castledoom.com

[Che]

Quote: He then goes on to remark on how he is a disgrace and how he is "house negro" meaning that he is a puppet for the white man.


The correct translation of the term used for Obama is "house slave."

It was cleaned up for publication.

I read something, the other day, that said Al-Qaeda is afraid the election of Obama will cause them to lose all support in sub-Saharan African nations.

[CharlieBrown]

Che wrote: Quote: He then goes on to remark on how he is a disgrace and how he is "house negro" meaning that he is a puppet for the white man.


The correct translation of the term used for Obama is "house slave."



I would have thought that negro is worse than the word slave.

[JuntaJoe]

Not to them. Arab cultures operate on a caste system. Even today they practice a weaker form of slavery. An American may get preferential treatment, but they hire Asians and Africans to long term indenture contracts that sit in the gray border of slavery.

The black skin color is irrelevant. Since they aren't Arab then they are lesser caste. Subservient and controlled. They don't subdivide further than that. "Negro denotes slave" is a more Pan America concept. We didn't enslave the other races. Just black people. So we more closely identify the race to the act.

But the Arabs are more "equal opportunity" slavers. Indians, blacks, and east Asians were, and still are, the groups the Arabs subjugate.

To an Arab the terms "house negro" and "house slave" are synonymous in effect. It's merely our American historical perspective that puts extra spin on it for us.

[CharlieBrown]

JuntaJoe wrote: Not to them. Arab cultures operate on a caste system. Even today they practice a weaker form of slavery. An American may get preferential treatment, but they hire Asians and Africans to long term indenture contracts that sit in the gray border of slavery.

The black skin color is irrelevant. Since they aren't Arab then they are lesser caste. Subservient and controlled. They don't subdivide further than that. "Negro denotes slave" is a more Pan America concept. We didn't enslave the other races. Just black people. So we more closely identify the race to the act.

But the Arabs are more "equal opportunity" slavers. Indians, blacks, and east Asians were, and still are, the groups the Arabs subjugate.

To an Arab the terms "house negro" and "house slave" are synonymous in effect. It's merely our American historical perspective that puts extra spin on it for us.

I was referring to our media switching up the words from slave to negro.

[JuntaJoe]

What likely happened is some journalist was reading a standard dictionary translation of a word or phrase and picked out the one most likely to controversial to American readers. He ignored the fact that certain words in certain places have different means to the practiced user of the language.


Imagine that the word bowl was used in a sentence.

We all went to bowl yesterday.

To us native users it would mean the group went to go play at the bowling alley.

But perhaps the usage in another country for the round dish aspect of the definition also referred to a punitive practice of shaving someone's head around the edges of a serving bowl, perhaps in a society that sees hair length as a sign of maturity. Incorrectly translated it would look like the group went out to practice a barbaric punitive action on people.


Just because the dictionary permits the usage of a word doesn't mean it is used correctly based on a certain definition.


In other words, the reporter did a little creative semantics to inflame the readership.

[Che]

Quote: I would have thought that negro is worse than the word slave.

If I remember the story correctly, the changes in the translation, first started with Arab news reporting.