General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI don't think it is appropriate to call someone an "OREO"
What say DU?
Background: HLN had a black lady repeatedly called another black lady an Oreo.
You will probably hear a lot more in the next few hours and days from your republican friends with their over-the-top outrage.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)FSogol
(45,488 posts)Is Bad.
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)to be exact
The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)These are pretty common names used. I don't see why anyone would be talking much about it.
Edited to add: Maybe the person who posted that she wouldn't be offended by being called a cracker ass because "she ain't no saltine," may not get it.
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)I don't know the context though, or why one black woman would call another black woman such a term on national TV.
itsrobert
(14,157 posts)Oreo by Ms Ali.
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)I'm surprised the network let it go on. Hmmm...... Glad I missed it.
CakeGrrl
(10,611 posts)It's meant as an insult, usually from one black person about another, if they feel someone is self-loathing enough to be ashamed of their race and try to act white or ingratiate themselves with whites to escape their heritage.
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)Not for news discussion. FFS make a legitimate argument.
Cleita
(75,480 posts)This was back in the early eighties and I found myself working in a department of a university that had mostly Af Amer employees. I did ask what an oreo was and apparently it means white on the inside and black on the outside. The person in question was a nasty supervisor. I did laugh even though I'm white. The guy really was a jerk though even if Af Amer.
I have never heard it since then, nor do I use it.
pennylane100
(3,425 posts)described Washington DC like an Oreo cookie when he spoke at the Press Corp dinner.
Igel
(35,317 posts)My understanding is that it's changed, but when I was living back in the area DC was a semicircle of black communities, largely poor, with a gentrified central core (mostly Georgetown) that was white and pretty well off. It was one of the weirdnesses of the city. I'd go to the Smithsonian in the morning and then head up to Rockville to a Russian bookstore, and the route usually took me from the "halls of power" and culture through working class and destitute black areas until I was out of DC properly and going through Bethesda. I knew there had to be Hispanic communities in there somewhere, if only because of the Spanish-language radio stations. Never found them, though. Perhaps NW or SE of downtown?
That's not insulting a person by saying that there's a mismatch between his skin color and attitudes, and he'd better bring his attitudes in line with his skin color.
Igel
(35,317 posts)And I've called out students in my class who use the term. "Oreo" is as bad as "burnt toast".
It conflates separate things, race and culture and sometimes language, and says that they *must* be the same thing as skin color--with skin color calling the shots. You aren't your character, you're not your culture, your aspirations. You aren't you. You're the representative of a group defined by something biologically superficial. You are the melanin content of your skin and that dictates who you must be and who you must want to be. It dictates your friends, your food, your fashion. You must conform. It's a group boundary kind of thing for the vestigially minded.
One guy I knew in student gov was black and had mostly given up on having black friends. He was fed up with them. They criticized him for not speaking right. For not listening to the right music. For not eating the right food. For having too many white friends. For pursuing education research that didn't seem to speak to the needs of African-American students. For not fitting in like a zombie. They said he wasn't a real African-American and he laughed and said they were finally right about something. He was Dutch-Guyanese. He spoke fluent Sranan and Dutch and had spent more time in Amsterdam than he had in the US, but was born and raised in Guyana. He was getting his degree so he could go back and work in the Guyanese ed system--in which the needs of African-American students weren't exactly pressing. They had more universal needs. But he was black and had a decent American accent, thanks to American School and spending time in the US as a kid. They assumed he was "African-American" and, well, that meant he had to conform or be seen as turning his back on "the community". He wanted to be himself, a Dutch-American-Guyanese grad student who liked Creole-Dutch food but his "peers" rejected the idea. And these were the people proudly proclaimed themselves as the defenders of diversity?
A girl in a class I was teaching was ridiculed for her clothes, food, attitudes. "You're not one of us," one of the African-Americans in the class told her with more than a little contempt. She had finally had enough after a couple of months and told the guy to go screw himself, he was right, she *wasn't* one of them and given how they treated her she didn't *want* to be one of them. She was Jamaican, and that meant she wasn't African-American by birth or culture or language. She bluntly said that she didn't have their hang-ups and wanted no part of them, thank you. That said, she wound up by the end of the year having a rather large spectrum of friends. But just as some whites wouldn't have much to do with her, some blacks wouldn't either.
A public health friend in stu gov was going to the Balkans to help people so he was learning Serbian. His fellow SE Asian students were surprised. As an Asian, his first responsibilty was to help Asians, they told him. He responded that he wanted to work in public health, not Asian public health, and to help people, not just Asians. He was a banana. He didn't pick his friends, culture, attitudes, and priorities based on something so thoroughly important as his skin color. Aside, he also said he didn't want to go back to Vietnam--he had had too many relatives killed there/ or vanish in re-education camps. His family had been boat people.
I don't like racial conformity requirements. I find they violate both my religious and my ideological principles. And I don't care what the skin color of the bigot is that's trying to impose them.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)When I was about 21 years old (1983) I worked in an engineering department with an african american designer I admired a lot. We had a great deal in common, and we used to joke about nearly everything.
(e.g. me: "is it true what they say about black guys?"
him: "Nah. It's a myth. Most are 12"-14" like you and me"
I am from a rural and very white hometown, and (without really understanding the subtext) I referred to him as "an oreo". In my defense, I was young and ignorant and considered it a backhanded compliment, as in; "we're more alike than it appears"
...much the way I considered it a compliment when he referred to me as a brother.
I consider a day in which I don't learn something a loss. That day I learned a fair bit.
So yeah, No. It's not appropriate.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)nt.