<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Jenny, interestingly, "the negative of a photograph" meaning of the word "arab" in Turkish derives from its slang meaning. There were few black people in Istanbul in the lates fifties and sixties. The ones there had come from north Africa/Arabia from the time the territories were part of the Ottoman Empire. The "official" dictionary meaning of the word ("photographic negative") was a derivation from an earlier usage of the word (during the time of empire) that had survived as street/kid slang.<br><br></div>Ciao,<br></div>Murat<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Jenny Gunn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jgunn7@mygsu.onmicrosoft.com" target="_blank">jgunn7@mygsu.onmicrosoft.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
Alessandra mentions the incredible amount of work it takes to deny race. But perhaps it is also important to mention that this work is not always conscious and when it is, it can even be with the best of intentions. What has been very eye opening for me in becoming involved with liquid blackness is the ways in which political correctness figures into the denial of race. The avoidance of the issues of race with the desire not to offend or not to misstep participates in the maintenance of the very fish bowl effect that Morrison describes. If Murat's translation had been more politically correct, it would have prevented an encounter with the imbrications of race in the etymology of Arab. But these encounters should be produced, and this history does not disappear simply through avoidance.<br>
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