Just a quick post before I head off to Newport, over in Texas it seems the term black hole is now a racist remark, well to some people at least.
Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield (white) seems to of got himself in trouble for saying that the county's collections office behaves like an area of space with an escape velocity greater than 300,000 kilometres per second.
"It sounds like Central Collections has become a black hole"
Anybody with more than six brain cells knows what he means. Documents, records etc end up in Central Collections, and they disappear.
However some people with fewer than six brain cells don't know the astronomical phenomenon, nor how the term black hole is used in everyday conversation.
Commissioner John Wiley Price (black) shouted out in the meeting "excuse me" and said the language was "unacceptable", saying that the collection's office was a "white hole".
Obviously, not knowing what a black hole is means this guy doesn't have much chance of knowing what a white hole is. Using the term white hole wouldn't describe the situation at all Mr Price. Instead of losing documents, the office would be creating documents and spewing them everywhere in a big mess.
But hell. Why bother making any sense, or describing something when pretty much anything anybody says could be interpreted by the PC-brigade as being offensive, racist or whatever? You won't win anybody to your side by irritating them with such petty nonsense, if there's a need for a change in language it will happen slowly over time.
Not content to keep his ignorance to himself, Judge Thomas Jones (black) also waded into this demanding that Mayfield apologise for the "racially insensitive analogy".
Mayfield has refused to apologise. Good, there's far too much stupidity on the march these days, what with religious fundamentalism, and "alternative" (read: unproven) medicine to retreat on things like this.
"I prefer black furniture" isn't racist, "there's a black hole in Cygnus" isn't racist, "that star over there is a red giant", or "that one over there is a brown dwarf", isn't racist. "We should paint fire hydrants white" isn't racist, "that office is a black or white hole" isn't racist.
To borrow something from Gandhi: "A general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir." (Kaffir meaning people of southern Africa). That is a racist remark.
Can we keep things in perspective please.