How to talk about skin color in English

Hi. I'm going to teach you...

[Laughs]

I need an opening again.

Boo.

Today I'm going to teach you something that a lot of people coming to Canada or

travelling have different opinions about,

and you guys need to know some things that are considered offensive, which means

bad, and what's considered, like, hmm, maybe okay. What I'm going to teach you is about

talking about people, how to describe them by skin colour.

Be careful, you could get into some fights.

Guess what? Nobody in the world is yellow. Okay? You guys from Japan and Korea, and if

you're Asian, you're not yellow. If somebody calls you yellow, it's very, very, very racist.

Mm-hmm. Maybe you guys have learned that you're called yellow... Are you a banana, though?

Come on. I've heard a lot of people from Japan and Korea and China say: "I'm yellow."

It's, for us, kind of rude. So maybe for you it's okay. I don't know. But basically, we do not

call people yellow, because they're not giant bananas.

You cannot say "black man".

"Black" is okay. I think they know it's a man. Hmm, maybe they

don't. If you don't know if it's a man or a woman, it's cool. You can just say: "Black".

Do not say: "Black man". Also racist, considered offensive is "coloured".

A long time ago, people would separate people from white people and coloured people, which means black people.

We are not living in the 1950s, thank god. In America, we do not separate people by colour.

All of these ones are highly offensive and wrong.

Red, we used to describe as Native Americans or Native Canadians

that were also known as Indians, which is probably offensive to someone somewhere.

We've had American football team called the Redskins,

picture of an Indian or a Native American.

The fan was hit with some

...

So, you cannot say that people are red-skinned.

There's another nasty word called the "n-bomb",

and it rhymes with "jigger".

So, replace the "n", you've got it figured out. This is a really, really, really bad word sometimes,

and along with the word "negro". So, maybe in your language "negro" means black, that's

cool, but when you call someone negro, it is, again, old-fashioned, and therefore offensive.

So, be careful ladies and germs, do not use these words; they are considered bad and offensive

to people. Other than that, open market.

So, what can you call people? If...? I mean, everyone's going to get offended, but: White.

White people. White people like to be called white people, because I don't know, we just

don't have another colour. I'm pretty white. I got some spots, too, so maybe you call me "spotty"?

I don't know. So, you can call people white, you can call people black. Another

fancy word for black is "ebony". Mm-hmm. My ebony princess.

People from the Middle East and people from India, people from Pakistan, Sri Lanka-represent-are

considered brown because there's different shades, obviously, of black and brown, but

Middle Eastern people, for the most part, are considered to be brown; they're not black,

they're not white. Good.

We also have something called olive-coloured skin. Now, this is kind of Mediterranean people.

So people from the Middle East or people from Iran, people from Iraq, Afghanistan. You guys

might be a little bit olive coloured. You might be brown, you might be black, you might

be white. I don't know.

We also have another word that... I don't know if it's offensive. It's "swarthy".

I like it, "swarthy". It's kind of an older word, and it basically means that

(it's a gentleman) has darker skin. So they're not a white guy, they're not Whitey Jones. "swarthy"

means kind of a mixture of brown and olive together. It's supposed to be like a really

beautiful skin colour, which I think.

Here's another one that I've grown up with, but I don't know, some people might get offended

by, like everything I say, people take offense to it maybe. Don't care, really.

"Mulatto"

means that you are both black and white; you're mixed together.

Maybe your dad is black, your mom is white. We, politically correct people,

mm-hmm, they say bi-racial or multi-racial,

but this could really cover anything, so you could be, for example, Asian and White, you'd

be considered bi-racial. But "mulatto" basically means you're black and white.

Not... Not stripes, though; just you're brown. Okay?

We also have shades of black and brown, so someone could be light brown, someone could

be dark brown. I've seen words used like "dark chocolate". Mm-hmm. I don't know, if you would

like to be called dark chocolate or milk chocolate, that's fine. I don't know if people get offended

by that. You can all my whitey, white, white, freckly bits of peaches and cream. You would

probably just talk to the person and ask them if they mind if you called them something

like a food. Check it out. They might like it. And then you could eat them,

This is why we can't call people yellow: If your skin is green or yellow or grey, this

indicates that you're sick. If some people are yellow, they have what's called jaundice.

Jaundice is a disease which turns the skin actually yellow. So, guess what? Unless you

have jaundice, you're not allowed to say that people have yellow skin. If you're going green

or grey, you're pretty sick. Some people go green before they-blah-throw up, which is

always nice. Or they go really, really pale. "Pale" means really, really white. Mm-hmm.

We also have "pallid", which means really, really pale. And then one step down is pasty.

I like this word, pasty. "Pasty" means that you're going to throw up. You look really,

really sick. You will probably faint. These words all indicate some kind of sickness.

So if someone's grey, it's not a good thing. If someone's pasty or if they're green, get

out of the way because they'll probably barf on you. Not a good thing.

I don't care what colour they are.

Other kind of expressions that we have for skin colour, like I said, are white. Now,

if you see someone that's really, really, really, really, really white, like very, very,

very pale, they're what's called "albino". Now, albino people are really, really unique

and cool and different. Albino people have literally super pale white skin, their hair

is white, and their eyes are pink. It's so cool. Eye colour, red, pink. Okay? We... You

probably have heard about albino rats or albino animals. Humans can be albinos, too. An interesting

thing about albinos, too, is they're not really good in the sun because they're so white,

and the sun hurts their eyes. Really cool. If you see an albino, just be like:

"Hi." Just talk to them, because they're normal people. Okay?

We are obsessed in Canada, in North America with being bronzed, or golden, or tan. Probably

any culture that has white people, we always want to be darker than we are. So if someone

has bronzed or tanned or golden skin, it means that they're white or ish, but they've been

in the sun and they've got a tan.

You will also hear advertisements for makeup that say: "Sun-kissed", like the sun kisses

you. Guess what? When the sun kisses me, it burns me, so I get sun burnt; I get red like

a big lobster.

I'm so white.

If you hear someone saying that he is dark, there's an expression:

"Tall, dark, and handsome."

This actually doesn't refer to skin colour. It means that their hair and/or their eyes

are dark. So they might have dark hair and/or dark eyes. Not one eye, both of them.

Freckled, hi, that's me. Freckles are these beautiful pigmentations I have on my skin.

So usually white people are freckled. Some people that are brown are freckled, too. So

cute. Or Asian people have freckles, it's so cute.

And the last one is rosy. If you have a rosy complexion or if you have rosy cheeks, it

means that maybe you've been running, maybe you're really drunk, or really, really hot.

"Rosy" means that your face has become a little bit red. But this is always a positive thing;

not a bad thing. There's one more thing that would make your face red that would be bad,

and it's called the Celtic flush. And this is what some people have if they're Celtic,

and if they drink, their faces go red. My mom has that. She drinks tea.

Maybe there's a reason why she drinks tea.

So, what you can do now is you can be able to

describe people by skin colour without offending people.

So remember: These ones are bad, these ones are good,

these ones mean you're sick, and these are just different.

What skin colour do you have?

Let me know in the comments.