Yes, I am a polite person and I will call people whatever they want to be called but I still think this playing with words is a silly and childish game. It is not so much that “orientals” have taken offense at the word as that the PC crowd like to be in the know of what is acceptable and tell everybody what is and what is not acceptable even to the subjects of the term.
Idiots come from all walks of life and all races. There is always some idiot who is going to find offense somewhere for any reason. Then the whole thing snowballs and we have another term which is no longer acceptable even though most of the people of the group it refers to find no offense in it.
I will call people by whatever name they want to be called but I can still think the reasons are kind of silly. I might add that if you belong to a group which feels the need to change names every few years, then maybe the problem is not with the words but with your group.
I’ll give you an example. In Spain pigs were considered unclean animals and the word for pig was considered taboo. So a new word would take its place but would soon become dirty and a new one had to be put in its place. Now Spanish has a dozen words for pig and they are all just as insulting and bad sounding because they all refer to pigs. Note that it was not even a question of not offending the subject of the noun, it was just the words themselves. Well, I am sorry but a pig by any other name does not smell any better.
I will call a garbage man “sanitation engineer” if he prefers it but I still think it is silly because we both know he is the garbage man which is not good or bad, it is just fact and words do not change facts. If I were a garbage man I’d rather get a raise than a new title.
Yes, I am respectful and I do not go around calling people dumbass even if that is what I think of them. If they want to be called “transmongolcaucasian” then that is what I will call them. But I still think they are silly by playing with words like that. That is just MHO and I do not wish to offend or irritate anybody.
People who try to find justifications like “Asian is more accurate than Oriental” are just playing games. On those grounds the term African-American would never be acceptable as it is very imprecise and confusing. And yet, there it is.
Now we have people saying you do not “own” a pet, you are its “guardian” and I have heard someone on TV refer to her dog as “canine-American”. This is beyond silly if you ask me. The fact is that America today is very caught up in these silly games. The niggardly and water buffalo examples are representative of things which happen all the time and are silly beyond belief. The climate fosters these things. Everyone is looking for an excuse to be outraged and make someone apologise.
The fact is that now we have to tiptoe around to avoid offense, the possibility of giving offense, the possibility that it might look like we might give offense or the possibility that someone might think that it may look like maybe there is a chance that someone, somewhere, might be offended.
I also recall during the LA riots, that man who was taken from his truck (Denny something??) and beaten almost to death by a black man. A helicopter TV cam was showing it live and they referred to the men who were beating him as “gentlemen”. I cannot imagine they would be called gentlemen if they were white but we have gotten to the point where you have to call blacks gentlemen even if they are killing someone lest they might take offense.
Another incident I remember was the 911 tape of an old lady who was being attacked in her home by an “African-American gentleman”. She was screaming into the phone that this “nigger” was killing her and all she was getting was a lecture from the operator. They went on like this for quite a while, the woman screaming in terror and the operator lecturing her that it is not acceptable to use the N word. No, you cannot refer to anyone as a nigger even if he is attempting to kill you and you deserve a long lecture even if it may cost you your life.
We hear every day cases that are just plain silly. Children being reprimanded for inocuous things. I think the climate has gone totally into sillyland.
In summary, this is just MHO, not in any way supposed to be representative of anything but my own opinion. Yes, I will call people by whatever name they want to be called. I also reserve the right to think it may be quite silly. Furthermore, if they become a nuisance in changing names too often and taking offense where none is meant and becoming a PITA about it I also reserve the right to tell them to go to hell and leave me alone.
