How about “white list?” Even if it’s racist against whites, it doesn’t matter, cause whites don’t count, right?
There has been some creeping incremental Orwellian self-censorship going on in Great Britain for quite some time. Magna Carta to Big Brother. How did that happen?
– with it in a brown paper wrapper.
Isn’t “green listing” also potentially “racist”? Isn’t green the traditional color associated with Islam?
Green – Islam
Red – Communism
I guess White is the way to go.
Sorry Davod,
The computer term whitelist — used to denote a list of acceptable contacts — has also been outlawed.
In an email, Scotland Yard warned staff the words were no longer “appropriate”.
Security services chief Brian Douglas wrote: “IB (Information Board) are uncomfortable with the use of the term Whitelist (and I presume Blacklist).
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4301441/Police-chiefs-ban-the-word-blacklist-over-fears-that-it-is-racist.html
perry1949,
Thanks for ensuring I do not fall off the path of correctness.