fly in the buttermilk

plural flies in the buttermilk

1. colloquialA black person in a predominantly white group of people.

   You can do the same in parts of Ward Three and see black folks sprinkled like “flies in the buttermilk.” Two Districts of Columbia, two different realities.

   2008, Bernestine Singley, When Race Becomes Real, page 108

   1 more example

   Once on-island, the black colony did not want to be reminded by whites or blacks of the racial divisions that existed “off-island.” Visitors did not want to be flies in the buttermilk […]

   2012, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Dorothy West's Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color, page 38

2. Synonym of fly in the ointment (“something that spoils something else”).

   Discovery of this document was a fly in the buttermilk of Tattenai.

   2013, Lewis P. Hussell, A Commentary on Amos, Ezra, Esther, Haggai, Nehemiah, page 246

   1 more example

   As life has a way of doing sometimes, just when things are going well, something comes along and puts a fly in the buttermilk. Two things happened in 1905 that changed things a lot for me. First off, the hotel burned down.

   2016, John Green, The Wind in the Junipers

   Synonyms: fly in the ointment