Everyday phrases/idioms with racial overrtones?

This thread could get as busy as a Chinese fire drill.

 

'Call a spade a spade' also has no racial connotation in its origin.

 

A little off topic (but tangent, really): I usually roll my eyes when someone goes on a rant about "PC" and people being hypersensitive about racial issues, but did anyone see the "pick-a-nicka" brouhaha over a NY cafe's specialty pizza?

Huffington Post called it "the most racist pizza ever created." Total tempest in a teacup. And since when are sunflower seeds racial, for crissakes?!?!

This Has To Be The Most Racist Pizza Ever Created

 

Buck, you're wrong.
Just because you don't want these things to be racially charged does not mean they weren't.
Good day.

 

When I was in college my roommates and I went to a party to a party and were chatting up a group of girls when a guy who lived there, but had recently graduated came home from work wearing a dress shirt and tie. He says something like "OK guys, let me go get out of this monkey suit and get to drinking."

The girls start talking about how racist he is and how they can't believe he just said that. We all looked at each other like "wow, these chicks are fucking stupid," but since we all wanted to score we agreed and talked about what a dick that guy was.

 

Depending on how you want to look at it, it either traces back to ancient Greece or to Erasmus of Rotterdam. Possibly Arestophanes, and definitely Plutarch used the phrase "to call a fig a fig and to call a trough a trough." Erasmus, when translating the phrase to Latin, changed the phrase to "to call a spade a spade."
Erasmus' translation was later translated into English.
In none of these translation was it in reference to race, or even a deck of cards. Interestingly, it seems that Arestophanes' "to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough" likely refers to, err, naughty bits.

So, Buck is very much correct that, in its origins, it has nothing to do with race.

 

But what if a spade self-identifies as a club?

 

"boy"

 

"This water is cold."

 

"Deep, too."

And I don't call a spade a spade, I call it a damn shovel.

 

"I b'lieve one o' them fellers was from Arkansas."

 

Ah, thank you! I set that up hoping someone would tee off on it.