Perhaps a dozen years ago, there was a general announcement of a Brown Bag Lunch series being held at another building on campus, with the informal lectures for the first few weeks listed. Some person working elsewhere in the NH state government sent a "reply all" that the term Brown Bag was offensive to many African-Americans, as it reminded them of the private clubs for light-colored blacks in the bad old days, at which one could qualify for membership in some fraternities and sororities (and even some colleges and churches) only by being lighter than a paper bag.
I knew immediately that no African-American had ever bee offended by brown bag lunches - it was just some white person showing off that they knew a tidbit of black history. I was typing exactly that for my own "reply all," which we are discouraged from ever doing for this very reason but I thought I would risk anyway, when a notification came announcing that the email was being deleted from the system. Darn. Missed it by that much. 
4 comments:
I knew immediately that no African-American had ever bee offended by brown bag lunches - it was just some white person showing off that they knew a tidbit of black history.
Within days of retiring from the Air Force, a hometown neighbor began a job in personnel. His expression for his change in status: "I'm brown-bagging it." The neighbor was a Tuskegee Airman.
Two or three years ago I saw a YouTube video from a brony convention in Thailand, featuring a volunteer orchestra. The highlight of the concert was two pieces ("Princess Twilight Sparkle" and "Luna's Determination") by the Czech composer known only by his screen name of MelodicPony, who had died of a stroke (at only 27) in 2016. I may be biased, being a brony myself, but I think the Czech Republic lost a second Dvořák when he died.
I bring this up because I rather suspect that some SJWs might have had coronaries--in southeast Asia, the centerpiece of a concert (on the theme of a Canado-American TV series) was a dead probably-white male.
The first I ever heard about this was a episode of "WKRP In Cincinati."
Sam, that's exactly the sort of strange memory that is all too typical around here.
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