How to talk about skin color in English

Talking about skin color can be complicated! Some words are very offensive and will make you sound like a racist! What is acceptable to society changes over time. I’m sure you’re a good person and that you don’t want to say something that sounds rude or ignorant. I made this lesson for you so you’ll know how to talk about skin color without hurting or offending someone. This lesson is VERY important because you can get in a lot of trouble by using the wrong words! It is part of the cultural learning you must do when you are learning English. Words that are used in your country and culture may not be accepted in North America or Europe, where people are more sensitive. Test your politically correct English in the quiz at TRANSCRIPT Hi. I’m going to teach you... [Laughs] I need an opening again. Boo. Today I’m going to teach you something that a lot of people coming to Canada or travelling have different opinions about, and you guys need to know some things that are considered offensive, which means bad, and what’s considered, like, hmm, maybe okay. What I’m going to teach you is about talking about people, how to describe them by skin colour. Be careful, you could get into some fights. Guess what? Nobody in the world is yellow. Okay? You guys from Japan and Korea, and if you’re Asian, you’re not yellow. If somebody calls you yellow, it’s very, very, very racist. Mm-hmm. Maybe you guys have learned that you’re called yellow... Are you a banana, though? Come on. I’ve heard a lot of people from Japan and Korea and China say: “I’m yellow.“ It’s, for us, kind of rude. So maybe for you it’s okay. I don’t know. But basically, we do not call people yellow, because they’re not giant bananas. You cannot say “black man“. “Black“ is okay. I think they know it’s a man. Hmm, maybe they don’t. If you don’t know if it’s a man or a woman, it’s cool. You can just say: “Black“. Do not say: “Black man“. Also racist, considered offensive is “coloured“. A long time ago, people would separate people from white people and coloured people, which means black people. We are not living in the 1950s, thank god. In America, we do not separate people by colour. All of these ones are highly offensive and wrong. Red, we used to describe as Native Americans or Native Canadians that were also known as Indians, which is probably offensive to someone somewhere. We’ve had American football team called the Redskins, picture of an Indian or a Native American. The fan was hit with some... So, you cannot say that people are red-skinned. There’s another nasty word called the “n-bomb“, and it rhymes with “jigger“. So, replace the “n“, you’ve got it figured out. This is a really, really, really bad word sometimes, and along with the word “negro“. So, maybe in your language “negro“ means black, that’s cool, but when you call someone negro, it is, again, old-fashioned, and therefore offensive. So, be careful ladies and germs, do not use these words; they are considered bad and offensive to people. Other than that, open market. So, what can you call people? If...? I mean, everyone’s going to get offended, but: White. White people. White people like to be called white people, because I don’t know, we just don’t have another colour. I’m pretty white. I got some spots, too, so maybe you call me “spotty“? I don’t know. So, you can call people white, you can call people black. Another fancy word for black is “ebony“. Mm-hmm. My ebony princess. People from the Middle East and people from India, people from Pakistan, Sri Lanka-represent-are considered brown because there’s different shades, obviously, of black and brown, but Middle Eastern people, for the most part, are considered to be brown; they’re not black, they’re not white. Good. We also have something called olive-coloured skin. Now, this is kind of Mediterranean people. So people from the Middle East or people from Iran, people from Iraq, Afghanistan. You guys might be a little bit olive coloured. You might be brown, you might be black, you might be white. I don’t know. We also have another word that... I don’t know if it’s offensive. It’s “swarthy“. I like it, “swarthy“. It’s kind of an older word, and it basically means that (it’s a gentleman) has darker skin. So they’re not a white guy, they’re not Whitey Jones. “Swarthy“ means kind of a mixture of brown and olive together. It’s supposed to be like a really beautiful skin colour, which I think.