Fair enough I seriously thought that Irvine22 was simply being obtuse when he brought that up as he has a storied history of being obtuse If I had thought it was an actual racial epithet then I would never have used it Chalk this one up to experience and to different culturesI have never heard of that saying or anything like it as being racially insensitive As an aside I would like to point out that whatever part of the world you re from your particular local sayings should not form the basis of wikipedia policy I can say with a great deal of certainty that the phrase To call a spade a spade has no racial overtones whatsoever in the vast majority of the english speaking world I have heard many rude offensive and inventive words for black people and spade has never been one of them Also whether you think my joke was funny or not I should not be banned for making it Regardless I have removed the phrase in question I ll take this incident into consideration when editting in the future I d appreciate an unblock now