Many people have asked about the use of the word blocklisting in our joint public statement. We are using it as an alternative to blacklisting which, while totally accurate has racializing overtones. Please see the beautiful words of Elvis Mitchell from his introduction to: The Black List, by Mitchell and Greenfield-Sanders, published by Simon & Schuster, 2008.

What is a Black List? Historically, Americans know exactly what it is: a group of people punished by being marginalized and denied work or social approval, generally for their having taken political stands. And, for African-Americans, it’s yet another slap at the word black, which includes such slurs as black sheep and blackguard. The Simpsons Movie cleverly takes aim at the tired attitude toward black when Mayor Quimby is forced to deal with an emergency by declaring “code black,” and Lenny groans, “Black? That’s the worst color!” Another Clinton — George, Parliament-Funkadelic founder — bounced the taint when he proclaimed in song that he wanted to “Paint the White House Black.”

With the serious attention directed at Senator Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, the concept doesn’t seem as much like the dance floor science fiction that Dr. Funkenstein chuckled his way through. Although the creakily derogatory stamp on the word black predates creation of these United States, the negative connotation is the reason why, until the 1960s, respectable people of color didn’t want to be called black; it was nothing short of an insult. Not until race pride shocked the country out of its ignoring and ignorant attitudes about the impact of, well, blacks on America, did the word take on a fresher and desirable aspect for many African-Americans, especially the young; the Afrocentric revolutionaries and the integrationist civil rights workers alike found something desirable about being known as black. For years before the 1960s, of course, it had the transgressive allure of cool. An underground recycling of the concept was taking place — in those halcyon days before cable TV, the internet, and bar codes burned onto youth culture so that its shopping habits could be tracked and exploited — in the shady bunkers beneath the Establishment, where jazz and blues musicians plied their trade for an appreciative audience of freethinkers who were disinclined to be described as Negroes, the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head and a five-cent tip.

…No doubt, the word black has outgrown much of the downbeat past, and all it took was several hundred years and a different kind of home-style thoughtfulness: black American ingenuity, which is as much about reinvention as it is invention.