“Hustlin’ like a Jamaican.”

“Ugly like a monkey.”

“You can call her a redbone.”

“I hope I don’t get ‘gyped'”

How many of us are using slang phrases in our everyday (online and offline) conversations that could be considered stereotypical or otherwise offensive?

I have to confess that I’ve been guilty of being racially-insensitive with some of the things I have said. For example, I use the word “gyped” to mean “cheating or cheated.” Well, I actually stopped using it when someone told me that the word was derived from “Gypsy”. Among some people Gypsies have a reputation for thievery. This reputation for thievery is not entirely unwarranted, as a Special Report from the BBC News reports, there are thousands of Roma children across Europe that are being trained to steal and forced to beg for hours on end. However, when I began using the word “gyped” I was unaware of the history of where the word came from, but once I was made aware, I stopped using it.

Jamaicans have a reputation for being thrifty, hard-working, and ambitious. Black people from the Caribbean and African countries do very well for themselves and their family once they emigrate to the US. Black Africans have high employment rates; they also have greater college-completion rates than most other immigrant groups in the US and native-born Americans. So clearly when black people from the Caribbean and Africa come to the US they do get their hustle on, but is it appropriate to turn beliefs about the work ethic of black immigrants into catchphrase? That is the question.

Granted, people are not always intending to be harmful or racist when they use what they believe to be nothing more than a colorful quip to make point, but there can still be negative repercussions from a bad joke–feelings can be hurt, stereotypes can be promoted, and the speaker can across as very ignorant and uncultured. I’m not advocating that anyone change the way they speak, I’m only saying that thinking before you speak and considering how you might sound to others before you let the words slip from your mouth (or before you let the post get published) is always a good idea.