Posted: Wed 29 Mar 2006 18:52 Post subject: Biscuit maker kisses goodbye to 'negro' link
I say it's about time and LONG overdue.
Quote:
Biscuit maker kisses goodbye to 'negro' link
23 March 2006
AMSTERDAM — Dutch biscuit maker Van der Breggen has announced its popular chocolate-covered marshmallow biscuits will no longer be known as 'negerzoenen'.
Neger is the Dutch for negro or nigger, according to the Van Dale dictionary. Zoenen is Dutch for kisses.
OriginalThe re-branded, politically correct treat
The company, based in Tilburg in the south of the Netherlands, said on Thursday the biscuits will be sold as 'Buys Zoenen' (Buys Kisses) from mid April. The name change is in response to criticism the original name is racist.
"Buys Zoenen are the successors to our well known negerzoenen, which have been popular with young and old for the past 86 years," a statement posted on the firm's website said.
"After meticulous market, brand, and consumer research, we found it was time to modernise the product name. Some people think it is a shame the name negerzoenen is disappearing because they have known it for so long. There are others, nevertheless, who are less enthusiastic about the designation."
"We fully understand this - Buys Zoenen must be for everyone," Van der Breggen said.
The name 'Buys' refers to the original producers of the biscuits, which was taken over by Van der Breggen in the late 1990s.
The 'Eer en Herstel' (honour and restoration) group, which represents the victims of slavery in Suriname, stepped up its campaign against the 'negerzoenen' name last year.
WOW. Now let's see if we can get "Aunt Jemima" off the pancake box and "Uncle Ben" off the box of rice here in the good old United States! (I've always found it mildly amusing that the "Jemima" and "Ben" characters have been "updated" and made to look "younger and more modern"----as if that will erase their place in history as symbols of offensive "Negrobilia").
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Thu 30 Mar 2006 02:44 Post subject: Negrita
Hi,
In Chile we have a brand name of chocolate cookies called Negrita, which means "pretty Black girl" in Spanish. The publicity shows a gorgeous Brazilian model of mixed Afro-European ancestry.
Would you thing that is wrong? At least I love the model, because is very pretty
I tried to find the pictures of the girl to attach it but they are not in the web.
Posted: Thu 30 Mar 2006 03:00 Post subject: Re: Negrita
oevega wrote:
Hi,
In Chile we have a brand name of chocolate cookies called Negrita, which means "pretty Black girl" in Spanish. The publicity shows a gorgeous Brazilian model of mixed Afro-European ancestry.
Would you thing that is wrong? At least I love the model, because is very pretty
I tried to find the pictures of the girl to attach it but they are not in the web.
this is the product
Regards,
Omar Vega
Well, if the term "Negrita" is truly complimentary and socially-accepted as such by "pretty Black" girls in Chile and Brazil, then I can't see why it would be particularly offensive. There is a puffy white/golden pancake-like confection my mother taught me to make(SOOO delicious!)called a "Dutch Baby". I wonder, is this offensive to the Dutch?
Hello, I've come across food products/packaging that have reference to a specific ethnic group. How should people respond to such product merchandising?
The first product mentions "Mini Filipinos" a chocolate candy with various flavors inside manufactured by an British company. Its an offshoot of the original "Filipinos" manufactured by a Spanish company.
(Its the 21st item on the junk food list, when you scroll down.)
I wonder if Tagalong originated from the word Tagalog? (A Philippine language/ethnic group.)
Did the names of those 2 types of girlscout cookies come into being at the time the U.S. acquired Guam, the Philippines, the Marshall Islands, and part of Samoa -1898?
Some people are offended others are flattered by the merchandising.
Some years ago when I was a child and visited the Philippines I came across a cake at a bakery in a downtown mall. The name of the cake was a Sambo. At the time I thought that was a weird name to call a cake.
It was a purplish colored cake made from a purple taro root.
I wonder if the term Sambo was bantered around alot when the Americans arrived there in 1898?
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 31 Mar 2006 16:27 Post subject: Zambos
thea wrote:
...Some years ago when I was a child and visited the Philippines I came across a cake at a bakery in a downtown mall. The name of the cake was a Sambo. At the time I thought that was a weird name to call a cake.
It was a purplish colored cake made from a purple taro root.
I wonder if the term Sambo was bantered around alot when the Americans arrived there in 1898?
Hi,
the term Zambo (with Z or S) does not mean the same in Spanish than in English. In English, if I am not wrong, means an African aboriginal that just arrived to the Americas, and is considered an insult. In Spanish means a birracial person which is the result of the mixture of Indian and Black.
Now, because Phillipines was a part of the Spanish Empire, and also because Spaniards considered Phillipinos and Native Americans as part of the same race, they also applied their ethnic terminology there.
Therefore, in Phillipines, a Mestizo is the mix of Spanish and Phillipino, and a Sambo is the result of mixtures between Black and Phillipino.
Yes, there were Black slaves in Phillipines, probably following the African Asian routes of the Portugueses.
Joined: 30 Mar 2005 {Posts: 1046 } Location: New Jersey
Posted: Fri 31 Mar 2006 17:10 Post subject:
Quote:
Yes, there were Black slaves in Phillipines, probably following the African Asian routes of the Portugueses.
There are also Black "Negritos" (Bushmen-type short-statured Blacks) in the Philippines who are probably the oldest population there. Some Sambos may have come about due to Negrito-Filipino crosses.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 31 Mar 2006 18:52 Post subject: curiosity
William wrote:
Quote:
Yes, there were Black slaves in Phillipines, probably following the African Asian routes of the Portugueses.
There are also Black "Negritos" (Bushmen-type short-statured Blacks) in the Philippines who are probably the oldest population there. Some Sambos may have come about due to Negrito-Filipino crosses.
Hi,
Yes, you are right. Then it is even more curious. It means Spaniards not only confused common Philippines with Native Americans but also the Negrito minority with black Africans. And kept their admixture terminology intact.
Well, Columbus confussed the Americas with India, anyways
Joined: 05 Apr 2006 {Posts: 6 } Location: Texas, USA
Posted: Wed 05 Apr 2006 15:49 Post subject: Re: Negrita
oevega wrote:
Hi,
In Chile we have a brand name of chocolate cookies called Negrita, which means "pretty Black girl" in Spanish. The publicity shows a gorgeous Brazilian model of mixed Afro-European ancestry.
Would you thing that is wrong? At least I love the model, because is very pretty
I tried to find the pictures of the girl to attach it but they are not in the web.
this is the product
Regards,
Omar Vega
Yeah - and apparently, in Argentina and Cuba "negro" is a term used to refer to a friend or loved one - with no negative connotations.
And I understand that it is also widely used and accepted in Portugese to refer to black people.
Plus, when I was growing up "negre" was used a lot in France. I don't think that's the case anymore - I think, they've switched to "Noir" - which literally means black.
So doesn't the meaning depend on where you are and what the culture is at the time?
Posted: Wed 05 Apr 2006 16:09 Post subject: Re: Zambos
oevega wrote:
The term Zambo (with Z or S) does not mean the same in Spanish than in English. In English, if I am not wrong, means an African aboriginal that just arrived to the Americas, and is considered an insult. In Spanish means a birracial person which is the result of the mixture of Indian and Black.
For many centuries, Sambo or Zambo was (and still is) a common male first name among the Hausa peoples of what is today northern Nigeria and adjacent regions of Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. It is the name traditionally given to a family's second son. As pointed out in Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina From 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf, 1974), page 185:
Peter Wood wrote:
Repeatedly in [North] America, when non-English-speaking groups have imported names which had laudatory or at least neutral implications at first, these have gradually been made common nouns and given a negative connotation.
A similar phenomenon in the early 19th cetnury transformed the Yoruba day names into derogatory terms. In the Yoruba culture, children are often named for the day of the week that they are born. The Yoruba days of the week are named as follows:
Posted: Wed 05 Apr 2006 16:11 Post subject: Re: Negrita
atim wrote:
Yeah - and apparently, in Argentina and Cuba "negro" is a term used to refer to a friend or loved one - with no negative connotations.
And I understand that it is also widely used and accepted in Portugese to refer to black people.
Plus, when I was growing up "negre" was used a lot in France. I don't think that's the case anymore - I think, they've switched to "Noir" - which literally means black.
So doesn't the meaning depend on where you are and what the culture is at the time?
According to my Portuguese teacher, when he was growing up in the 60s, preto was the preferred term and negro was never used to refer to a black person. Today, negro is used and preto isn't; the latter is now seen as inappropriate. He didn't explain why, but when I was in Brazil in 1993, I heard a mixture of both.
What does “negre” actually mean? Is it a derogatory word for black people as opposed to “noir”, which simply means black?
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Wed 05 Apr 2006 16:18 Post subject: Re: Negrita and the word Negro in Spanish
G-Man wrote:
atim wrote:
Yeah - and apparently, in Argentina and Cuba "negro" is a term used to refer to a friend or loved one - with no negative connotations.
And I understand that it is also widely used and accepted in Portugese to refer to black people.
Plus, when I was growing up "negre" was used a lot in France. I don't think that's the case anymore - I think, they've switched to "Noir" - which literally means black.
So doesn't the meaning depend on where you are and what the culture is at the time?
According to my Portuguese teacher, when he was growing up in the 60s, preto was the preferred term and negro was never used to refer to a black person. Today, negro is used and preto isn't; the latter is now seen as inappropriate. He didn't explain why, but when I was in Brazil in 1993, I heard a mixture of both.
What does “negre” actually mean? Is it a derogatory word for black people as opposed to “noir”, which simply means black?
Hi,
The problem with the term "Negro" is that in Spanish means black and nothing else. Is like the world Verde which means Green. There is nothing racial on it, and we use it because we don't have another word for the color black.
For some reason that word took a racial tone when used in other languages out of their original context, like an import.
In Spanish we have lots of expresion that may sound racially loaded for people that is not familiarized with our language and culture.
Examples. We say our friends "Como estas, negro" (how are you, black) to mean "how are you buddy". We say our girlfriends and wives "Mi negra" (my black) to mean "honey", and our little daughters "negrita" (little black girl). And that has nothing to do with race at all. We say negro to white people as well, if they are not pink colored.
There are racial slurs in Spanish, but the word "negro" is not one of them. For example, calling a Black Latin American person an "African" could be very offensive, indeed.
So, same people could suffer a "cultural shock" when learning Spanish.
Joined: 05 Apr 2006 {Posts: 6 } Location: Texas, USA
Posted: Wed 05 Apr 2006 17:14 Post subject:
In colonial times "negre" was used to refer to people of African & Carribean descent - particularly slaves. It's derived from the word "negro". And has that whole slavery/colonial connotation to it. As I said earlier, it's no longer an acceptable term.
But then there was the whole "la negritude" (blackness) movement - basically francophone writers, poets and intellectuals of African & Carribean descent who came together to restore pride in their black identity - standing in resistance to the colonial powers, to counter the negative connotation of the word.
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