Re: Blackboards (was Re: Untouchables [Andreas J., please read])

Garth Wallace wrote:
>
> Peter Bleackley wrote:
> >
> > Staving Roger Mills:
> >
> >> Muke Tever wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Has the word "chalkboard" not appeared in this thread at all?
> >> That's what
> >> > they got called here...
> >> >
> >> Probably coined by some administrator who thought "we can't call them
> >> blackboards if they're green.....and greenboard doesn't sound right"
> >>:-))).
> >
> > More like the work of some political correctness monkey who decided that
> > "blackboards" was racially offensive. Surely it's more offensive to
> > automatically assume that people are so easily offended?
> > (ridet, annat, currit).
>
> I think it's more likely that "chalkboard" was intended as a generic
> term for blackboards and green chalkboards.
>
> My only evidence is that blackboards were called blackboards and
> chalkboards interchangeably in school when I was growing up in Berkeley,
> and if anybody was going to get offended it would be somebody here.
> Also, I never heard of a green chalkboard being called a blackboard.
I'd have to agree. When I was in school about 1970, before PC,
we had green and brown blackboards. All the students and most
teachers called them "blackboards," but a couple of teachers
called them "chalkboards." At the time, I just assumed they were
being pedantic, that they couldn't be called "blackboards" if they
were not black.