We all have a handicap(s) of some sort; each by varying degrees…
…and we have spoken…
This is clearly a non-starter. I can see the points made be folks who don’t want the word banned, though I still believe that it has no place in discussion here.
Perhaps we should merely call people on it when they use the word.
Thanks for the good points made on both sides of the issue.
You’re right in general, but it’s tough when it’s in the workplace and you have to go on having acquaintance relationships with people. I’d rather not know someone’s a bigot when we just have to be able to get along long enough to do our jobs. Then I believe it’s OK to all just act a certain way regardless of true feelings.
I’m thinking specifically of a person who referred to one of our staff as “the colored guy”. Now, he could mean nothing by it (just the descriptor he grew up with, etc.) but regardless, it’s not an OK word, nor is it OK to refer to someone by their color (even here where the vast majority is white). I really resent him for it and would have a hard time dealing with him, and wish it had never come up.
To me, that makes no sense. If I have to work with you, I’d like to know how thick your skin is, what your hot buttons are, what you’re tolerant and intolerant of. Once I know these things about you, then I know what subjects to avoid around you, what will make you run to the boss in a hissy-fit, and also how to torment you if you’re a pretentious PC sensitive little fuckwitted retard in need of a good bitchslapping. 
Honest to Og, you folks who work in an office have my sympathy. The office I left in 1990 was a no-boundaries kinda place. Italian jokes, jewish jokes, fat jokes, cripple jokes, black jokes, blond jokes, old guy jokes-all groups were represented, we abused and supported one another, and in retrospect, they were a fine bunch of people to work with. If somebody went too far, the offended person would take them aside, bitch them out, the offendor apologized, and we went on with business. None of this scampering around and whispering about he said/she said.
So if you have a group of people who are white except for one black person, and you need to direct someone to that person, it’s not okay to use the most obvious descriptor to distinguish him? Color me perplexed. 
OOE: *So if you have a group of people who are white except for one black person, and you need to direct someone to that person, it’s not okay to use the most obvious descriptor to distinguish him? Color me perplexed. *
Why would you assume that race is necessarily “the most obvious descriptor”? Maybe the black person is the speaker at the podium, or the occupant of the corner office, or the guy by the water cooler, or the woman wearing a sari. Looking at somebody and seeing primarily their skin color is a bit narrow-minded.
The reason people sometimes avoid using racial descriptors is precisely because we tend to over-emphasize race in situations where other distinctions are actually much more important. (Miss Manners’ classic example of an inappropriate racial descriptor: “See that black gal up front?” “You mean the presiding judge?” Even in a situation where everybody else in the courtroom was white and male, it would not be appropriate to designate the judge as the “black gal”.)
Now, if you really do have a situation where you need to pick one person out of a fairly undifferentiated group, and all you have to go on is physical appearance, it does make sense to use racial descriptors if they’re available. In other situations, though, you might want to stop and think about whether a person’s race really is “the most obvious thing” that distinguishes them in this context.
Today one of my coworkers said something was “retarded,” and I told her only a total faggo would use a politically incorrect term like that.
Well, duh. There’s only one judge in the room. :rolleyes:
Not to prolong a hijack, but gigi didn’t make an allowance for this. She simply said that it’s not okay to refer to a person by his color. Maybe the person who referred to gigi’s co-worker didn’t see “the colored guy” in the vicinity, or know his name or position within the company or whether he had a corner office. Sure, he shouldn’t have called the guy “colored,” but simply using a racial descriptor as a shorthand need not cause her to “really resent” him and to anticipate “a hard time dealing with him.”
Please, no list of banned words. The very best thing about the Straight Dope is that the moderators do not run our posts through a binary filter: if you use X word, you are banned; profane words on hash-table Y will be bleeped out; no use of Z phrase is permitted and will result in tempban until the issue is resolved with the moderators in e-mail.
Ha! We are above such things here. Our moderators have brains. It is true that there are some topics which are forbidden here, but the moderators have the discretion to know when a person is asking about how a non-central file-sharing network operates and where to download the client. (Of course, they still may shut you down for it, but that depends on the thread.)
As many people observe here, it all depends: it isn’t the word but how one uses it. And that is already covered under Rule One, which is “never act incautiously when confronting a bald, wrinkly, smiling old man.” Wait a tic, wrong index card.
Rule one is “don’t be a jerk.” I have to conclude that this covers “using words in a jerkish way.” I mean, good grief, sooner or later, we’ll ban the word asshat and people will start calling each other butthats, then rumphats, and soon we’ll have to ban hat altogether! What will the moderators wear when they scold us? It’s chaos, I tell you, chaos!
Ahem. Anyway.
Which is why I don’t like the flier that the OP referenced (and it was around long before someone used it as an anti-Bush jab). Not everyone who competes in the Special Olympics is retarded. Some are physically disabled. The competitors are sorted by the nature and degree of their disability. And they take it damned seriously, contrary to that urban legend about all the runners in a race linking arms with the one who fell.
But people who think that that photo and its caption are clever are the kind of people who think all disabled people are the same, because they’re different from “us”. Just people who “we” don’t have to think about much, unless one of “them” sits next to us on the bus or something. :rolleyes: