USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010925.1418 (Crew, this is the Captain): It's interesting how a phrase can outlive its cultural origins and actually come to mean something entirely different. Take for instance, the phrase: "Let's call a spade, a spade." It means we should speak forthrightly, to tell the plain truth, to not let petty sensibilities stand in the way ot making a clear and necessary point about something, right? But what is a "spade", anyway? Why would you want to call whatever-it-is "a spade" as opposed to using some other label for it?

No, it's not another name for a shovel; it's an obsolescent term once used by American whites for people of African origin. You know, those people. A modern translation of it, carrying the cultural meaning it once had, would be: "Let's call a nigger, a nigger." It comes from the slight similarity between their skin color and the ink used to print black playing cards..

Nearly everyone who now uses the phrase would, ironically, never consider actually calling an African American "a spade" (or "a nigger" either). In fact, I wonder how many American blacks use the phrase without even knowing what it really means, or althernatively who use it fully understanding the irony of it? (discussion in progress)

Update 20010926: John writes to tell me that the phrase appears in the play "The Importance of Being Earnest". This unquestionably predates the racial meaning of the word "spade" in the US, and in any case Oscar Wilde wasn't American. I stand corrected.