George, an ornithologist, calls from Seattle, Washington, to discuss using of the term flesh-colored to describe something pinkish in color. The Century Dictionary, first published in 1889, defined flesh-color as “The normal color of the skin of a white person; pale carnation or pinkish; the color of the cheek of a healthy white child.” Although such a narrow definition is increasingly considered myopic and unacceptable, George says many bird field guides still describe pink feet as flesh-colored. However, there’s a growing movement among scientists to update such language, including the name of the bird officially known as flesh-footed shearwater. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “”Flesh-Colored” in the Names of Animals”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is George DeVokey from Seattle, Washington.
Hi, George. Welcome to the show.
Well, I’ve been an ornithologist for over half a century, and I noticed in the late 60s for the first time that the term flesh is used to describe a pinkish beige as a field mark on a number of birds.
And I realized when I was wanting to take a mixed-race group out that I couldn’t use this term without having it be very race-specific.
And as a result, I’m wondering if you could tell me something about how this term got to be incorporated into our language as something that clearly means Caucasian flesh.
So, yeah, yeah.
So you’re talking about bird names that include the term flesh, but it’s referring to sort of a pinkish tone or something?
It’s a pinkish-beige.
It’s interesting because it’s like the color of herring gall legs are flesh color, like the bill of an immature reddish egret is thought to be flesh color.
And it wasn’t until I realized that the flesh-footed shearwater, that there is an actual official name for a southern hemisphere seabird, the flesh-footed shearwater, that makes that an official use of the term as opposed to just one that’s being used in field guides and things like that.
My goodness, why haven’t they changed that?
Well, it turns out that I, when I started thinking about this around four to five weeks ago, I put a post on a Seabird website, a Seabird listserv, and mentioned the fact that, hey, we should really think about this because at this moment we should be thinking about how we have taken certain things for granted and that they are racially charged.
And as a result, a petition is being written to change the name to probably pale-footed shearwater.
So I was heartened by the fact that people embraced this.
And now it looks as if some of the major websites that talk about birds and their markings are going to purge the term flesh and basically replace it with something that’s more appropriate.
Oh, that’s great.
Well, that makes perfect sense.
Who writes the dictionaries? Who decides this stuff?
It was a pretty white group of people who made dictionaries for a long time.
I mean, if you look back at the Century Dictionary published in the late, what, late 1880s, they described flesh color as the normal color of the skin of a white person, pale, carnation, or pinkish, the color of the cheek of a healthy white child.
Yeah, it’s embarrassing.
Yeah, yeah. And I’m glad to hear that the scientific world is starting to catch up to some of the commercial world.
I mean, we have Band-Aids in lots of different tones now.
And Crayola got rid of that flesh crayon, thank goodness.
This seems much needed.
Yeah, the work’s not done yet, though.
There are still plenty of places where skin means white people’s skin, right?
Still lots of color guides and paints and clothes and different kinds of things where flesh and skin just defaults to the color of the Caucasians or white people.
Right. I remember a few years ago when Michelle Obama wore this sort of champagne-colored gown and the Associated Press described it as a flesh-colored gown.
No. No.
No.
Well, I have to say, when I was a kid, the color flesh confused me because I assumed as a child that it meant the muscles underneath and not the skin above.
So a flesh-colored crayon, to me, was the flesh of an animal, what you might see when you butcher an animal.
Right.
So I didn’t understand how that weird peach color was supposed to be flesh.
I thought it should look like red meat, like beef.
Yes.
And someone even countered my post about this by saying, oh, it does mean meat-colored.
And I said people aren’t coloring people’s faces in coloring books.
Coloring book with a meat color. That’s right. George, are you finding resistance to this, or is this pretty much a done deal, switching the name?
There were some people who said, oh, we can’t really change the name because it’s so well established, which is kind of the point.
There was a discussion about whether it was the role of ornithologists to do this, or should we focus on ornithology.
And I was pointing out that at a moment like this, if you can find in your daily life somewhere where institutionalized racism seems to have occurred and is being tolerated, that it is well to point it out.
And that’s what my musings that I posted to this website were, just me pointing something out at this moment in time.
And again, I’m heartened by the somewhat trivial thing in terms of the grand scope of what’s going on in the world that the seabird name might be changed.
Let’s keep it going.
I bet there are more animals of all kinds that have the word flesh or other things in it that can be changed.
Let’s do it.
We’re with you 100%.
Yeah, keep it up and drop a line sometime.
Let us know what else is happening in your world.
Sounds super interesting.
Okay, great.
Well, thanks very much.
All right, take care.
Thank you, George.
Bye-bye.
Okay, bye-bye.
Tell us how you’re changing language in your world, 877-929-9673.
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