Glossary

Some terms and how I use them. This is a work in progress.

By the way, also check out the  excellent Glosario of Nezua the Unapologetic Mexican, which gave me the idea, and Required Reading by the Angry Black Woman.

Abagond - my pen name, which I took so I would not have to guard my words.

acceptable blackness - blackness that is acceptable to white people, that does not threaten them or make them feel uncomfortable.

acting white – the idea that acting too much like white people is a bad idea. Favoured by Black American teenagers as a put down. It takes in not just clothes and music but even speaking proper English and doing well at school!

ad hominem argument – questioning a commenter’s intelligence, character, age or motives, as if that affects whether their statements are true or false. Like the devil, even bad people can make good arguments.

Afro-Latino – people in the New World who are black by race, or at least mixed with black, and Latin by culture.

America - strictly speaking this means all of North and South America, but in practice, in the English language,  it means just one part of it: the United States of America. Assume the latter unless it is clear I am talking about the former.

Anglo - anyone whose main language is English. Mainly used when talking about Latinos. Like with Latinos, Anglos can be any colour – because it is about culture, not race – but they are mainly thought of as being white (a little over half are).

Anglo-America – the English-speaking part of North America, particularly the white Protestant part of it.

Anything But Racism argument - is where a white person is presented with a clear case of racism and tries to think of some Logical Explanation for it that has nothing to do with racism. As if racism is that rare or something.

Apple-pie America – the white, well-to-do, sheltered parts of America where people trust the police, the courts, the prisons and the press, where they think injustice and racism are rare, where they believe in just world doctrine, where they wonder “Why do they hate us?” It is quite unlike the dystopic places in New York where I spent many of my formative years.

Arab trader argument – if white Americans do something evil and terrible it is all right – or at least not all that bad – so long as they can find at least one example from world history of someone else doing the same thing. Thus the Atlantic slave trade was not so bad because Arabs traders sold slaves too! Utterly morally broken, but whites say it with a straight face.

asymmetry of racism – the idea that white racism in America is way worse  than black racism because it is supported by the institutions of society, like the police, the courts, the press, the schools, etc. It is why “reverse racism” and “Blacks are racist too” are weak arguments. Some express this thought by saying racism = prejudice + power.

Barbara Bush Award for Deluded Whiteness – given from time to time to worthy souls whose belief in white racist lies leads them into saying something amazingly brainless.

Basically Good – what White Americans think they are despite their ugly past and Christian ideas of original sin.

“Bell Curve, The” (1994) – a book by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein that said that most blacks will forever be at the bottom of American society because of an inborn lack of intelligence.

Beyonce – a singer from Houston who sings like a black girl but tries to look like a white girl. Part of the Black Beauty Triumvirate.

biracial – an American term for mixed race. It means you have parents from different races. On this blog, nine times out of ten “biracial” is just an updated term for the out-of-date word “mulatto”: someone who has a black parent and a white parent. Most people like that in America just call themselves black because of the One Drop Rule, but it becomes a life-changing  issue if they are too white to be black and too black to be white.

black - this blog follows the One Drop Rule. Not because it is right – it is mad and shows what a big lie race is – but because in North America it is a fact of society. And, more to the point, it is the common meaning of the word in English when applied to people. Naomi Campbell and Halle Berry are both black. So are Tiger Woods, Barack Obama and Mariah Carey. But not Bill Clinton.

Black Beauty Triumvirate – the Three Prettiest Black Girls in America. Members: Beyonce, Halle Berry and Rihanna. Tyra Banks and Vanessa Williams are former members. It is completely safe for a white person to say these women are beautiful.

black ghetto – also known as the hood or the inner city, is a part of an American city where nearly everyone is black. Some are middle-class but the term is mainly applied to poor ones.

blame-shifting- shifting blame onto someone else when accused of doing wrong. About half of all arguments whites make about racism boil down to blame-shifting: Blacks do it too, Blacks are to blame for their own troubles, You are the racist one, the Arabs traded slaves too, Racism is natural, etc. The best of all: blaming blacks for blaming whites: “blame whitey”.

Blasian - part black, part Asian.

booty-on-a-stick – thin with a big bottom, like Angel Lola Luv. Man, I hope it does not catch on. To me it looks strange and ugly.

breasts-on-a-stick – thin with large breasts, the White American idea of female beauty since the 1990s. Half way between Vogue and Playboy, it was made famous and acceptable by Anna Nicole Smith and Pamela Anderson. More at “white beauty: a brief history”.

Britain - I mostly use it to mean the country, not the island. As such it has four main parts: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Chinese Invasion Experiment - a thought experiment to think about what would become of white people if the Chinese took over and settled America. Not as some cathartic fantasy for black people, as one commenter put it, but to help white people think about what dispossession means.

colour - a person’s colour is the colour of his skin, another word for race. It is not the physical colour, like pink, olive or brown, but the racialized colour, like black, white, brown, yellow, red. Thus, Halle Berry’s skin might be a nice brown colour, but her colour in the sense of race is black.

colour-blind racist – someone  who says he does not see colour – until you want to marry his daughter. It is the most common sort of racism among White Americans born after 1970. Whites say they do not see colour, but there are plenty of cold, hard numbers about housing, marriage, schooling, unemployment, income, life expectancy, etc, that prove otherwise. Colour-blind racists do not so much hate blacks as look down on them. See Jim Crow racist.

colourism – the belief that lighter-skinned people of the same race are better than darker-skinned people.

comment policy – yes, I have one. If you stay on topic, keep from making personal remarks and do not use bad language, you will be fine.

covering – where you cover up your true self to fit into the straight, white middle-class male “neutral” mainstream.

Creole - on this blog it mainly means American Creoles: those whose roots go back to French New Orleans. Not the same thing as Cajun. Like Latino, it is a culture, not a race: you can be black or white and still be Creole. Most Creoles these days, though, are Americanized. Haitian Creole, on the other hand, is a language, a Haitian form of French.

culture - everything that you have learned: how you talk, act, dance, dress, cook, pray, etc. Language, religion, dress, food, way of life, etc. White American culture is one of the strongest in history, yet many of them think they have no culture at all! It is everyone else who eat strange food, keep strange holidays and speak English with an accent, not them!

cutsie-pie face – the kind of face that Gabrielle Union, Sanaa Lathan and Jessica Alba have but not, say, Sade or Megan Fox, whose faces are more “womanly” and less like that of a girl.

darkies - people of colour as seen from the point of view of white privilege and power. There are three main kinds: Happy, Helpless and Ungrateful.

derailing - what losers in an argument try to do, like by changing the subject or trying to get you angry.

dorf - how NPR and many well-to-do whites like their black music: dead, old, retro or foreign.

empire – where one country rules others. It is done either directly by sending armies and governors and even settlers or indirectly through control of trade policy and military alliances. Britain and Rome ruled directly; America and Athens, indirectly.  America, which has most of the world’s weapons, rules by means of vassal states, called banana republics, and is opposed by those fighting in the hills, called guerrillas. Read Thucydides and Jamaica Kincaid.

feelings of white people – more important than the truth, apparently.

five walls of racism – the five walls White Americans have to break through to completely free themselves from racism.

FTW – for the win

Get over it -what white people say when faced with an undeniable case of racism, like slavery.

Go back to Africa – America is not all that bad because if it were, you would go back to Africa.

good hair – hair like a white woman’s: flowing, smooth, straight or almost straight, preferably long and full. The opposite of nappy or natural hair.

good white people – an ironic term for white people  that means white people who think they are good but in fact are not. Mostly used when talking about some racist blindness or screw-up on their part.

Halle Berry – an American actress whose beauty I have failed to duly note. Part of the Black Beauty Triumvirate.

HBD - short for human biodiversity, a form of pseudo-scientific racism, pushed by Steve Sailer and others.

Hispanic - anyone whose main language is Spanish. It is not a race since millions of Hispanics are white, black, Indian and everything in between. However the American government and American scholars often regard it as a race.

IIRC - If I remember correctly.

internalized racism – being racist against your own race and therefore against yourself.

IP address – the number the Internet gives to your computer so that you can send and receive stuff. They look like this: 74.190.38.65. In most cases it allows you to tell what country and town a person is from. I have a cool map that shows where all my current visitors are coming from.

IRL - in real life.

It was the times! – a simple phrase that excuses the evil deeds of past ages because, apparently, they had a very different sense of right and wrong.

ITA – I totally agree.

Jezebel stereotype – black women stereotyped as being oversexed and loose.

Jim Crow – American apartheid: the first hundred years after slave days when racist laws kept black people and white people apart, particularly in the South. Features: lynchings, the Klan, blacks forced to ride at the back of the bus, marriage between the races outlawed, “whites only” hotels, etc.

Jim Crow racism – the old sort of racism common among White Americans born before 1970, back in Jim Crow days. They do not just look down on blacks, they hate them, they want as little to do with them as possible. Being in the same swimming pool or kissing one – ew! If you hang out with blacks there is something is wrong with you.  The races are happiest when they are kept apart. Tra-la-la-la-la.

just world doctrine – the belief, common in Apple-pie America, that society is just, that whatever injustice there is is an accident, not something built into society. It is assumed rather than proved.  Thus the Anything But Racism argument.

Klan - the Ku Klux Klan, the paramilitary wing of Jim Crow rule in the American South in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Now largely toothless.

Kool-Aid drinker – someone whose common sense judgement is blinded by his loyalty to an idea or a person. Like when nearly a thousand followers of Jim Jones died after drinking poisoned Flavor Aid (not Kool-Aid, like people think) at Jonestown in 1978. I noted some right-wing Kool-Aid drinkers in my post on Sarah Palin’s Kool-Aid Drinking Society.

kumbaya anti-racism – the idea that racism will go away like magic if we say the right words and try to act in a colour-blind way.

Last Man Talking – where you try to “win” an argument by merely out-talking everyone.

Latino - short for Latin American. About half are also Hispanic: those whose main language is Spanish. The other half are mainly Brazilian.

Macon D – is the white anti-racist blogger who runs Stuff White People Do, which looks at the many ways white people do racist stuff and not see that it is racist.

Mighty Whitey – a white character in a story who saves people of colour. Like Lawrence of Arabia or Michelle Pfeiffer in “Dangerous Minds” (1995).

Missing White Woman Syndrome – where the news goes on and on about some young, pretty, well-to-do white woman who is missing but say next to nothing about missing people who are poor, black, old or male.

moderated words – words that will send your comment to moderation instead of getting posted instantly. They are listed in the comment policy. In general they are either obscene (fuck, shit, dick) or racial slurs (whitey, chink, nigger). Note that piss and idiot are moderated, but hell, damn and ass are not.

moral blindess – where one is blind to the wrong one does or is done in one’s name. Brainwashing, like the white lens, and broken moral reasoning, like the Arab Trader argument, layered on top of one’s own natural pride and rational self-interest, makes it dangerously easy.

NAMs – Non-Asian minorities, particularly those in America: blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. Used by Steve Sailer and other HBDers.

New York - in this blog it means the city not the state. It goes like this;

• New York state = New York + upstate New York + Long Island

Nollywood – the Nigerian film industry.

No Slappz - is a commenter from Brooklyn who believes only the facts he wants to believe. Therefore arguing with him is a waste of time. When you give up he thinks it is because he won. He has great spelling and vocabulary skills but terrible reading skills, being an extreme example of reading white white.

North America – nine times out of ten this means just the United States and Canada. Only if I am talking about all the continents in the world does it also mean Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

not all whites – the idea that you cannot make general statements about whites because they are not all the same. They are so different from one another! They are individuals! Unlike blacks or Asians, who are seen through stereotypes. When a black man rapes a woman it is because he is black, blacks cannot control their desires. But when a white man molests a little boy, it is because he is sick, he needs help. How nice.

Not as bad as it used to be – means that whites no longer force blacks to ride at the back of the bus or hang them from trees, like they did back in Jim Crow times. Also known as “progress”.

n-word – is the word “nigger”. In the mouth of a white person it is always a racist slur.

One Drop Rule – if you look at all black African, even just one bit, then you are considered to be black in American society. Because, you know, whites are pure.

OP - original post

person of colour – an ungainly term for anyone who is not white. What Nezua the Unapologetic Mexican calls “brown” and what the British used to call “coloured”.

Pioneer Fund – pours millions into studies that support scientific racism.

police – men armed by the state to keep law and order. They protect the rich from the poor and whites from blacks. A black life does not hold much value in their eyes.

purple people – people with purple skin. I have never seen one, but white people  keep bringing them up, as in: “I don’t care if you’re black, white, green or purple, it’s the person that counts.”

quick-and-dirty - said of a number or an answer that is easy to get that is probably right, but futher study is required to get the true answer. WHR is a good example.

race conscious – where your race becomes a part of how you see yourself and others. Whites in America think it is wrong, while for people of colour it is unavoidable except for the profoundly delusional. Whites see it as “being obsessed about race” or just plain “being racist”.

race realism – the belief that the races are a fact of nature as opposed to social constructs. Most race realists believe that the races have important inborn differences of intelligence and behaviour that the politically correct are too brainwashed to see or admit to. HBD is pseudoscientific wing of race realism.

racism - the belief that one race is better than another by nature and not, say, because of the current power balance or an accident of history. White Americans have narrowed this term to mean only the most extreme Klan, neo-Nazi sort of racism – meaning, presto changeo, they are not racist! I do not buy that. Nor do I buy the idea that only those backed by institutional power can be racist. Anyone can be racist. And in America nearly everyone is – black, white, Latino, Jewish, Muslim. Like it is in the drinking water or something. And, yes, I am racist too.

racist - one who believes in racism or acts as if he does. For whites it is the closest thing they have to the n-word. For me it is a piece of mere description, like communist, Methodist or aquamarine, not a fighting word. If I call you racist I am not questioning your character but your thinking.

rape statistics – black men rape women, especially white women, at some unbelievable, amazing rate. Or so some commenters like to tell me when they are losing an argument on race.

rational self-interest – the idea that people are expected to act in a way that furthers their own interests and that of their family and friends.

reading while white - despite their higher reading scores, whites in America can still completely miss the point of a post, especially if it is about racism.

Rebecca - my wife. She is beautiful and charming, but I left her with our two sons on March 1st 2009. This blog records part of our troubled marriage.

Rented Negro – a black person who is paid for kissing up to white opinion. An Uncle Tom with stock options. Examples: Clarence Thomas, Juan Williams, Amy Holmes, John McWhorter. And, arguably, Will Smith and Condoleezza Rice.

Sapphire stereotype – black women stereotyped as angry, headstrong, disagreeable women. It is the main stereotype that whites born since 1970 have about black women.

Sean Combs - a rapper who is the head of Bad Boy Records. He keeps changing his name, so I just call him by his birth name. His stage names:

• 1997: Puff Daddy
• 2001: P. Diddy
• 2005: Diddy

He has also been called Puffy and Sean “Puffy” Combs, but he never went by those as stage names.

Secret Course on Whiteness – that course I did not get invited to where white people learned how to think and act the way so many of them do.

shopping while black – the “crime” of shopping while being a black person. Like being followed by shopkeepers because they think you are going to take something.

single story – where we keep hearing the same story over and over again about people and places we do not know first-hand. So Africa becomes a place full of wild animals and hungry, unwashed children, not a place where there are libraries, bus drivers and true love.

skinhead - a white person who is openly racist and joins together with other like-minded whites.

SMH - smack my head.

Snow Makes You Smarter – the pseudo-scientific idea that those who come from a long line of people who have lived through unforgiving winters have more intelligence than those from warmer places.

sock puppet – a commenter going by a different name so that it seems like others agree with him. Not allowed on this blog.

Some of my best friends are black – but they are still racist because otherwise they would not be talking like that.

spammer – a commenter who pushes his (its) own content without the courtesy of at least reading and understanding mine.

Standard English – the English they teach in school as proper English, the kind you read in books. The language I try to write this blog in.

straw man argument – where someone tries to destroy your argument by bringing up a different argument that sounds kind of like yours and then destroys that.

stereotype – a picture you have in your head about people who belong to a certain race, religion, country or whatever. For example, “Asians work hard”, “Black women are loud-mouths”, “Rich people are stuck up” and so on. A huge part of racism runs on this stuff. It is what makes racist jokes funny.

Stormfront - the main Klan website.

SWPD – Stuff White People Do, an anti-racist blog run by Macon D.

Teflon Theory of History – the idea that anything that took place more than 30 years ago is Ancient History. It has Absolutely No Effect on the present. Or not much. Unless it was something good like the light bulb or the Declaration of Independence. Therefore those who make a big deal of the bad stuff in the past, like slavery, are Living in the Past and need to Get Over It.

thick - a woman has a thick figure if she is in between thin and fat. They have an hourglass or pear shaped figure; they seem to have big hips. Some call them “curvy” since they are not so thin or so fat as to have almost no figure. Most women with a WHR less than 0.68 are thick.

TMI – too much information. We did not want to know that.

tragic mulatto – a person who is half white and half black who is torn between the two races. They often try to be white which leads to tragedy. “Imitation of Life” (1933) is a famous book about that which was made into a Hollywood film twice (1934, 1959).

troll - a commenter who is not interested in debate but just wants to amuse himself by getting everyone angry.

Uptown – when capitalized it means the one in New York: Manhattan north of 110th Street, a place that has shaped my view of the world more than anywhere else. Not just from living there but through the authors I read most growing up – who also lived there. See: The best American authors live north of 110th Street.

Vast Taking Machine – American media that endlessly produces self-serving white opinion along with some Rented Negro voices, making it next to impossible to easily hear other voices – except as single stories.

Vogue magazine – the top fashion magazine in the world. Pushes an idea of female beauty that seems to come from gay white male fashion designers. Whatever, it is completely at odds with my own ideas of female beauty.

West Indies – means the former British West Indies, the black, English-speaking of the Caribeean: Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana, Antigua, etc.

white - anyone who is pure European by blood or looks it. When I use the word I am thinking mainly of whites in North America, the ones I know best, and, to a lesser degree, whites in Britain and South Africa. Note that what passes for white in North America is not quite what passes for white in Brazil.

white club – the white race seen as a club. Like a club it has members, it has rules about who can join and who cannot, it has duties and privileges. Those who fail to carry out their duties can be kicked out.

white guilt – the guilt that whites deny they feel due to their unfair position in society. They deny it but, like quarks, it makes sense of observed behaviour better than other hypotheses.

white inventor argument – white people are better than everyone else because of all the cool stuff they invented.

white lens – the screwed up way whites have of looking at the world, the brainwashing that says “white is right” and “black is bad”.

white pride – it sounds like something only skinheads have, but most white Americans build part of their self-worth on being white. You can tell because if you say something bad about whites they get upset, take it personally, feel the need to defend whites as a whole – even to the point of excusing clear evils like the slave trade or bad public schools in black ghettos.

white privilege – the unfair advantages whites get in American society because of their skin colour. Like better housing and schooling, better care from doctors, higher income for a given level of education and experience, etc.

whitey – a racial slur for white people, mostly used by white trolls.

WHR - waist to hip ratio. WHR = waist / hip. Vida Guerra at 0.68 and Jennifer Lopez at 0.67 are right at the line between thick and thin: they are just thick enough to be good looking according to black ideas of beauty and just barely thin enough to fit white ideas of beauty.

wigger - is a “white nigger”, a white person who tries to be black by dressing, acting and talking in a stereotypically black way.

Wigger Fallacy – the mistaken idea that what makes you black is how you dress and talk and act, that it is just a matter of culture.

YMMV – your mileage may vary.

YT – whitey