blackdar

blackdar noun: the ability to detect whether or not a person is of African ancestry by observing that person.

Noun

blackdar (uncountable)

(slang) The ability to detect whether or not a person is of African ancestry by observing that person.
- I said I saw predominantly black people in those "most dangerous neighborhoods", and you went on and on about how race is an artificial construct, what if his grandfather was white, yada yada yada, yet now you have no problem identifying the person in the video as a "black woman". How is that? Is...2009 June 30, BillB [username], “Re: OT: RGP KKK”, in rec.gambling.poker (Usenet)
- She is pegging my High-Maintenance-dar, and my High-Maintenance-dar is almost as good as my cradar and my blackdar.*2010 February 19, Rev. Ivan Stang [username], “Re: Nerd gal, or sex goddess in disguise?”, in alt.slack (Usenet)

I have heard of gaydar...you must have blackdar.2009 June 30, BillB [username], “Re: OT: RGP KKK”, in rec.gambling.poker (Usenet):
(I'd meet her during the party and she didn't set off my Blackdar at all, so that convinced me to stop listening to my Blackdar about the hostess.)2012, Touré, “Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now”, in Free Press, published 2011, →ISBN, page 112:

From black + -dar.

What does blackdar mean?: Blackdar means the ability to detect whether or not a person is of African ancestry by observing that person.
How do you use blackdar in a sentence?: I have heard of gaydar...you must have blackdar.
What part of speech is blackdar?: Blackdar is a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: blackdar (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-blackdar.ogg.

Cite this entry: “blackdar.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blackdar. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.