MovieChat Forums > Mercy Street (2016) Discussion > "Men of Color"? Really?

"Men of Color"? Really?


When I heard the female protagonist utter this ridiculous twenty-first century liberal term, I nearly turned the show off. This would not have been a term that was readily used in the period. Why does everything have to be completely ruined by modern-day nonsense liberalism? I guess the show will offer up none of the real raw images of war and diction that was used in the United States at the time. I guess this is just going to be some liberal fantasy of feminist power during the Civil War where everyone uses 21st century liberal racial and feminist terms? I hope this show doesn't completely take that tack throughout. Sadly, I know it will. Historical Civil War narrative tells us that even the most feminist of characters would have been miles behind any modern-day notion of today's radical feminism. Even in the North. Historical documentation tells us that blacks were somewhat better treated in the North, but the North was not some racial fantasy camp. But, I'm sure the agenda in this series won't address that. I just ask for an historical program that doesn't inject so much of today's modern liberal speech patterns and activist bias.

The only remotely believable character on the show is the black "doctor" who actually uses the N word. Let's face it. This would have been the terminology North and South. I have higher hopes for this show. I just hope it doesn't fall in the PC nightmare trap that so many modern films and movies have fallen into.

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That jarred with me too, but I think the term that you mean is "politically correct", not "liberal".

Cheers, Will

If the opposite of Love is indifference, what's the opposite of Hate?

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Aren't liberals said to be more politically-correct than conservatives or moderates?

I'll let you know when I come-up with a new signature, .

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Don't know about moderates, but conservatives are just as politically correct as liberals. The difference being what they take offense to.

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I agree with you 100%! Rednecks(aka conservatives) have their issues they are sensitive about too.

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Hi Joe!

And no, Liberals aren't' said to be more politically correct… Liberals SAY they are more "politically aware"!

Which is only one of MANY reasons there isn't really anyone on either side of the party (left, right or middle) worth voting for and all the independents still can't come up with the real money it takes to win.

And once again you draw me into the thread of a show I haven't seen and probably won't watch because if this is REALLY part of the dialogue then there is nothing of historical value to be found in this show!

Dude… SAVED AGAIN!
; - )


"He who laughs, lasts" - Mary Pettibone Poole

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Yes, really, it's not a 21st Century "PC" term but one of the terms used back then. Here are the Google Ngrams for "free man of color" and "free men of color". Notice where the peaks are. Click through the book links at the bottom if you think Ngrams made a mistake.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=free+man+of+color&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfree%20man%20of%20color%3B%2Cc0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=free+men+of+color&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfree%20men%20of%20color%3B%2Cc0

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Very interesting, jbredin-97852! I didn't know such info existed! Thank you!

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Books do not represent common speech. While these terms may have been used in writing, they were likely not used when spoken. Spoken language has the tendency to abbreviate, it's thus more likely that they said the N word rather than something as long as "man of color".

It's something you can observe in every single language.

So yes, writing this into DIALOGUE is solely done for PC reasons.

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Actually, 'person of color' was used in the Census since its inception. The iterations man/woman of color, at best, could be described as anachronistic but to assign nefarious intention is just the OPs projection, assumption, and personal bias.

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Sorry, even if the show used it AND Trump was elected president, it would still not be acceptable to use the n-word today.

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And why is that? The writer of the original posting, who is obviously a black person disagrees. So, where does that leave the rest of us? He is completely correct about the "liberalism's" creeping into art, in all of its forms...

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@pulpkult

Oh,please---the OP turned out to be wrong about the term "men of color" being a PC term---it's an actual 19th century term. And just because the OP used the pic of a black person, that doesn't necessarily mean the poster is black. People use all kinds of pics that don't really show who they are. And art has always been mainly a liberal thing, so why this person was all of a sudden whining about it just now "creeping" into art, is frankly just a bunch of BS. Tired of some conservative whining just because every damn thing isn't controlled by or thinks exactly like a clone of them.

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I'm guessing you're one of the PC brigade who censors Mark Twain and other 19th century American authors. Censorship isn't any more palatable coming from the left today than it was coming from the right in the 1930s.

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You don't know much about the time period do you? The most famous recruiting poster for black men was titled "Men of Color To Arms!" The phrase "people of color" was not used, but "men of color" certainly was.

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"People of color" probably was not used in the south to refer to slaves. But "free people of color" was particularly used in southern Lousiana and some other former French colonies in the U.S. and French colonies in the Caribbean. The phrase denoted a separate class of people from African slaves and freed slaves, usually of mixed European and African ancestry. I became aware of this some 30 yrs ago from Anne Rice's novel,The Feast of all Saints, about the free people of color. (It was made into a two-part TV/mini-series in 2001)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_people_of_color

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So what term should she have used?

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A lot of time could be saved for everyone if the various OPs knew what they were talking about before posting a lot of drivel.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae

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Sad to hear the term "man of color" set you off so much. But surprise, it is actually a period term. As someone else pointed out, there is a ca. 1863 recruitment poster with the phrase:

http://faculty.isi.org/media/images/catalog/cache/Men_of_Color_To_Arms_To_Arms_Broadside_c.jpg/872px-Men_of_Color_To_Arms_To_Arms_Broadside_c.jpg

Besides this, I've seen many times 19th Century Blacks referred to as "person of color;" "colored" or "free man/woman of color," etc. I can think of another broadside: "Colored people of Boston."

http://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/archive/assets/images/archive/cautionposter.jpg

Another such example is the use of the term "United States Colored Troops" during the Civil War.

So I think, without question, the phrase "man of color" was readily used during the period as opposed to being just the "modern-day nonsense liberalism" you believe it to be. Hope this helps.

EDIT- I just went to the Library of Congress' Historic Newspapers database and did a nationwide newspaper search from the years 1836 to 1865 and searched for the phrase "man of color" and it came up with 1645 results.

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But aren't these all examples of how the term was used IN THE NORTH? Because even the Constitution referred to them as, I believe, 2/3 "of a human man". So regardless of what they were called, both sides saw them as "less than" a person… although they also believed this true of women who got the vote after "persons of color" did. And history, unfortunately, is written by the winners who have a vested interest in being selective of both what and how things are said regarding events in the past. Which occasionally leaves me a bit suspicious of what I read.

But it's just an observation, without links to back it up. Although I still believe The South (or the Confederates who fought and the women they "left behind") as a whole regarded blacks as property not people



"He who laughs, lasts" - Mary Pettibone Poole

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