The problem with ‘black market’

The term black market should be replaced with illegal market because it could suggest racial bias or discrimination, according to UK Finance, a trade body for British banking and financial services.

I suppose it is asking for the black never to be used with negative connotations. That will be a black day for the language. Who ever thought that black market had anything to do with black people? It’s not as if black people are stereotyped as illicit money-changers.

It cannot be long before Penzance changes the name of its principal street, Market Jew Street. The name has nothing to do with Jews but derives from the Cornish Marghas Yow, meaning Thursday Market.

By contrast, Black Friday has been promoted in Britain to chivvy people into buying goods as they do in America. It falls on the day after Thanksgiving, but most British people do not know on what day Thanksgiving falls.

An utterly baseless nugget of disinformation has been floating around the internet claiming that on Black Friday ‘slave traders would sell slaves for a discount to assist plantation owners’ who needed extra help to prepare for winter.