Astronomers Are Racist

First picky eaters, now astronomers.  We’re finding racism in some amazing places this week.

This story out of Dallas tells of a meeting of the Dallas County Commission.  Apparently, one of the commissioners referred to their central collections office as becoming “a black hole” due to the volume of lost paperwork.

A black hole.  You see where this is going, right?

This prompted two other commissioners to speak up, with one demanding an apology and the other correcting the term to “white hole”.

Now, a “black hole” is a pretty well settled astronomy term for a collapsed star that creates a gravity field so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape from it … hence the name.  Big thing in the middle of space … no light can escape … space is black … black hole.  Get it?

A “white hole”, on the other hand, is the theoretical opposite, a reversal of a black hole, which would spew things out instead of sucking them in. 

Since the analogy was about an agency that loses paperwork, the original “black hole” reference was correct.  If the agency had randomly taken their files and thrown them out the front door at passers-by, then the “white hole”-correcting commissioner might have a point.

As it stands, I doubt either commissioner who objected to the term has a basic understanding of astronomy.  No, they’re just reactionary idiots who, upon hearing something they were ignorant of, jumped to take offense because that’s all they’re good at.

There are lots of terms that have the word “black” in them for very good reasons, without having anything to do with race at all.

“Blackout”, for instance, because without electricity, there are no electric lights.  Lights go off, night is dark … blackout, get it?

“Whiteout” wouldn’t work for that, but it does for severe snow conditions where the ground and sky appear to merge into a single wall of snow.  Snow is what color?  Right, white. 

See?  Not a damn thing to do with race.

It's stupid and moronic to object to terms like these or take offense.  People should have more care to understand the real meaning of something before jumping to take offense.  These two commissioners didn't.  They were, one might even say, most niggardly with their effort to understand.

<whispers> "Did you see that?  He used the n-word! Oh ... my ... god ..."

No, didn't.  Because "niggardly" is a perfectly good word of Old Norse derivation that has nothing to do with race, meaning "to withhold for the sake of meanness" or "miserly".  To say these two idiot commissioners were miserly in their effort to understand what the term "black hole" meant would be accurate -- they withheld their effort for the sake of meanness.

They'd probably be more offended by the word "niggardly" than "black hole", others have been; mostly ignorant others who don't take the time to find out what a word or phrase means before taking offense.  They hear a sound and take offense, because it sounds like something they think they should be offended by.

How about being offended by real racism, instead of objecting to words and phrases that have nothing to do with race?