Fair enough  I seriously thought that Irvine 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 youre 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  Ill take this incident into consideration when editting in the future  Id appreciate an unblock now