black sheep
American Heritage Dictionary:
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black sheep
n.
- A sheep with black fleece.
- A member of a family or other group who is considered undesirable or disreputable.
American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms:
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black sheep
The least reputable member of a group; a disgrace. For example, Uncle Fritz was the black sheep of the family; we always thought he emigrated to Argentina to avoid jail. This metaphor is based on the idea that black sheep were less valuable than white ones because it was more difficult to dye their wool different colors. Also, in the 16th century, their color was considered the devil's mark. By the
18th century the term was widely used as it is today, for the odd member of a group.
Oxford Dictionary of the US Military:
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Black Sheep
The nickname for Marine Attack Squadron 214, first commissioned in early 1942 at Ewa, Hawaii. Its mission is to provide close-air support, and conduct armed reconnaissance and limited air defense for Marine expeditionary forces. It was active in the Pacific theater in World War II and has seen action in every major conflict since.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore:
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black sheep
‘We speak figuratively of the one black sheep that is the cause of sorrow in a family; but in its reality it is regarded by the Sussex shepherd as an omen of good luck to his flock’ (Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), 8). A number of other nineteenth and twentieth century references, from Somerset, Kent, and Derbyshire, for example, agree with this assessment of the black sheep, but others say the opposite. ‘It was unlucky for the first lamb dropped in lambing season to be black—black twins were more unlucky’ (Wiltshire, 1975: 56) and Charles Igglesden (c.1932: 105) writes the same for Shropshire, adding that the only way to avoid the bad luck is to cut their throats before they can ‘baa’.
Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.
- Opie and Tatem, 1989: 29
Gale Musician Profiles:
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Black Sheep
| For The Record... |
| Members include Dres (born Andres Titus in Queens, NY) and Lawnge (name pronounced “long”; born William McLean in Brooklyn, NY) Released debut album, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Mercury/Polygram, 1991; embarked on U.S. promotional tour with III Al Skratch and the Legion, 1994. Awards: Gold album award for A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Addresses: Record company—Mercury Records, 825 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10019. Management—Shakim Compere, Flavor Unit Management, 155 Morgan St., Jersey City, NJ 07302. |
Rap duo
Black Sheep became part of music’s hip-hop landscape in 1991 with the release of their debut album, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, whose single "Flavor of the Month" sealed the duo’s popularity. At the time of their debut, Black Sheep were one of many New York Citybased hip-hop and rap groups attracting national attention; Cypress Hill, Naughty by Nature, Brand Nubian, and L.O.N.S. had all paved the way for Black Sheep’s appearance.
Black Sheep’s members, Dres and Lawnge (pronounced "Long")—two friends raised in New York City’s boroughs— met in 1983 in Sanford, North Carolina. Dres, who is black and Puerto Rican, was born Andres Titus and grew up in the Astoria housing projects in Queens. By the time he finished high school, he had served time in jail; this early brush with the criminal justice system convinced Dres not to glorify crime in his music.
Lawnge, whose real is William McLean, was raised a few miles from Dres in Brooklyn. Citing early
musical influences, Lawnge told The Source, "When we were teenagers, like teenagers are now about rap, that’s how we used to be…. We worshipped Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh, [L.L Cool J.], Run-DMC." Dres added, "Those [rap artists] were Gods."
Dres and Lawnge are both members of the black separatist movements Nation of Islam and Five Percent Nation of Islam, although Dres is also affiliated with the religious sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses. "My father is a Jehovah’s Witness," Dres revealed in The Source, "I listen to my father." Both also claim that seeing miserable living conditions for black people throughout the United States made them want to reach out to the black community and provide inspiration through their music. Details magazine described Black Sheep as having "their own mythology: street without gansta pretensions."
When Black Sheep’s Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing was released in 1991, it sold close to 900,000 copies and went gold. Lawnge played the role of the producer, and Dres performed as the rapper and primary lyricist. The album boasts two hit singles, "The Choice Is Yours" and "Flavor of the Month," and is marked by "broadsides," or skits, which are humorous parodies of songs and contain witty, thought-provoking lyrics.
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing established Black Sheep as part of the unofficial Native Tongue Posse— honest hiphop groups that are known for following their own beat without concern for public opinion or current trends; a concern for social issues; and the ability to shun commercialism for originality. Other Native Tongue groups include A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, and the Beatnuts.
According to Billboard magazine’s Havelock Nelson, Black Sheep singles from the duo’s first album remained popular as "recurrents" on rhythm and blues and Top 40 radio stations for three years after they were released and were not likely to fade from the minds of original listeners. "The Choice Is Yours" spent 16 weeks on the Billboard Hot R&B Singles chart and generated excitement and demand for a second album, which would take more than two and a half years to make.
Black Sheep’s second album, Non-Fiction, was created and designed as a counterpart to A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Lawnge told Nelson that Black Sheep is showing new dimensions in its music and that the group’s second album was built conceptually on the first. The titles Non-Fiction and A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing are metaphors for each album’s lyrical content. Lawnge commented to Nelson, "A Wolfin Sheep’s Clothing not what it appears to be, and nonfiction [literature] exists because there’s more for you to know."
By 1995 hip-hop and rap’s popularity had extended far beyond New York City-based musicians and encompassed Los Angeles rappers as well as musicians from the South and Midwest. Black Sheep remarked in The Source that with their second album they wanted to avoid being branded as "just another one of those New York acts with the same ol’ beats." In the single "North, South, East, West," for example, Black Sheep call for an end to regional competition in rap and hip-hop. The Source described 1994’s Non-Fiction as "seventeen testosterone-filled odes to the crew they grew up with, set to jazzy hooks and classic New York beats. This time there is more freestyling, Lawnge on the [microphone], less ho rhymes [usually degrading lyrics about women] and, most surprising for this crew, no skits."
Non-Fiction reveals that Black Sheep has a deepening awareness of social issues pertaining to black Americans. "Freak Y’all" calls for courage and action with such lines as, "I wish my people had the heart to start a revolution." Another song, "Peace to the Niggas," warns against being impressed with or seduced by violent videos. Dres told The Source that Black Sheep’s philosophy is "Elevation. We don’t try to knock people over the heads. But we want them to open up their eyes."
Rolling Stone’s Touré described Black Sheep’s Non-Fiction as the album that "shows that Lawnge has matured as he laces tracks with interesting musical ideas like combining sharp percussion and high-note piano on ‘Let’s Get Cozy’ or letting an antique-sounding piano dominate ‘Summa the Time.’" New York News-day’s Jon Young declared, "The easy-rolling groove of ‘Without a Doubt’ is guaranteed to jump-start the dullest party," while Billboard’s Nelson pointed out that Black Sheep "did not fall prey to the trend of making a record that intentionally sounds East Coast or West Coast."
The tone of Black Sheep’s second album is grittier than their first and the lyrics are far more serious. Utilizing a technique different from their first album, Dres and Lawnge alternated roles when creating Non-Fiction; both artists rap on the album’s tracks and both master the production duties.
Because it was considered credible to listeners on the street as well as palatable to radio audiences, "Without a Doubt" was chosen as Non-Fiction’s first single. A commercial promoting the album ran on music television stations and featured a bull walking the streets of Manhattan. The ad also depicts black sheep running noiselessly through a public library. To further spread the word about Non-Fiction, in October of 1994 the duo embarked on a U.S. promotional tour with fellow rap act III Al Skratch and the Legion and also performed in Toronto, Canada, and London, England.
The Source’s Clarence Mohammed pointed out the importance of the message contained in Black Sheep’s Non-Fiction:"In an age of modern day Negro Gangstas being praised for killing half their own people, Non-Fiction is definitely a missing component in the hip-hop world. [Black Sheep] present a perfect picture of black men coexisting in peace."
Selected discography
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing (includes "Flavor of the Month" and "The Choice Is Yours"), Mercury/Polygram, 1991.
Non-Fiction (includes "Without a Doubt"), Mercury/Polygram, 1994.
Sources
Billboard, September 24, 1994.
Details, January 1995.
New York Newsday, January 8, 1995.
Rolling Stone, February 9, 1995.
The Source, January 1995; February 1995.
Vibe, March 1994; December 1994.
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categories related to 'black sheep'
Bradford's Crossword Solver's Dictionary:
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black sheep
See crossword solutions for the clue Black sheep.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Black sheep
For other uses, see Black sheep (disambiguation).
In the English language, black sheep is an idiom used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group, especially within a family. The term has typically been given negative implications, implying waywardness.[1] It derived from the atypical and unwanted presence of other black individuals in flocks of white sheep.
In psychology, the black sheep effect refers to the tendency of group members to judge likeable ingroup members more positively and deviant ingroup member more negatively than comparable outgroup members.[2]
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Idiomatic usage
The term originated from the occasional black sheep which are born into a flock of white sheep due to a genetic process of recessive traits. Black wool was considered commercially undesirable because it could not be dyed.[1] In 18th and 19th century England, the black color of the sheep was seen as the mark of the devil.[3] In modern usage, the expression has lost some of its negative connotations, though the term is usually given to the member of a group who has certain characteristics or lack thereof deemed undesirable by that group.[4]
The idiom is also found in other languages, e.g., French, Serbian, Bulgarian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Bosnian, Greek, Turkish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Romanian and Polish. The same concept is illustrated in some other languages by the phrase "white crow": for example belaya vorona (белая ворона) in Russian and kalag-e sefid (کلاغ سفید) in Persian. A variant form of black sheep, "the red sheep of the family", was used by Jessica Mitford to describe herself, a communist in a family of aristocratic fascists.[5]
Biological origin
In sheep, a white fleece is not albinism but a dominant gene that actively switches color production off, thus obscuring any other color that may be present.[citation needed] As a result, a black fleece in most sheep is recessive, so if a white ram and a white ewe are each heterozygous for black, in about 25% of cases they will produce a black lamb. In fact in most white sheep breeds only a few white sheep are heterozygous for black, so black lambs are usually much rarer than this. Some breeds of sheep (such as the Hebridean, Ouessant, Black Welsh Mountain and Karakul) are normally black.
Black sheep effect (Psychology)
Overview
In 1988, Marques, Yzerbyt and Leyens[2] conducted an experiment where Belgian students rated the following groups according to trait-descriptors (e.g., sociable, polite, violent, cold): unlikealbe Belgian students, unlikealbe North African students, likealbe Belgian students, and likealbe North African students. The results provided support that the favourability is the highest for likeable ingroup members and the lowest for unlikeable ingroup members, whereas the favourability of unlikeable and likeable outgroup members is between the both former ones. These extreme judgements of likeable and unlikeable (i.e., deviant) ingroup members, relatively to comparable outgroup members is called “black sheep effect”. This effect has been shown in various intergroup contexts and under a variety of conditions, and in many experiments manipulating likeability and norm deviance (e.g., Branscombe, Wann, Noel, & Coleman, 1993;[6] Coull, Yzerbyt, Castano, Paladino, & Leemans, 2001;[7] Khan & Lambert, 1998;[8] Pinto, Marques, Levine, & Abrams, 2010).[9]
Explanations
A prominent explanation of the black sheep effect derives from the social identity approach (see social identity theory, Tajfel & Turner, 1979;[10] and self-categorization theory, Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987).[11] Group members are motivated to sustain a positive and distinctice social identity and, as a consequence, group members emphasize likeable members and evaluate them more positve than outgroup members, bolstering the positive image of their ingroup (see ingroup bias). Furthermore, the positive social identity may be threatened by group members who deviate from a relevant group norm. To protect the positive group image, ingroup members derogate ingroup deviants more harshly than deviants of an outgroup (Marques, Abrams, Páez, & Hogg, 2001).[12] In addition, Eidelman and Biernat (2003)[13] have shown that personal identities are also threatened through deviant ingroup members. They argue that devaluation of deviant members is an individual response of interpersonal differentiation. Khan and Lambert (1998)[8] suggest that cognitive processes like assimilation and contrast, which may underline the effect, should be examined.
Limitations
Even though there is widely support for the black sheep effect, the opposite pattern has been found, for example, that White participants judge unqualified Black targets more negative than comparable White targets (e.g., Feldman, 1972;[14] Linville & Jones, 1980).[15] Consequentely, there are several factors which influence the black sheep effect. For instance, the higher the identification with the ingroup, and the higher the entitativity of the ingroup, the more the black sheep effect emerges (e.g., Castano, Paladino, Coull, & Yzerbyt, 2002;[16] Lewis & Sherman, 2010).[17] Even situational factors explaining the deviance have an influence whether the black sheep effect occurs (De Cremer & Vanbeselaere, 1999).[18]
See also
 |
Look up black sheep in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Black swan theory
- Glossary of sheep husbandry: see entry for "black wool".
- Scapegoat
- The Ugly Duckling
References
- ^ a b Ammer, Christine (1997). American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-395-72774-4. http://books.google.com/?id=9re1vfFh04sC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=american+heritage+dictionary+%22black+sheep%22. Retrieved 2007-11-13.
- ^ a b Marques, J. M.; Yzerbyt, V. Y., & Leyens, J. (1988). "The 'Black Sheep Effect': Extremity of judgments towards ingroup members as a function of group identification". European Journal of Social Psychology 18: 1-16. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420180102.
- ^ Sykes, Christopher Simon (1983). Black Sheep. New York: Viking Press. p. 11. ISBN 0-670-17276-6.
- ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1992. http://www.answers.com/topic/black-sheep. Retrieved 2008-03-24.
- ^ "Red Sheep: How Jessica Mitford found her voice" by Thomas Mallon 16 Oct 2007 New Yorker.
- ^ Branscombe, N.; Wann, D., Noel, J., & Coleman, J. (1993). "In-group or out-group extremity: Importance of the threatened social identity.". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 19: 381–388. doi:10.1177/0146167293194003.
- ^ Coull, A.; Yzerbyt, V. Y., Castano, E., Paladino, M.-P., & Leemans, V. (2001). "Protecting the ingroup: Motivated allocation of cognitive resources in the presence of threatening ingroup members". Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 4: 327–339. doi:10.1177/1368430201004004003.
- ^ a b Khan, S.; Lambert, A. J. (1998). "Ingroup favoritism versus black sheep effects in observations of informal conversations.". Basic and Applied Social Psychology 20: 263–269. doi:10.1207/s15324834basp2004_3.
- ^ Pinto, I. R.; Marques, J. M., Levine, J. M., & Abrams, D. (2010). "Membership status and subjective group dynamics: Who triggers the black sheep effect?". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 99: 107-119. doi:10.1037/a0018187.
- ^ Worchel, S., & Austin, W. G. (1979). The Social psychology of intergroup relations.. Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.
- ^ Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the Social group: A self-categorization theory.. Oxford: Blackwell.
- ^ Hogg, M. A., & Tindale, S. (2001). Blackwell handbook of social psychology: group processes.. Malden, Mass: Blackwell.
- ^ Eidelman, S.; Biernat, M. (2003). "Derogating black sheep: Individual or group protection?". Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39: 602-609. doi:10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00042-8.
- ^ Feldman, J. M. (1972). "Stimulus characteristics and subject prejudice as determinants of stereotype attribution.". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21: 333–340. doi:10.1037/h0032313.
- ^ Linville, P. W.; Jones, E. E. (1980). "Polarized appraisals of out-group members". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38: 689–703. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.38.5.689.
- ^ Castano, E.; Paladino, M., Coull, A., & Yzerbyt, V. Y. (2002). "Protecting the ingroup stereotype: Ingroup identification and the management of deviant ingroup members.". British Journal of Social Psychology 41: 365-385. doi:10.1348/014466602760344269.
- ^ Lewis, A. C.; Sherman, S. J. (2010). "Perceived entitativity and the black-sheep effect: When will we denigrate negative ingroup members?". The Journal of Social Psychology 150: 211-225. doi:10.1080/00224540903366388.
- ^ De Cremer, D.; Vanbeselaere, N. (1999). "I am deviant, because...: The impact of situational factors upon the black sheep effect.". Psychologica Belgica 39: 71-79.
External links
- Exploration of the etymology of the phrase "black sheep of the family"
- "The black sheep effect: Judgmental extremity towards ingroup members in inter-and intra-group situations". European Journal of Social Psychology (Science Direct) 18 (3): 287–292. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420180308. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00221031. Retrieved 2008-01-04.
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