Is the expression "call a spade a spade" a racist comment, or referring to playing cards?

I used to use the phrase "just call a spade a spade" which means just say what it is and stop beating around the bush. I want to know what this means, and where it comes from. Someone told me that the term "spade" is also a racist comment for a black person. I didn't know that, and I don't mean to be racist at all, farthest thing from it. Is the phrase referring to this racial term, or like a spade that's a suite of cards?

Is the expression "call a spade a spade" a racist comment, or referring to playing cards?
I have heard the term "spade" used racially, but never heard "call a spade a spade" in a racial context. I think the latter is one of those phrases that if someone is overly sensitive %26amp; looking to hear the wrong thing they will.





A good example of that is the phrase "The Pot Calling The Kettle Black" which is to say something about someone else which is actually true of you yourself. Which I am going to assume comes from when cooking was done over fire buring coal or wood which covered everything with soot. Ergo it doesn't matter what you are, if your guilty of it, your guilty. Rather like a lazy person complaining about another persons lazyness.





So my answer is yes, both are used and only one is not racially motivated. As for the meaning and where they come from, I think the first poster got that down.
Reply:It has no racial connotation and neither does the quotation cited earlier. There is nothing racist about the word "niggard", it is just close in sound to a racially offensive word. "Spade" as a racially offensive term is 20th century, not earlier, and developed first in the USA between the two world wars.
Reply:To speak plainly - to describe something as it really is.





It might be thought that this derives from the derogatory slang use of the term spade meaning *****, as exemplified in 'as black as the ace of spades'. That view of it as derogatory might also be thought to be supported by this piece from John Trapp's Mellificium theologicum, or the marrow of many good authors, 1647.
Reply:"call a spade a spade" is a comment.


Meaning





To speak plainly - to describe something as it really is.





Origin





It might be thought that this derives from the derogatory slang use of the term spade meaning *****, as exemplified in 'as black as the ace of spades'. That view of it as derogatory might also be thought to be supported by this piece from John Trapp's Mellificium theologicum, or the marrow of many good authors, 1647:





"Gods people shall not spare to call a spade a spade, a niggard a niggard."





The phrase is much older than that though. Nicolas Udall, in his Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte saiynges. First gathered by Erasmus - translated 1542, has:





"Philippus aunswered, that the Macedonians wer feloes of no fyne witte in their termes but altogether grosse, clubbyshe, and rusticall, as they whiche had not the witte to calle a spade by any other name then a spade."





This refers back to Plutarch's Apophthegmata, 178 BC.





The eccentric right-wing British Tory politician Sir Gerald Nabarro was fond of emphasizing his direct 'man of the people' image by saying 'I call a spade a shovel'. In fact, despite being from an immigrant family himself, Nabarro loudly supported the repatriation of Caribbean immigrants to the UK. How he referred in private to the people who would have undoubtedly have been called 'spades' in Nabarro's social circle isn't recorded.