It may not have been coined as a euphemism for ‘black’, but it was certainly coined as a replacement for ‘black’ in the context of people of African origin (but not other people of African origin). As such, it’s easy to see how it became commonplace as a generic replacement term; trouble is that it simply isn’t really a very useful one, except when used self-referentially.
Cite?
Sounds like that thinly veiled arrogance that was referred to earlier.
If you will accept citations from Wikipedia…
George Carlin, in defending his preference for “Indian”, says that Columbus did NOT think he had reached India and therefore called the people he met “Indians.” He says that country was known then as Hindustan, not India. The word “Indian” derives from (I’ll get this wrong) “people who walk in God’s grace” or something, “In Dios” Is there any truth to this?
I am a white man. I am (well not really) offended at “Caucasian.” I am Canadian. I don’t even know where Caucasia is! Actually… what the hell DOES “Caucasian” refer to?
On the bastardization of words to sanitize gender, I propose the following: The word “human” is not offensive, neither is the word “woman.” Both of these words end in “-man” Why then is policeman, fireman, chairman, alderman, businessman offensive? Is it because “man”, referring to male, is unadorned? If we must alter the language to correct this, instead of replacing the suffix “-man” with “-person” let’s add a prefix to “man.”
I like “he-” but that probably wouldn’t fly. Some may suggest “de-” How about “jo-”? e.g. “At the party there were 20 women and 22 jomen.”
For what it’s worth: my chief complaint against PC is it presumes my use of an “incorrect” term means I intend harm. I insist on saying blind, cripple, retarded, and handicapped when I need such descriptors.
I love the scene in “Clerks II” where Randall said “porch monkey” in front of a black couple. He was honestly unaware the term was racially charged (as was I - I’d not heard the term before). The shocked look on everyone’s face was predictable - but that’s what I mean! They all assumed the mere mention of that phrase had dealt harm… but no hate was intended, no disrespect was felt, no damage was (or should have been) done. Nonetheless, the manager felt it necessary to apologize and refund the black couple’s money.
Randall, after realizing how others took it, launched a campaign to “take back” the phrase. Why should we allow hate-mongers to claim certain words for their exclusive use, leaving us to fabricate new words? We should wrest those words out of their hands! Come on fellow honkies! Join me in taking all racially/sexually/handicappedly charged words back! All of them! Can I get some niggers to join the cause?
I find it arrogant to insist that something is “PC” just because a particular term falls outside of a person’s comfort zone, for reasons that are without factual merit.
But that’s me.
I don’t think your cite supports what you think it does.
I counter your Wikipeidia article with this About.com article:
OTOH, if we have two distinct groups claiming the same term for themselves, there needs to be a useful way to distinguish them. And I think that Indians-from-India have a bit older claim to the term.
Nope, not at all. The indigenous inhabitants of North America were misnamed by the Spaniards, pure and simple. And the name “India” for the area where the Indians-from-India live goes back to ancient Greek – it was what they called the area around the Indus river.
Really? Because in my experience African American as used in the United States is specifically used as a descriptor for people we would typically call black.
The United States 2000 Census form considers “Black, African Am., or Negro” to be one and the same. Maybe it was originally coined to be an ethnic descriptor but that’s not how it’s being used by most people.
Baloney. It might not be the only factor but to say skin color has nothing to do with whether we call someone white or black it is just plain silly.
Or it could be that racial classifications of any kind are arbitrary and will vary depending on cultural context. I can find all sorts of pictures of people from Papua New Guinea that most Americans would call black.
Marc
Which doesn’t change the fact that one term references ethnicity and one references race.
Nelson Mandela is not an A-A. Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a A-A. But both are black. See how this works? One term communicates something that the other does not.
What race is Colin Powell? Queen Latifah? Kid from Kid 'n Play? Tisha Cambell?
Their skin is far from black, but I assure you that they are black people. Any insistence to the contrary is baloney.
And I could probably find equal amounts of people who think the sun is a planet. The question is, so what?
Remembering that the assertion you called me to cite support for was this:
…let’s take a look at your About.com cite:
So I think your citation actually supports my position better than the one I picked; namely, that ‘African-American’ is indeed a term chosen specifically to replace ‘black’, for those black people of African heritage.
So, in the name of PC, should we thrust a name upon people who don’t even want it?
If we just stepped back, and took everything in a case by case basis, and actually looked at whether a term is intended to be offensive vs. descriptive I think we’d be a lot better off.
No. I in fact call Indians-from-NA “Indians”, since every Indian person I have met uses that term to describe himself. I’m just lamenting the ambiguity here, and wishing there were a terminology that would satisfy everybody while not introducing confusion.
Asking why political correctness is bad is not really a well-formed question. Political correctness is bad in the same way that the Grinch Who Stole Christmas is bad - it’s a fantasy monster invented for the particular purpose of representing evil. “Political correctness” is a term with approximately the same amount of meaning as “Volvo-driving, ivory tower elitists” - it’s a concept deliberately invented for a political purpose. That’s why, in every discussion of this type, you see people seriously discussing the merits of imaginary terms and self-righteously defending their rights to use the term “blind” instead of “visually-impaired”. Why shouldn’t you use the term “blind”? No one has asked you not to. But talk radio hosts and political pundits are having great success at convincing people that some group of academic types (probably drinking lattes while driving their Volvos and listening to NPR) has set themselves as a mysterious language authority and demanded that every reference to another human being be some twelve-syllable compound word.
You don’t have to believe the propaganda, folks. No one is going around scolding people for using the words “blind” or “black” or “Indian” (in fact, in academic literature, as far as I can tell, the normal term for American Indians is, in fact, “American Indians”.) “Political correctness” is a phantasm. It’s not something real. Of course there are some examples of people accidentally being overzealous in trying to be inoffensive. But the idea that this represents some larger phenomenon that we somehow need to fight against is pure fiction. Even more bizarre is this:
It’s hard to imagine a belief less rooted in reality than this one; the term “political correctness” was popularized specifically in mocking jokes and right-wing screeds. No one is going around defending it; the ludicrous idea that people are being “intimidated” or “silenced” for being “un-PC” would be absolutely laughable if it weren’t such a perfect example of political propaganda having overcome reality.
The only real examples I can see of people trying to actually shape discourse are those who smugly explain how they don’t see people in terms of race or ethnicity or height but rather as “humans”. Now those people don’t represent any sort of organized force to be wary of, but if they did, they would be the real problem, as the expressive power of language would be seriously hampered if we had to stop making any sort of reference to those things. The mind reels at the thought. “Could you take this document to Sheila, please?” “Who’s she?” “She’s the dark-haired human at the front desk.” :rolleyes:
And yet people, including the United States census, continues to use AA to describe race.
Now who’s being literal to the point of ridiculousness? People might describe me as white but it isn’t like my skin is literally snow white. Likewise you don’t have to be coal black for someone to identify you as black. Obviously there’s some variety to human skin tone but most people in the United States identify race by physical characteristics such as skin color.
Great. It’s obvious to me that you’re being completely irrational and have little of value to add to the conversation. Thanks anyway.
Marc
This just isn’t so. I’m sure you’re correct that the “PC movement” did not start from latte-sipping do-gooders. It more likely started from some indignant asshole saying (for example), “What do fat people want me to call them, horizontally enhanced?” However the phantasmic “movement” started, it’s become such that people do scold you for using the “incorrect” term.
It’s become mandatory at a former workplace of mine to have “sensitivity training” that ensures no one will commit sexual harassement or racism. Noble motives, but within the “training” is a rundown of PC terms. There it is grounds for disciplinary action to use “blind” or “cripple” - let alone “coloured” or “wop”
Just in the interest of The Straight Dope[sup]®[/sup], and not joining this mêlée of a thread:
Not Caucasia, but the Caucasus–a region of Eurasia where we arbitrarily set the “border” between Europe and Asia along a line demarked (in the South) by the Caucasus Mountains that extend northward from the land between the Black and Caspian seas. It was in this region that Johann Friedrich Blumenbach believed that the European peoples had originated as he attempted to describe the various human races, as he perceived them, in the late 18th and early 19th century. His work carried over into all the subsequent people who divided humanity along “racial” lines. (The word “Caucasia” does exist, but it is more commonly presented as “the Caucasus.”)
Interestingly, that was the method used in the earlier forms of the language where variants of “wer-” indicated the masculine and variants of “wif-” indicated the feminine and the word “man” meant persons without identifying sex. “wif-” went on to become “wife” and “wifman” became (for reasons of orthography) woman while “wer” dropped out of the language (except in combined forms such as werewolf) leaving “man” as both the masculine and gender neutral. So your proposal has a certain historical merit.
Getting anyone to go along with your proposal may take sime effort.
To dip my toe into the discussion, barring the change of language regarding man, werman, and woman/wifman, there is a current use for the elimination of the -man suffix (although I agree that it is overdone in some cases). There have been any number of women who have related stories of growing up confused that they could not fight fires, police streets, or carry out trash because the words, themselves, indicated that the job was a “man’s” job. This may not be as true in 2006 as it was in 1970–but then, we have changed the language so that fewer young girls encounter the problem. And for every case of some poor sap being simply overwhelmed by the need to use extra letters in fire fighter or police officer, we have the opposite cases where flagman and workman were shortened (by one consonantal sound) to flagger and worker.
Yeah, if you’re using an actual offensive term. If you’re using a term that’s genuinely offensive to most of the people in the community, you don’t have much business complaining when others tell you to stop it. But like I said, no one’s going around scolding people for using “blind” or “black” or “Indian”. Those are all perfectly normal, acceptable terms for blind, black, or Indian people respectively; it is either fantasy or mendacity that leads people to claim that the word “blind” is now verboten.
You really expect me to believe you could get in trouble at work for using the term “blind”? Yeah, right.
Whereas if you’re going around at work calling people “cripples” or “wops”, your ass oughta get fired.