You were really surprised ?

Posted by D. Brooks on June 18, 2003

In Reply to: Blue blood posted by ESC on May 28, 2003

: : I have always understood this term to refer to those of the finanacial/cultural elite and had recently been told that the origin is from the merchants of indigo from the "new world". Apparently, indigo was one of the many plants that were "discovered" in the Americas, (potatoes, tomatoes, etc.) and its exceptional blue dye qualities were highly desired, making its merchants extremely wealthy and figuratively "blue-blooded". It seems that this term may be older though.

: BLUE BLOOD - "An aristocrat or aristocratic person. During the centuries when the dark-skinned Moors ruled Spain, members of the old Castilian families were wont to say with pride that their blood had not been contaminated by Moorish or other foreign admixtures. The term they used was 'sangre azul,' which probably sprang from the fact that the veins of the fair-skinned are visibly blue." " From the The Dictionary of Cliches by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985). F

: riends of mine were in the diplomatic corps for a while. They adopted a baby girl in Guatemala. When they were assigned to a new post in Spain, they reported back that their daughter was shunned by other children because she has dark skin. I found that surprising.

Why were you surprised that the little girl was shunned by her friends because of her skin ? A friend of mine was a spanish major at the university of virgina and during her four or five years spent the summer in spain. She is not the darkest of black woman but she has brown skin. She told me that the people treated her bad talked about her as if she were trash. They were unaware that she was able to speak and comprehen what they were saying. I believe that the running of the bulls also represents the exodus of the moors from rule over spain which is why they kill the bull at the end. They have great discontent for people of color not to generalize or to say that all people from spain have this attitude.