A "N**** -brown Couch" ???

[ganymed]

I just read this article and started to think !!


https://www.racewire.org/archives/2007/04/niggerbrown_couch_packaged_and.html




What would you say if you order a couch described as "ni*** - brown" ?

Im totally shocked !! O_o

[richard black]

I bet I know how that happened. Some casual racist made a comment about 'black person-brown' to a non-native English speaker who hadn't a clue and just thought it was a perfectly normal technical term. Could have been a manufacturer in or outside the US/UK (I'm guessing US - here in the UK the word 'black person' seems to be pretty much the exclusive preserve of streetwise black youth). Lo and behold, one bunch of righteously offended customers....

Edit - oi, who edited out my non-politically correct vocabulary? I never typed 'black person'. Actually I never even _say_ black person. And I certainly don't say 'n*****'. But there's no point pretending these words don't exist!

[thalbergmad]

Would never happen in the UK.

We cannot even sell gollywogs any more incase 0.002% of the population might be offended.

I used to have a black teddy bear that i called Sambo. Would get locked up for that in todays climate.

Thal

[arensky]

My first reaction on seeing the photo was that it's obviously a misspelling or spellchecker correction of "Niger-Brown" or is the archaic (and offensive to many) spelling of this colour; this probably occurred in a factory where English is not the primary language. This is discussed in the comments on the link. I'll bet this error has been corrected by the manufacturer (who is probably from Asia; the US furniture manufacturing industry is pretty much dead and that labeling mistake would probably never get out of the factory). After all, this isn't going to help sales much... 

I am no fan of PC but certain words and expressions that can offend others should be expunged from language use. Not by legislation, but out of consideration for others  and common sense.