Where am I making exceptions? I said context not exception, football in England has mostly been a white working class sport for decades.

If we were talking about Rugby or cricket then by all means lets discuss the upper echelons of society and their deep set racist ways.

And as for "pass it to the black lad" I've seen people done for less. Alan Hanson was castigated for using the word coloured when describing a player.

You said, and I quote "Also bear in mind football is the working class game, Ron Atkinson will have been brought up and experienced an environment where you would think nothing of throwing around comments like the n word" Are you not saying there that he was brought up working class where people would think nothing of using the N word? Because that's what it looks like to me.

I only mentioned that I've heard more racist language from the middle-class than I did from the working class because you had said how inherently racist the working class is! I think you know that though, you're just talking about cricket and "upper echelons" to muddy the waters. That's fine...

Coloured is not an acceptable word and quite right Hanson should have been pulled up for it. Although I don't think anyone's going to mind someone saying "pass it to the black lad", and it's quite out of touch to assume that it would be.

That and far far worse was more than acceptable 30 years ago.

So coloured is bang out of order and black is fine? Reet then...

Well...I think he's probably racist to a degree. There are levels of racism.



Coloured was at one time the more politically correct term (as opposed to the N word) it's become unacceptable. Language shifts.

Yes. Would you like to know why? Coloured is a term that is associated with apartheid.

That's a whole new debate, Inherent racism and all that.

Well lets be pedantic, black is a term associated with slaves.

It's also because saying they are 'coloured' suggests that, rather than simply being a different colour to white people (ie two different colours), white people have no colour, they are simply the norm, whereas black people have a colour.

Negro is associated with slaves

It used to be that referring to a person as 'black' was almost as bad as the dreaded n-word and that 'coloured' was perfectly polite.

Funny old world, eh? ;)

That was never the case in the black community. I don't know where you get that from.

I think that's more of an American thing: with people wanting tobe called African American instead of black.

Well,People say 'coloured' all the time where i'm from,I grew up hearing it,I'm only in my early 30's.Maybe different words are offensive in certain areas and not in others?

I think it's best if we as people never ever mention anybody's skin colour as anything in case the old PC brigade wheel up and frisk you off for a seminar.

That's not the case either. In my world and my household it has been black for as long as I can remember

I also hear people say coloured. Usually no harm is meant by it.

Lol it certainly is.

I don't mean all black people in America. I just mean there was a move that came out of America towards the African American label, rather than black. I don't think it was a massive move, I just think it got a lot of airtime (primarily in the form of people having heated arguments and defending their right to continue to use terminology or defending their right not to have to continue to use terminology...:P

...he chose the best person for the job because he was good at his job and passionate about it more than anything else, I do believe that but that still doesn't necessarily indicate that he wasn't/isn't racist necessarily though..just that 'sense' of the better player overruled everything else for him..

..but it wasn't acceptable 30 years ago though..maybe words terminology was used 30 years ago but it wasn't 'acceptable' then either...

Maybe, but things move on. If he has the mental capacity to run a successful football club you'd think he'd be able to learn some simple manners. He's older, he should be wiser.

I didn't say "coloured" was bang out of order, I said it was unacceptable. I don't get what's so hard to understand about that.

They do that alot though with Irish Americans and Italian Americans, seems to be less to to with colour and more to do with roots and where they originated from

Oh those terrible PC brigades. Wanting not to cause unnecesary offence to people.

Never understood why people get so het up about it. If I discover that a word I am accustomed to using is actually offensive to the people that word concerns, why would I wish to dig in my heels against that?

An occasional moment's discomfort over not being sure of the currently acceptable word is worth it for a society that tries not to cause hurt to people because of who or what they are.

And yet... by far the largest group to migrate to the USA was the English, according to the resource centre at Ellis Island. And yet no one ever hears someone described as an English American.

Yeah, that's true actually, I never even thought of that, I wonder why that is?