Got me to thinking...
A very good member of the #thesteemengine community posted a very good piece on what to do if you get “blacklisted” on steemit.com and after reading the post and a couple comments back and forth between the author and me it got me to thinking even more about the subject.
Can be a little dangerous...
When I think and start drilling down on something I can be a little dangerous with what I come up with. I have even been known to get side tracked and totally off the subject I started out in pursuit of. Such was the case on Sunday when I started going through my mind on just what type of egregious things a person could do to get blacklisted.
Before I get too...
Before I get too far into this let me just thanks to @sumatranate for being the inspiration for the subject matter of today’s Daily Dose, Thanks Nate. Also here is a link to his post,
Nate’s blog if you get a chance to read it please do, because he gives some great advice in that piece.
Back to black...
Now, back to where I was going, why is the word “black” associated with so much negative things? Why is it that the knight in shining armor is always the “white” knight? When it comes to sheep never do you see a black sheep winning at the livestock shows in the sheep judging contests?
Might be a....
As crazy as this might sound; I almost think that there might just be a conspiracy out there in the world against the color black. Seriously, what else could it be? The thing is I actually know how part of it got started.
I know black sheep...
I have two brothers and sister and I was the black sheep of the family so I do know what the hell I am talking about when it comes to black sheep, so just keep that in mind.
It all started in...
Many, many, and mean many years ago in west Texas there was a big ranch that raised sheep. The sheep were raised both for the wool their coats produced and also for their meat. Sheering sheep ain’t fun either, not for the person with the sheers or for the sheep; it is some hot dirty work.
Sheep wool is used for all sorts of items, blankets, sweaters, socks anything that you could wear or wrap up in to stay warm and dry you can pretty much find made of wool, sheep’s wool.
Lots of flexibility...
Being that most sheep grow wool coats that are white in color that allows for a lot of flexibility in what the color of the products can be made with that wool since the wool can be dyed and made to be whatever color is desired.
Protect the gene pool...
The last thing the rancher needed to have was a sheep that had black wool growing on it instead of white. Black wool can’t be dyed to change the color of the wool so it meant that whatever would be made with that wool was going to be black. He also didn’t need that black sheep breeding his white sheep since that would just pass along that gene that produced black wool. So the black sheep ended up being culled real quickly in order to stem the contamination of the sheep gene pool on the ranch.
The garment industry...
The garment industry likes to be able to make things in different colors so they weren’t about to buy black wool and limit what they could produce; so being a black sheep meant you weren’t wanted or needed and you ended up as part of the Sunday meal.
Have you ever actually...
From that ranch in west Texas the term black sheep started, undesirable was the meaning and it sure had to do with color. Just like anything though people started using that term to describe other things; even those that color wasn’t involved with. How many times have you actually seen a list that was on black paper? Yet we hear the term blacklisted real frequently.
Black sheep led the charge in black being undesirable or just bad, and it spread from there.
Now the word black...
Now days even some people get offended if you even mention the word black. It has really gotten that far out of hand now in this politically correct society we have become. We really don’t need to be qualifying stuff with colors in this day and age where no color is even involved. If something is bad, then say it is bad, don’t color it black.
Being white never...
The same goes for something good; if it is good just say so, it’s good. Being white never made anything good other than sheep’s wool.
In fact I can think of a couple things that are white and in my opinion aren’t good. Snow would be one of those, “pure and white was the wind driven snow” is a line from some book I remember reading when I was a kid and thinking to myself that snow is curse that is laid upon people living in the north.
Sugar is white...
Sugar is another substance that is white in color and the doctors tell us all the time that we need to stay away from it. So just to be clear on this; I know that white doesn’t necessarily mean that something is good either, but it gets more play in being used in that way.
A real guzbucking mess...
If we don’t watch what the hell we are doing with describing things and people with colors this place we live in is going to turn into a real guzbucking mess for sure. There will probably be a day when some group tries to hijack all the colors of the rainbow and claim those as theirs.
So the next time you hear anything prefaced with the word “black” now you will now where it all started from, Texas.
Until next time,
@sultnpapper
