This phrase you’re using is a racial slur
In the past week I’ve heard this phrase used more than once by well meaning people who probably don’t know its sinister origin.
When I first heard the phrase “call a spade a spade”, I imagined that this was somehow referring to spades, one of the suits of cards. But since then I have learned there is a different origin to this phrase. This phrase has harmful connotations with a racial slur. Most people use this phrase to simply mean to talk frankly about something or to call it as it is. But let’s have a look at the history of this phrase to better understand what meanings it has taken on and why so many people still use it.
One of its earliest usages comes from Nicolas Udall, who translated Apophthegmatum opus by Erasmus of Rotterdam. One line of the translation reads:
“to calle a spade by any other name then a spade” (c. 1542)
Can we pause here to appreciate that we still use a phrase today that was used almost five hundred years ago? That’s pretty awesome.
In the 16th century, this phrase was using “spade” in its sense meaning “shovel” or “trowel”. Part of the problem with this phrase is that “spade” has so many meanings. The meaning of “spade” relating to a tool for digging is the first one and has been around since people were speaking Old English (5th-11th centuries CE). Only a few decades after this original uses of our phrase, however, “spade” took on a new meaning.
A new meaning of “spade” came about in the 1590s: the suit of the playing card. The word probably comes from the Italian word for “sword”. For most people, this might be the first definition of “spade” that comes into your mind now when you hear the word.
We need to fast forward over two hundred years before this phrase becomes problematic. The first use of spade as a racial slur for “Black people” came about in 1928, during the Harlem Renaissance. This probably came from the popularization of phrases such as “black as the ace of spades.” Over time, the connection between the suit of cards and the color black allowed the word “spade” to be used to refer to Black people in a derogatory way. At the time, many Black people were migrating north to escape Jim Crow laws in the south. An increasing Black population may have not only created social friction, leading to more white people referring to Black people in a derogatory way, but also probably created a need for euphemisms for “Black people.”
If “spade” initially was a euphemism for “Black person” and didn’t have negative connotations associated with it, it could have easily taken on negative connotations very quickly. We see examples of this all the time. Thinking about terms for people with disabilities, during my life it was considered politically correct to refer to someone as “handicapped,” in the United States at least. You still see remnants of this in that most disabled parking is labeled “handicapped” parking. Before that, it was acceptable to refer to people with disabilities as “crippled.” As soon as a new term becomes politically correct, people will start using it to refer to a group with the intention of marginalizing that group. Over time, the new term will take on a negative connotation. This constant shift of what is politically correct is known as the euphemism treadmill.
So for the last one hundred years, “to call a spade a spade” has taken on a new, racialized meaning. There was an attempt during the civil rights movement to reclaim the word “spade.” Ted Joans eulogized Malcolm X in the poem “My Ace of Spades.” But for many decades, “spade” has been classified as a racial slur. Its use is considered offensive when used by non-Black people (Thesaurus of American Slang, 1989). So when you say “call a spade a spade,” you are invoking all of its racialized connotations as well, perhaps without realizing it.
Learning about how this phrase has been used over the last half a millennium shows us a lot about how words can pick up new meanings and change over time. Unfortunately, language has long been weaponized to marginalize other groups of people. The phrase “to call a spade a spade” exemplifies how this can happen to a phrase with no previous racialized connotation. As a consequence, many people still use this phrase. They may not intend to cause any harm, but may be doing so anyway.
It’s important to show people how what they say can have unintended consequences. If more people knew the history of this phrase, they might think twice before using it again. Maybe we should do like the French and say appeler un chat, un chat, which literally translates to “to call a cat a cat” and means “to say it like it is.”
I am a Linguist writing about language, among other things. You can follow me on Medium to read more here.
