I always thought it meant the playing card, and when shown, such as in a poker hand, there is no denying it, a spade is a spade. However actually it meant call a spade (shovel) a spade, not a gardening tool.
So I did just a tad of research. The phrase has been around for eons and for the most part means, and has meant just what I thought it meant. However in the early 20th century the word spade was used pejoratively to refer to Black men. So yes, there is a racial component.
I, to the best of my knowledge, have never used the phrase in any context. Had I been there, I too probably would not have commented, as I did not know the etymology of the word/phrase. That may make me ignorant, but not racist. I'd like to think the same of the survivors there.
Oh, and there is nothing wrong with watching Survivor. We all have our guilty pleasures, and I enjoy the show.
Is It Racist To 'Call A Spade A Spade'?
September 23, 201310:33 AM ET
LAKSHMI GANDHI
What happens when a perfectly innocuous phrase takes on a more sinister meaning over time?
Case in point, the expression "to call a spade a spade." For almost half a millennium, the phrase has served as a demand to "tell it like it is." It is only in the past century that the phrase began to acquire a negative, racial overtone.
Historians trace the origins of the expression to the Greek phrase "to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough." Exactly who was the first author of "to call a trough a trough" is lost to history. Some attribute it to Aristophanes, while others attribute it to the playwright Menander. The Greek historian Plutarch (who died in A.D. 120) used it in Moralia. The blogger Matt Colvin, who has a Ph.D. in Greek literature, recently pointed out that the original Greek expression was very likely vulgar in nature and that the "figs" and "troughs" in question were double entendres.
Erasmus, the renowned humanist and classical scholar, translated the phrase "to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough" from Greek to Latin. And in so doing he dramatically changed the phrase to "call a spade a spade." (This may have been an incorrect translation but seems more likely to have been a creative interpretation and a deliberate choice.) "Spade" stuck because of Erasmus' considerable influence in European intellectual circles, writes the University of Vermont's Wolfgang Mieder in his 2002 case study Call a Spade a Spade: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur.
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So what does all of this mean for people who want to, well, "call a spade a spade"? I urge caution. Mieder concludes his case study with the argument that "to call a spade a spade" should be retired from modern usage: "Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together."
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade
Call a spade a spade
To "call a spade a spade" is a figurative expression. It is also referred to as "let's call a spade a spade, not a gardening tool" which refers to calling something "as it is",[1] that is, by its right or proper name, without "beating about the bush"—being outspoken about it, truthfully, frankly, and directly, even to the point of being blunt or rude, and even if the subject is considered coarse, impolite, or unpleasant. The idiom originates in the classical Greek of Plutarch's Apophthegmata Laconica, and was introduced into the English language in 1542 in Nicolas Udall's translation of the Apophthegmes, where Erasmus had seemingly replaced Plutarch's images of "trough" and "fig" with the more familiar "spade." The idiom has appeared in many literary and popular works, including those of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, W. Somerset Maugham, and Jonathan Swift.
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Full definition
To 'call a spade a spade', or, 'to call a spade a shovel' are both forms of the figurative expression which requests that the speaker should, or has, called a person, place or thing, by the most suitable name it could have without any reservation to the feelings or strained formalities that may result from its use.[1] [2][3] The implication is that one tells the truth regarding the nature of the thing in question,[4] speaking frankly and directly about it[2][3], even if it is considered coarse, impolite, or unpleasant.[4][2][3] Brewer defined it in 1913 as being "outspoken, blunt, even to the point of rudeness", adding that it implies one's calling "things by their proper names without any 'beating about the bush'".[5]
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Usage
Brewer includes the expression in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable in 1913,[5] providing a definition largely consistent with contemporary English usage in the early 21st century.[4][2][3] The Oxford English Dictionary records a forceful, obscene variant, "to call a spade a bloody shovel", attested since 1919.[12]
The phrase appeared in Joseph Devlin's book How to Speak and Write Correctly (1910), where he satirized speakers who chose their words to show superiority: "For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it."[13]
Oscar Wilde uses the phrase in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), when the character Lord Henry Wotton remarks: "It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for." [14] Wilde uses it again in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).[15] Other authors who have used it in their works include Charles Dickens and W. Somerset Maugham.[9]
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As perceived slur
The phrase predates the use of the word "spade" as an ethnic slur against African Americans,[9] which was not recorded until 1928; however, in contemporary U.S. society, the idiom is often avoided due to potential confusion with the slur.[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_spade_a_spade
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