I think you have a good point. Political correctness demands that you see groups as groups, and not as individuals that make up groups. I also believe there is an underlying assumption that certain groups are at a permanent disadvantage. A personal example…when my husband went to enroll at a large state university as a freshman, he was told to go to Hispanic assimilation counseling. My husband is Hispanic, on one side, but he was born & raised in the US, and English is his first language. He found it kind of insulting to think that just because he has a Spanish last name, he would need some sort of help fitting into the university that other kids didn’t need. To me, this is an example of PC-ness run amok.
I would argue that they were equally confusing and inaccurate so why is one prefferable to the other? I have seen people I would have classified as black only to find out they were from India or Papua New Guinea. What about an Australian Aborigine? Remember, I already wrote that any classification based on skin color is going to be arbitrary so I already agree with you.
Marc
You need to get out more. We have had mail carriers and postal employees in Nashville for a long time. I’ve never even heard of postpeople. and I’ve been here forty-one years.
It doesn’t mean anything. The only time I see it used is when people are making fun of being PC.
I agree. “handi-capable” sounds really stupid. How about just saying that someone is “mentally handicapped”? It’s the same number of syllables and that’s the term that has been used by educated people for about the last half century. People who use 'retarded" generally don’t know better or are trying to be insulting.
Not always. Sometimes it’s a matter of acknowledging that language affects our perceptions and adopting language that doesn’t negatively weight those perceptions against a race or ethnicity or gender. And sometimes it’s a matter of just being sensitive to another person’s preferences.
Gender references that associate strength with manhood and weakness with being female are so common at the Dope that no one says anything about them. They are not part of our “fighting of ignorance.” A similar put down of a race would warrant a warning. It’s a puzzlement.
I do see sense in finding a new term when the old one begins to be used as pejorative slang–although really, I do still use the term “retarded,” I do it kind of gingerly. I haven’t found another equally convenient term for that particular group…
I am tip-toeing my way into academia and have gotten some serious editorial flack for consistently using the male pronoun, whenever the female pronoun doesn’t specifically apply. A hypothetical person is always “he” in my writing. Apparently, I am supposed to alternate the male and female pronouns. I did do that, once, actually, to a particularly obnoxious editor. “Once he has finished the research phase of acquisition, she should move on to…”
I am afraid that I may make it a point, in my career, to ignore all of the PC gender garbage. The male version of a word is the default, if the female version is not specifically called for, and anyone who doesn’t like it can kiss my wide academic ass.
My point is: insisting that the pronouns be artificially alternated with each other, or insisting that I use an ambiguous, inconvenient, and awkward-sounding substitute for a perfectly good word that high school kids don’t fling at each other as an insult, implies that… there’s something WRONG with the group it labels. Ooooh look at the little girly girls trying to be college professors; they must feel sooo ashamed of themselves, embarassed, unsure, really like they don’t fit… let’s throw 'em some PRONOUNS to direct attention to 'em and make 'em feel better!
Have you guessed my gender?
I’m female.
The use of “she” or “she and he” is awkward-sounding only because it isn’t used as often. After a while it doesn’t seem artificial at all. I don’t think it is carved in stone anywhere that “he” is the default assigned by God. It’s just a matter of what you are used to.
“He” is ambiguous if it doesn’t fit half the population it is being used to describe. And how inconvenient is it to add “or she” if it means slightly opening the minds of others to opportunities and expectations for women?
Please don’t take this as “insisting.” It’s not.
It is, however, ambiguous. When I was going to university in Dallas, I was friends with this Indian dude who was studying electrical engineering. My girlfriend is part Indian, and has the most wonderful dark-almost-black eyes I have ever seen.
Without further clarification, you don’t know if they’re Indian-from-India or Indian-from-North-America, and that’s a pretty big difference.
(And they’re from North America, FTR)
i was once fat…I loved walking into a clothing store and saying I need a jacket for a fat man…Invariably the salesman would say…sir, you mean portly or heavy…and I would say no, fat.
To be aware of what one is makes it easier to do something about it if you can and if one is desirous of doing so.
But ambiguity isn’t going to stop assholes from hating niggers, japs, kikes, chinks, etc… , it’s just going to confuse those of us who like to include details. Refer to the SNL sketch in which John Lovitz is trying to say which woman won an acting role, but struggled mightily to do so as they shared the same qualities except for one being black.
Personally, I usually avoid political correctness unless a term has largely become used in a purposely offensive manner, but I’m definitely on board the “Native American” bandwagon ever since I’ve befriended Indians. That way there’s only confusion when talking about Indians (“Indian Indians or Native American Indians?”)
If you’re talking about an obviously biased word, like a racial slur, then I’m with you. I’m a bit young to have been alive when “colored” was acceptable, but apparently it was if the NAACP used it. But, I can even see that “colored” was used during segregation and thus, might have bad memories attached to it.
“Black”, though? It’s like a handful of vocal people woke up and decided that “black” was offensive. “Black” never negatively weighted perceptions. It was a descriptor, much like white. Does it make total sense? No, but neither does white.
“Yellow” is probably a different situation though because it is used as an insult for Asians.
Do you differentiate among intent? I never have felt like there is intent to be biased when one uses the term “black” or “Indian”.
But even if it’s confusing, isn’t it a bit arogant for non-Indians to decide that “Indian” is no longer an acceptble term? Indians call themselves Indian, regardless of the smug thrusting PC upon them.
Ten years with my wife, and I’ve heard her refer to herself as “Native American”.
The problem is that the term arises as a result of trying to find a way to say ‘negro’ without actually saying ‘negro’, so the term gets erroneously applied to dark-skinned persons who are not of immediately African heritage, erroneously applied to dark-skinned persons who are not actually American at all, and erroneously not-applied to persons of African heritage who have light coloured skin.
It isn’t anything about removal of ambiguity, it’s about discontinuing use of a fuzzy descriptive term, not because it was fuzzy, but because it was deemed offensive.
PC terminology is a part of deconstruction or critical theory, etc. Apart from that, it sounds hopelessly affected, clumsy, and lends itself to more confusion, not less. Maybe that’s the point. “Colored People” is Officially Racist, but “People of Color” is not, somehow. Further, the actual intent does not matter, and because of that paradigm shift there are more than a few folks out there who have lost their job. I understand that sports authorities were adamant about expunging the Seminole name for sports teams, till somebody thought to ask the Seminoles. Maybe that shouldn’t matter, the mind boggles.
Another disturbing aspect of PC is the rise of a professional class of the Permanently Offended, and an end run around free speech.
My half-sister is part Indian and her godmother is full-blooded Indian. My half-sister’s father is part cherokee and her godmother’s parents are from the Goa region.
Because of the ambiguities involved, I use “Native American” simply because it will not be confused with Indians from India. I’m not trying to be inoffensive to American Indians, and would be offended if they thought I wanted to call them Native Americans out of political correctness. Of course, when referring to a tribe I would call them by their tribal name, but then, either American Indian or Native American.
Those terms have the advantage that no one currently uses them to mean anything other than those whose ancestors arrived here before 1492. So I’m using them.
There is PC and there is stupid though.
Again, using my wife’s family as an example. None of them use “Native American”, but they think the Cleveland Indian’s insignia is remarkably offensive. You’d have to be blind not to, I think.
In general, they aren’t thrilled about Indian mascots regardless of the team. I can see why, as a mascot sort of seems pet-like.
So, I think if you can look at obvious offensive things like a smiling idiotic looking caricature of an Indian and remove them, without feelings of guilt making you go overboard and removing things that aren’t actually offensive in any way, then you can find the happy medium.
Besides, isn’t PC just an issue in the press? I mean, Indians call themselves “Indian”. I’ve never heard a black person call themselves anything but “black”. My disabled buddy goes so far as to call himself a “crip” (ok, probably a bad example, as he’s a bit on the unusual side…). It just seems like much ado about nothing.
The wife usually says that she’s Indian, and clarifies it with “feathers, not dots”, if that helps. Always amuses me.
Why don’t you just refer to people as they ask you to refer to them and not be a dick about it?
You don’t always have the luxury of soliciting their each and every individual preference.
Well there are plenty of nations/races/tribes throughout the world’s history whose name for themselves means “first people”/“the good folks”/“the people”, so if we refer to them by that we would be implying that everyone else was a bunch of barbarian savages.
I was going to also ask what would happen if I insisted that all European-Americans be referred to as “the great white overlords,” but that example would be just silly. Or would it? To what extent would you go to avoid offending people if their preferred term is ambiguous or offensive itself?
Well, who said A-A is supposed to replace black anyway? A-A is no more a euphemism for black than Irish-American is a euphemism for white. The problem is that people read way too much into the term and automatically assume that it exists out of PCness. I guess the idea that A-A was coined as a way of distinguishing a population of people based on their ethnicity as opposed to race is just a concept that is too large for the masses to swallow. I wish folks would unhinge their jaws just a little bit. Juuuust a little bit.
If my tone comes across as caustic, forgive me. It’s just that this has been explained so many times, in so different many ways, and yet it’s like people insist on making this more difficult than it has to be.
In the US, “black” does not have anything to do with skin color. Perhaps at one time it did, but not anymore. The only thing arbitrary about “black” is the percentage of black ancestry one can have in order to be black. But the term itself is not predicated on how dark someone’s skin is, so Indians and Aborigines are irrelevant to this even if they are ebony complected.
Perhaps the reason why you find A-A confusing is the same reason you have mistaken Indians for black people. You are being too literal. It makes me wonder if you find Native American to be confusing in the same kind of way.
Does she do the “feather not dot” hand signal as well? 