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Do you feel its pointless to leave out a persons skin color when describing them? I'm not advocating using racial slurs or pejoratives but it seems like people walk on eggshells when trying to describe a person leaving out skin color when it is a perfectly viable descriptor of a person, or thats at least how i see it.
It depends why you are using it as a descriptor. If it's relevant, then of course it's fine. But why mention it if it's not relevant? If I'm telling a story about, say, someone who nearly ran their bicycle into me, the country they were born is almost disinformation.
Sometimes you can be too politically correct.
I made a comment once about a "charming black guy" who stole my wallet and got accused of being a racist.
Ofc it's normal, especially when identifying someone. It's a personal characteristic like hair color, eye color, height, etc. It can make a whole of a difference.
Omitting skin color for the sake of not sounding racist is dumb and makes you seem exactly that - racist.
I'd never leave someones race out when describing them, but then again I'm from the Uk and we don't have the same racial tensions over here.
If I saw a white person in a group of black people, I would say hey, look at that cool shirt that white guy has on! or something like that.
You sick racist pig, you admit people are the race they are. You're supposed to pretend that you are completely blind and can't see skin colors. And deaf so you can't hear their accents.
In all seriousness though, you would be less normal if you avoided saying a hispanic person is hispanic. If I'm watching tv and I don't know the characters name, I'm likely to say something like the fat white guy, or the black guy with the beard.
Yeah, of course.. I work in retail and we describe customers using skin color all the time. There is nothing racist with being called black if you're black and etc.
Working in security, we -have- to use skin color and race to describe a person thoroughly, otherwise when we're looking for a suspect, it would be hard to spot the correct person! Especially if the person is more than one race, say, police are looking for a black person with lighter skin...or they're white, but tan skin...it goes hand in hand to help distinguish from race alone. It's an every day occurrence for me, so it's normal. =)
Well he was black, so of course he stole your wallet. Just kidding, bad joke I know. It is fine to use color as a description. I dont get offended when someone calls me white. Who cares?