I was reading some student writing recently, on a prompt where they were required to write about a picture they were given. The picture showed a family at dinner. I noticed that it didn’t bother me when they said it was “a black family” or “black people” but just “blacks” did. Giving it some more thought, I realized that I have the same unhappy reaction to seeing people being called “whites,” and “a gay” is cringe-worthy as well. I think the reason for this is while IMO it’s more or less acceptable to note that a person has a characteristic, it isn’t right to label them as the characteristic.
Is one set of terms less acceptable to you as well, or does it not make a difference?
I don’t really care. I suppose “blacks” and “gays” sound a little bit less nice than “black people” and “gay people”, but it’s not enough of a difference to make me bother.
I make an effort to say “people who are black” rather than “blacks”, and “folks of the Jewish faith” rather than “Jews”, etc. It does occasionally bother me when others use the other terms.
The way I think of it, everyone should be a person first. Calling people “gays” or “blacks” is, in my opinion, one step towards not considering them people at all.
However, I feel obligated to point out my own hipocrisy; I freely say “christians” and “mormons” and “7th day adventists” etc. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have any worry about those groups being singled out as subhuman, or perhaps I’m just totally inconsistant for no reason.
My vote is “ick” on blacks, gays, jews, whites, whatever.
All these (imho) should be adjectives, not nouns. They are something that describes a person, where as the noun usage is “thats what they is alright” shudder. I squirm to bits inside when I hear specificially “a lesbian” and “a jew”.
I dont get the heebeejeebeys when somone uses the noun form to speak of themselves, but when people use it about others, it makes me squirm, even with the best will in the world it has a tone of “them” about it. An american, a swede, a croat … hmm… that works, doesn’t feel weird, maybe it only counts for “minorities” ?
yeah, blacks, whites…sounds degrading alright.
I prefer Africans (or African American)
Caucasian
Asian
I have no problem with the term gay, as I’ve a few gay friends and they use that term to describe themselves. So as long as it’s ok with them, it’s ok with me
I agree with Iteki, the term “Jew” sounds somehow derogative, I wonder is that history still asserting itself? The term has been used as a swearword for so long, that it somehow seems tarnished. I usually say Jewish, i.e: not: he’s a Jew, but: He’s Jewish.
that sounds better, for some reason…
Well, I’ll go against the grain and say I see nothing derogatory in saying whites, blacks, gays, etc. I use both “black people” and “blacks” interchangeably. Kinda like blondes, redheads, brunettes, etc. Should we switch to calling them blonde-haired people, red-haired people, brown-haired people? After all, by focusing on their hair color, are we not ignoring their status as people? Seriously though, it sounds as silly as calling garbagemen “sanitation control engineers”.
To me, “follower of the Jewish faith” sounds a little wierd, especially since my Jewish cousins call themselves Jews. Sticking a few extra long words in does not make a label any more PC. It just seems sort of knee-jerk and hyper-sensitive.
I usually write “blacks” or “whites”, but say “black people” or “white people” in speech. Don’t think I’ve ever written a paper about homosexuals, but I think if I did I would call them “homosexuals”. IRL, I usually say “gay people”. I’m black, btw.
I don’t care one way or the other, except for the implicit assumption in the use of the word “gays” that the group in question is “gay men.” I’ve never found the term “gay” to be exclusionary of lesbians, but then I’m not a lesbian so what do I know? I like “queer” myself for referring to any permutation of the non-heterosexual born-in-the-right-sex-body crowd but some people get touchy about that sort of thing so instead we see “LGBTQ” or some such. What does irk me for reasons unknown is the use of the article “the” in front of any of those words. “The blacks, the Jews, the gays.” But I find it highly comical if someone uses the article “a” in front, “a black, a Jew, (and especially) a gay.”
Never thought about it much- I always thought the word “people” was implicit when talking about blacks, whites, or gays. Since we know we’re talking about people, it just seems to save time when omitting that word.
So… do you call, say, Jamaican black people Africans or African Americans? Black will work just fine. As for the OP, blacks, black people, gays, gay people, ::shrug:: meh. Makes no difference to me.
“African American”. I don’t know why anybody would want to eschew “black” – it’s got punch, style, and all that good stuff, and it’s short to boot. But if people don’t like it, who am I to complain. However, to say that “African” means that a person is “black” is patently racist. The simple truth is that not all Africans are black, so we have a situation like all horses have four legs but not all four-legged animals are horses. Clearly “African American” is intended to imply black American, and as such it implies that Africans who are not black are not Africans. That is wrong. Thus, I cannot accept “African American” as a substitute for “black”.
Never thought about it myself. Either way works for me. Maybe “high-mel” or “low-mel” for black or white? That should be completely devoid of aggressive undertones :).
There’s nothing wrong at all with saying “blacks,” “whites,” or “gays” any more than with saying “teachers,” “authors,” or “redheads.” Should I refer to them as “people who teach,” “authoring people,” and “people of red hair”?
You could well be right. Since how I use the terms doesn’t really affect or bother anyone else, I’ll probably keep my oversensitivity for the time being. Just feels right. Oh, and I suppose I should say, I wasn’t attempting to say in my previous post that everyone who says “blacks” or “Jews” is attempting to dehumanize them. Just that someone who says “people who are jewish” is clearly acknowledging that jewish folks are people just like the rest of us. You’ll never see an american WWII propaganda poster that says “Let’s go kill the people from Japan,” because mentioning that they’re people is an impediment to demonizing them.
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As for “African American,” I knew of a black man visiting the US from Germany. He said he was black, and was corrected – “No, no, you want to say african american.” He was quite annoyed. “I am not an african american. I’m a black German.”
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