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Unread 02-25-2017, 01:36 AM
Ann Drysdale's Avatar
Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Old South Wales (UK)
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Well, Siham, I've been following this thread since it began and your post just broke a dam.

I have long been afraid to do, to say, what I feel to be right in less specific but similar circumstances, only to be told that it's not OK. I remember with horror a situation when a member of a writing group, actually a wellknown person who is both black and gay, flung back his chair and walked out, shouting over his shoulder that he couldn't stay in the same room as someone who was so "right on". I struggle to recall what it was I said; if only, if only...

I remember the frisson of confused feelings when the actor Benedict Cumberbatch said "coloured people" instead of "people of colour" and was torn apart by the press. And I'm still not quite sure when it is OK to say "black".

I don't want to introduce any discussion along these lines - this is the wrong thread - but the Etheridge Knight poem meant a great deal to me and I shall think deeply about the comfort I got from it.

Thank you for posting it.
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Last edited by Ann Drysdale; 02-25-2017 at 01:44 AM. Reason: changed "correct" to OK (the second one) because I am still thinking.
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