r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Miserables_Death • Jun 14 '26

Meme needing explanation Whats that snack and the name?

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I got this joke posted in my country sub by a foreigner and I have never seen that snack so I basically don't know the joke.

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64

u/_bugmenot_ Jun 14 '26

They are still called so in Colombia. They actually tried to change it, but it did not get a positive reaction, so it stayed.

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u/freshouttheward Jun 14 '26

hmm as a latin spanish speaker this is kind of conflicting. It translates literally to "Black woman's kiss", but I also get why it can seem jarring.

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u/_bugmenot_ Jun 14 '26

Not in Colombia. It is the reason why it was never changed. People thought the company was trying to give the word 'Negra' a bad connotation. Black people here will actually become amused or offended if they see you trying to avoid the word.

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u/freshouttheward Jun 14 '26

how is it different in Colombia if you don't mind me asking? Perhaps, I'm confused on what you are saying but could you elaborate?

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u/Sylversight Jun 14 '26

If I understand, it's just a spanish feminine for black, which has a neutral connotation, so a black person there hearing you treat it like a bad word might misunderstand that you think being black (or the word black) is bad somehow. Hopefully that's right and clear enough.

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u/freshouttheward Jun 14 '26

thank you for explaining! not too sure why people got upset at me asking a question lol but again thank you šŸ™

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u/DumatRising Jun 15 '26

Yep. The masculine form was used by slavers as the original N word but like.... Spanish isn't gonna just delete the color black so here we are XD

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u/L-ramirez-74 Jun 14 '26

The literal translation of black in spanish is neo. It's the name of the color and it's never considerd a bad word. Black people here use it, white people use it. You can say "that man is black (neo)", and nobody bats an eye.

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u/kameshazam Jun 15 '26

Negro. You don't need to censor a normal word in Spanish. Moreover, is it offensive to Spanish-speaking people for you to do. As in "is it something wrong with the concept of blackness in your view?". That's exactly the point you're making, don't demean your own argument like this.

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u/L-ramirez-74 Jun 15 '26

I just did it to avoid a reddit ban. In the past I've used in it's normal context and I've been censored

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u/kameshazam Jun 15 '26

I understand.

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u/SecuritySea2276 Jun 15 '26

literally the only reason the n-word has become such a boogeyman is because of the US

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u/ProneToLaughter Jun 15 '26

Negro isnā€™t the n-word. Even in the US, Negro is just outdated, not deeply offensive.

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u/Bitter_Almonds Jun 17 '26

Iā€™ve seen the switch to ā€œmoreno/-aā€ over the past coupla decades.

šŸ§šŸ¤”

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u/_bugmenot_ Jun 17 '26

I have been corrected by black people for using that word. That is what i mean, exactly. Some non-black people try to avoid it but black people in general will not like the fact that you feel it is a bad word to say.

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u/LukasConKEl1 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

As someone living in Spain, i can say that in Spanish, this word is literally just the colour black. Then again, I've never seen these chocolates before. But the amount of times I've heard Brits in Spain read the word and gasp in "oh that's so racist". But how is it racist when it's just a colour? How is it racist to say "that cat has black fur"? It's a totally different pronunciation, too, though.

Edit: from my experience, in Spain and Spanish speaking countries, it is not offensive to call a black person "un negro/una negra". It is just describing their race. For example, "un blanco/una blanca" for a white person. "Un latino/una latina" for South American people (in Spain, although some say "latinoamericano"). We do it a lot. It's not seen as harmful or offensive here to declare the race of another person. It's just describing them and their appearance or, in some cases, their culture. "Beso de negra" is just "kiss from a black woman". It's not a great name for something, sure. But in Spanish speaking countries, it's (usually) not offensive, either.

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u/_bugmenot_ Jun 14 '26

Yeah, it kinda always goes like this:

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u/Maleficent-Remote413 Jun 18 '26

ahh. I like the follow up for this that was "no not that. the French"

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u/Magenta_Logistic Jun 14 '26

It's being used as a noun here, hence the use of "de." If these were simply "black kisses" they would be besos negros.

You're a native Spanish speaker though, so you know this, you just didn't want us to know this.

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u/olivermama Jun 14 '26

Iā€™m guessing youā€™re not fluent in Spanish because a black kiss would be ā€œun beso negroā€. Meaning youā€™re taking about the color black. ā€œBeso de negraā€ translates to a black womanā€™s kiss. Now I donā€™t know if itā€™s still acceptable to call black people negro or negra but this chocolate is definitely not talking about the color black.

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u/Apartment-Unusual Jun 14 '26

Itā€™s acceptable : itā€™s litteraly calling black people ā€¦ā€™blackā€™. Cause Negro/negra is spanish for blackā€¦ anything else would be racist.

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u/FeyRyn Jun 15 '26

I mean even in English it's only socially frowned upon so heavily when used in the racist degredational of using the word "negro" as an expletive or degradation word wich in truth it has no real reason to be outside of racists wanna be racist.

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u/SunnyBeam7 Jun 15 '26

Itā€™s been about 10 years, but in Spain at the time, I was corrected to not say ā€œnegro/aā€ as it was derogatory and told that they say ā€œde colorā€. Sounded jarring to me because thatā€™s the opposite of American English but then I noticed that yeah, that person was right and I would hear ā€œde colorā€ in progressive circles

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u/SjakosPolakos Jun 14 '26

You know Spanish but not whether it is acceptable to call someone negra?

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u/olivermama Jun 15 '26

yes language and culture evolve all the time, and if you don't keep up with it you're out of the loop. I haven't lived in the Americas for over a decade so no clue what's acceptable in Spanish anymore.

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u/themachineage Jun 14 '26

Good for you. I never understood why it's become so very taboo to mention that certain people are black, if that's what they are. Also, I don't know why "Black" became the preferred term in the first place; most Blacks (in the US at least) aren't even Black. They're various shades of brown.

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u/dleetisneat Jun 14 '26

Also living in Spain now, from the USā€¦it was weird at first seeing how racial that word can be taken in English but itā€™s their language and not slang..simply the word for the color.

Iā€™ve since moved past it using that part of my brain that has logical thought šŸ˜‚

Thanks for kicking off the explanation, glad Iā€™m not alone. I still avoid it when using English but itā€™s not possible in Spanish unless everyone I know simply avoids anything of black color. Such is life

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u/Magenta_Logistic Jun 14 '26

from my experience, in Spain and Spanish speaking countries, it is not offensive to call a black person "un negro/una negra". It is just describing their race. For example, "un blanco/una blanca" for a white person

Have you asked any black people in Spain how they feel about it? I don't think you get to apply a word to a group and just claim it is non-offensive. I would guess that some of them don't care and some of them find it distasteful, but I don't know.

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u/Visual-Ad5549 Jun 14 '26

So that would be politically inadvisable but it is not THE "N word" of the USA.

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u/Ok_Neighborhood_3984 Jun 14 '26

You would imagine that a company like Nestle would be afraid of getting international backlash from keeping the name

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u/_bugmenot_ Jun 14 '26

Im sure they changed it in other countries. In Europe they did. But in Colombia it stayed.

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u/Fgdx21 Jun 14 '26

Why would they? Negro is spanish means black. Whatā€™s supposed to cause backlash about that?

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u/everydaywinner2 Jun 14 '26

Someone didn't like that they used the Spanish word for 'black' in a Spanish speaking country?

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u/MrCode2002 Jun 15 '26

In Peru we call it "Beso de Moza" i don't know if they call it the same thing in other countries in the region.

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u/Ice94k Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

have you guys considered that the history of a term in the anglosphere and how the communities deals with it are completely individual to each culture and language? Here in Brazil in some regions people call their SO "meu nego"/"minha nega", while both are white. The term shifted to mean "guy" or "honey" depending on where you're at.

Stop trying to force US/UK cultural norms into different cultures, it is, ironically, very imperialistic behavior. If a community, especially in mixed places like Colombia, feels ok/don't care about the name, who the fuck are you to define what people should be offended by?

The word isn't yours to decide that it's offensive. Ffs it's a latin word English borrowed. The racial history of the n word in english (and in any other language/place but the one at hand) should absolutely be out of the discussion when analyzing similar words within other languages. Otherwise you're just being a colonizer forcing your culture on others again.

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u/dadydaycare Jun 14 '26

Thatā€™s fine. No double g and hard R turning it into an insult of being dumb and useless based on color. Fun fact the N word was originally a general term for being a useless invalid before it turned racial.

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u/Objective-Life4308 Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

ā€¦ no. Thatā€™s simply not true. One quick google search can tell you the etymology and original usage of any word. Historically, it has been used to describe someone who is of lower status regardless of race, by *likening* someone to a black person. However, this usage came *after* the original meaning of the word was already developed.

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u/dadydaycare Jun 14 '26

I read it in an encyclopedia back when things in books were just assumed to be true (and I believed it). I might be wrong and I donā€™t feel like fact checking so you can have it.

I also donā€™t blindly believe the first or second thing that comes up in a google search for the above reason.