"fly in the buttermilk" meaning in English

{
  "categories": [],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "flies in the buttermilk",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "flies in the buttermilk"
      },
      "expansion": "fly in the buttermilk (plural flies in the buttermilk)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, Bernestine Singley, When Race Becomes Real, page 108",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Dorothy West's Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color, page 38",
          "text": "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 […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A black person in a predominantly white group of people."
      ],
      "id": "en-fly_in_the_buttermilk-en-noun-p6VqO6~a",
      "links": [
        [
          "black",
          "black"
        ],
        [
          "predominantly",
          "predominantly"
        ],
        [
          "white",
          "white"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) A black person in a predominantly white group of people."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013, Lewis P. Hussell, A Commentary on Amos, Ezra, Esther, Haggai, Nehemiah, page 246",
          "text": "Discovery of this document was a fly in the buttermilk of Tattenai.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, John Green, The Wind in the Junipers",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of fly in the ointment (“something that spoils something else”)"
      ],
      "id": "en-fly_in_the_buttermilk-en-noun--YP6lmtb",
      "links": [
        [
          "fly in the ointment",
          "fly in the ointment#English"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "extra": "something that spoils something else",
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "fly in the ointment"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "fly in the buttermilk"
}

{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "flies in the buttermilk",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "flies in the buttermilk"
      },
      "expansion": "fly in the buttermilk (plural flies in the buttermilk)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English colloquialisms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, Bernestine Singley, When Race Becomes Real, page 108",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012, Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Dorothy West's Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color, page 38",
          "text": "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 […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A black person in a predominantly white group of people."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "black",
          "black"
        ],
        [
          "predominantly",
          "predominantly"
        ],
        [
          "white",
          "white"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(colloquial) A black person in a predominantly white group of people."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "colloquial"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2013, Lewis P. Hussell, A Commentary on Amos, Ezra, Esther, Haggai, Nehemiah, page 246",
          "text": "Discovery of this document was a fly in the buttermilk of Tattenai.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, John Green, The Wind in the Junipers",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of fly in the ointment (“something that spoils something else”)"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "fly in the ointment",
          "fly in the ointment#English"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "extra": "something that spoils something else",
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "fly in the ointment"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "fly in the buttermilk"
}