No, my cite supports my position (which you appeared to take issue with); namely, that A-A was chosen–not to necessarily replace anything–but to specifically refer to the descendants of African slaves and indentured servants brought over it US in the 18 and 19th century. Not to all peoples of African heritage. As such, it is a term intended to denote ethnicity as opposed to race. As Malcomb X put it, A-A is "more historically and culturally defining over ‘Negro’ and ‘black’ " and that is because it is more explicit descriptor of heritage. He saw himself as an African living in America, which is intrinsically different than a African living in Africa or some other place. Not that Malcomb X invented the term, anyway. He just adopted it and went on record stating why he prefered it.
Nothing in the excerpt that you highlighted actually said that A-A was coined as a replacement for black. Users of the term may frequently apply it indiscriminately, but it was not intended to be use that way when it was originally introduced into the lexicon.
My problem with it isn’t so much the “incorrect” terms…obviously there some names that it is unacceptable to call certain groups. It’s that political correctness spills over into ideas. Political correctness is the reason Larry Summers was pretty much run out of Harvard Yard on a rail…for the mere suggestion that women might not be as naturally adept at math as men. This is where, IMO, PC gets to be a problem…because it shuts down debate & academic inquiry.
So if you were to hear someone describe Nelson Mandela as A-A, would you not find that to be ludicrous? Please say that you would, for the love of all that is English and logical.
Hey, you were the one that said “black” was arbitrary because of skin color. That is ridiculous since the term has far evolved past the point that it denotes anything specific about actual skin color. People are black not because their skin is black, as you concede, but because of their heritage.
Which is all well and good, but has nothing to do with the textbook definition of “black”. People perceive all kinds of things, some real and some not so real, so arguing this particular point only tells me that you think established definitions can be disregarded simply because a certain plurality thinks a person with dark skin = Black. If that aint’ craziness, I don’t know what is.
I think your “lots of Americans think Papau New Guineans are black” argument is a lot more irrational than anything I could ever dream of, let alone write in this thread. But you’re welcome for whatever.
Actually, though, it didn’t. I don’t know the exact context of Summers’ quote - he may or may not have said something deserving of censure. I didn’t follow the story terribly closely. But this event actually ignited a lot of conversation about the subject, and a literal debate was held between Stephen Pinker (a linguist specializing in child-language acquisition) and Elizabeth Spelke (a developmental psychologist.) They’re both pretty well-known figures; Pinker in particular is quite famous, and while I’m not familiar with the literature in psychology, Spelke is a name I know pretty well from her work in cognitive science. And the debate did address whether or not men and women have different inherent aptitudes for math and science (in general; I don’t think there can remain any real argument that there aren’t some women with aptitude far beyond most men.) It’s not a settled question - but I haven’t seen any signs that the academic community considers it as such. It’s not an area that is verboten in academia as far as I can tell, which suggests to me that the stranglehold of “political correctness” - in the arena where it’s supposedly strongest, no less - is probably not the problem a lot of people seem to think it is.
Of course I would. Which is why I kind of find African American to describe a race to be somewhat silly.
It is arbitrary. I don’t believe the term has evolved as much as you think it does. Sure, when most people in the United States say black they mean someone with African ancestors, but that’s largely because of our history not because of any scientifically valid classification.
You mean like this little tidbit from your link?
Racial classifications are all about perception and most of it is based on physical characteristics. When you see someone like Denzel Washington I bet you just assume he’s black based on his looks. Or do you happen to know his genetic background?
You might want to brush up on your reading skills because I never made that arguement.
I didn’t say Americans thought people from Papua New Guinea were black only that I could find pictures of people from there that most Americans would think were black. Meaning there are people there who have similiar hair, skin tone, and facial features of those in the United States we would generally call black. I could also show you other Papua New Guineans who wouldn’t generally be called black by most people in the United States.
Papua New Guinea is a pretty neat place and it’s interesting to see how varied people can look in a relatively small area.
You are right…I did hear about this debate, and I recognize that these two individuals are distinguished in their fields. I think, however, that this one debate does not reflect the tendency for unpopular ideas to be shouted down or protested in various ways on campuses today.
Of course, some women are clearly gifted in math. However, aptitude is a bell curve, and I guess the question is more about how much the bell curves of males & females overlap/correspond to each other.
I agree to an extent. I did not find that in my classrooms I found the teaching to be outrageously biased (I was a social psychology major…I found my professors to be perhaps slightly biased to the left. On the other hand, my husband was an economics major at the same university, and he thinks his were biased to the right. Neither of these observations surprises me, given the disciplines involved). In my experience, it was the general atmosphere on campus…in public lectures, the print media, etc., that I found to be intolerant of opposing viewpoints. At that time, PC was a fairly new term, I think, but I was definitely informed on more than one occasion that certain POVs were “PC” and certain ones weren’t. This included, but went far beyond, what specific terms we were supposed to call various groups.
I don’t know. People say that - and I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, either - but I really haven’t seen any evidence that it’s pervasive. I mean, this depends some on your point of view - certain ideas are definitely prerequisites to academic work in certain fields. People who deny the existence of Darwinian evolution might claim that its presence throughout the field of biology represents systematic bias; obviously, I don’t buy that. It may be, though, that some of the basic assumptions in different fields of study are examples of large-scale bias. In fact, I think that could be said of what has been called the “Standard Social Science Model” (actually, that has been said, and pretty much constantly, by critics :)). But when that’s the case, it makes more sense to examine the biased approach of a particular field, and look at its origins and effects, than to decide that it’s just another example of Political Correctness Gone Mad[sup]TM[/sup]. (I actually think one of the positive legacies of postmodernism is its tendency to encourage examination of the biases underlying academic study. This is the only positive thing you will ever catch me saying about postmodernism.)
Outside of the outlines of particular disciplines, I haven’t particularly noticed a huge bias in my own experiences; college students are pretty notoriously liberal, but I guess I haven’t seen any particular evidence that other viewpoints are not tolerated. Possibly that’s in part because at my school, we have a rather large and active Student Republican group, and they put up as many signs as the Student Democrats. Overall, I just haven’t seen it. And to a certain extent, it seems to me that a lot of universities have spots for particularly outrageous academics - whatever their particular political views. There’s a number of pretty visible liberal wackjobs in faculty positions at a lot of schools, but there’s plenty of people whose ideas are pretty starkly opposed to the “accepted” standardsr who still have faculty positions. Camille Paglia enraged a lot of feminists when she wrote some things about rape that were really unpopular at the time, but she didn’t get kicked out of her office. (Incidentally, if you track down that essay - it’s pretty infamous, but I’ve forgotten the name - it doesn’t seem all that outrageous nowadays.)
One of the interesting points that Pinker made is that a very tiny average difference, the sort of thing that could only be discovered by truly large-scale statistical analysis, would nevertheless mean that at the very, very top of a field, you’d expect the superior group to outnumber the inferior group by several times. If the average boy in a high school math class does half a percentage point better on tests than the average girl, that would predict several men winning a Nobel Prize in math for each woman who wins (specific numbers invented off the top of my head, of course.)
There’s a number of fields notorious for rightward bias. It’s understood that the economics department, the poli-sci department, the engineering department, and the business school will be pretty right-leaning. Likewise, you probably won’t find a lot of Republicans on the faculty of the women’s studies department. But even with professors who I know to be pretty political one way or the other - usually something I learned from talking to them outside of class - I’ve never had a professor who tried to shout down other viewpoints. In fact, most of them are pretty thrilled when any real discussion happens at all. I’ve never known them to be hostile towards other views.
This just doesn’t jibe with what I’ve seen. I’m not saying there’s nothing to it, but it’s not what I saw. Definitely the student body at any university is going to lean left; that seems to be something pretty characteristic of that age, as far as I can tell. But while some viewpoints were definitely more popular than others, I never saw any signs that some of them weren’t tolerated at all.
Fortunately I left that job before the “sensitivity” program was implemented and my sole source of info is likely exaggerated complaints from a former co-worker. I have no direct knowledge which words lead to what level of discipline. I’m sure you’re correct that “blind” is not one of the words.
I was trying to refute what I thought was your assertion that no one is actively correcting others’ language. On re-reading your post, I see I missed your point - or rather mistakingly added to your point. When you said, “No one is telling you not to say ‘blind’” I assumed you meant “…and other politically-incorrect terms.” I see now you are saying no one is seriously campaigning for the use of many of the hyphenated monstrosities that come up in such discussions “visually-impaired, horizontally-challenged” and the like. I apologize.
My fundamental point was: Although the latte-sipping do-gooders do not exist, there is a societal force equivalent to “language police.” There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the word “cripple” and no one’s ass should be fired for using it. I won’t champion the use of words like “wop” or “nigger” but I do maintain that trying to restrict their use is the equivalent of aiming the fire extinguisher at the flame.
Well, take issue with those who think it refers to race, not with the existence of the term itself. Even a literal interpretation of the term should tell you that it says something that black doesn’t. The “American” part says as much.
As I already pointed out, “black” is indeed arbitrary, but not for reasons that have anything to do with skin color. Only someone steeped in literalness would think that its confusing for that reason. “Black” is arbitrary because of the percentage of black ancestry required to be black. That percentage was set arbitrarily. But once again, this relates to heritage and not to appearance.
Are you trying to tell me that a person’s appearance determines a person’s race, and not their heritage? This is priceless really. The “tidbit” that you latched onto indicates the physical characteristics people commonly use to distinguish people of the Negroid race from others. That’s skin color, facial features, and hair texture. Well, duh, that was never in dispute. That’s a separate issue from what it takes to be black in this country. The US census defines black as:
Which means exactly what I said earlier. In the US, “black” is related to heritage not appearance. Which means that dark-skinned Indians would not be expected to check “black” on the census form. Nappy-haired Papau New Guineans wouldn’t be black either, despite the protests of those in Camp Slackjaw who think anyone with a fro is black.
Racial classifications are based on (generally) agreed upon definitions all of which are based are arbitrary criteria.
Racial perception is something quite different. A panda bear is not a real bear just because it looks like one. A legless lizard isn’t a snake just because they look alike. A dark-skinned Indian isn’t black just because he/she is of the same complexion as Wesley Snipes.
Being familiar with the phenotypes commonly associated with having an African ancestry, I say he’s black because he carries those phenotypes. However, if someone informed me that Denzel’s ancestors hailed from Malaysia, I would no longer consider him black. Because most people in this country who look like Denzel are the descendants of American slaves, I also would call anyone who looked like him an “African-American”. But I would quickly revise my terminology if it turned out the man was either A) not black or B) not the descendant of American slaves.
Phenotypic cues are correlated with racial membership, but are not determinants of such. Colin Powell looks a lot like a white man to me, but he is black because of his African-based heritage. A guy from Papau New Guinea may look quite similar to many black people, but that doesn’t make him black. Appearance is a marker for race, but that is all.
Well, why are we even talking about Papau New Guineans in the first place?
And like I said before, so what? If I showed a group of Americans a picture of a Korean man, more than half of them would probably say he’s Chinese. But so what? I fail to see the point you’re trying to make here.
I have to correct you/clarify one point…it wasn’t the professors who shout people down, it was the students.
Frankly, I am over my head in this specific discussion, because it has been a long time since I was in school, and I don’t remember a lot of specific instances. Most of my friends were leftists, so I may have a skewed viewpoint anyway.
My point, though, is not about the frequency of occurence, but more that the very term “political correctness” implies that there are some things that are OK to think/believe/say, and some things that are not, and IMO, when this gets in the way of thought or logic, then there is a problem. When it creeps into policy making, there is a problem. We see this all the time. For example, the implication that certain groups are inherently and permanently at a disadvantage in our culture stems from political correctness, and I also believe this to be a wrong-headed, illogical premise.
Precisely. (“Visually-impaired”, though, is useful to describe people who are literally visually impaired but still have some vision.)
Again, that sounds seriously “exaggerated” to me. I don’t doubt that some people are hypersensitive and no doubt occasional misbegotten attempts at “sensitivity” backfire. I highly doubt anyone is really going around telling off people who use the term “blind”; if they are, they’re both rude and completely incorrect. (Even worse if someone really did tell him to use the term “handi-capable” - unless they were joking and Grits just missed it.) But people ignorantly making social faux pas are not something new and unusual; they don’t represent the sort of malevolent force that people seem to be imagining.
If you go on to read the rest of that post, you get a feel for the sort of discomfort motivating what he’s writing. Look at this: “My black friends refer to themselves as black, not African American, but for some reason when I use the word black it shows I am using it to be mean and hurt their feelings? My friend often speaks of her of working with people who are already blind, to help her prepare. But if I say blind, I am being rude?” This is imaginary, as with most of the rhetoric we hear about “political correctness”. There may be one or two nutjobs out there claiming that “black” is somehow now a racial slur, but it’s not as though there’s some large group of people campaigning against that term. Surveys have been done; while some black Americans prefer African-American, virtually no one considers the term rude or insulting. So who the hell does Grits imagine is trying to make him feel guilty? Who is accusing him of “being mean”? (Notice the way he writes - omitting references to who is doing this.) It’s possible that he has a couple of seriously nutso friends; it sounds more like he simply has internalized some bizarre notion that these words are now considered impolite, when they’re not.
That’s the problem. So much “exaggeration” occurs in discussion of “political correctness” that it’s almost impossible to discuss the issue on realistic terms. There’s a big difference between the “politically correct” avoidance of racial slurs and this entirely imaginary commandment not to use perfectly normal words like “black” and “blind”. These terms are not offensive. No one seriously thinks they are. The problem here is that certain people have had incredible success selling the idea that Volvo-speaking, latte-driving, French-sipping liberals are accusing them of being racist for using perfectly ordinary language when we’re not. The two things being conflated - the growing intolerance of actual offensive language, and this imagined censure of perfectly ordinary language - are entirely different things. One of them is basically imaginary. The other is not. There’s a big difference between being told not to call the dude on the corner with a monkey a “wop” and being told not to mention the fact that he’s blind. One of those things is perfectly reasonable; the other is not.
The coup hidden in this enormously successful bit of propaganda is that, suddenly, refusing to accept actual offensive language - something that a lot of people would agree with - is being conflated with not accepting a lot of perfectly ordinary, polite words - something most of us would be upset at. Even though the second practice is basically imaginary, it’s managed to make it a lot harder to call people out on their use of actual offensive language. It’s become so tremendously popular to be “un-PC” that people are now congratulated for being offensive. It’s truly ridiculous - look at how people go around railing against “political correctness”. How could the “politically correct” possibly be some sort of force in society when they’re so obviously such a tiny, tiny minority? This is the sort of thing the Republican party has done so well over the years - convince a large, powerful group that they’re somehow being oppressed by an imaginary crowd of effete academic types, stir them up with down-home ideas like “Call a spade a spade”, and convince them that they’re the downtrodden minority. It’s what they’ve done with Fundamentalist Christianity - stir up a whole crowd of people until you manage to convince them that they’re being oppressed if they can’t put their religious texts on the walls of courtrooms, and you got their votes. This backlash against “political correctness” has been incredibly insidious, because people buy into it regardless of their political affiliation, and it somehow convinces the 95% of people who buy into it that they’re some kind of edgy, oppressed minority - so you watch people jump on the bandwagon while congratulating themselves on how they’re “taking a stand”.
It’s amazing. And it’s amazing that so few people are able to see through it.
That depends heavily on the circumstances. No one’s ass should be fired on the first offense, at least. But almost any taboo language is acceptable with at least some of the people it describes under certain circumstances. I would laugh if a close friend called me a faggot. But if a shop clerk decides they have some privilege to do so because they “aren’t biased against anybody, honest!” then they’re in for a rude awakening if they say it to me. (Fortunately, most people have the sense not to use language like that.)
No one’s trying to restrict anybody’s use of any terms. You’re not being “oppressed” if you face the natural social consequences of your actions.
United States Department of Education
Washington, D.C.
May 4, 1993
Memorandum
TO: Office for Civil Rights Senior Staff
FROM: Jeanette J. Lim,
Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
SUBJECT: Language Reference to Persons with a Disability
“In addition, please avoid using phrases such as “the deaf,” “the mentally retarded,” or “the blind.” The only exception to this policy involves instances where the outdated phraseology is contained in a quote or a title, or in legislation or regulations; it is then necessary to use the citation verbatim.”
So you can see, this is not exaggerated, it is real. People are told we must avoid certain words, and use others instead. I mentioned my friend who is going blind. She says she deals with this quite often. She is getting her PHD and has been told over and over by her teachers, who aren’t blind, that she needs to stop using the word blind. The article is from about 15 years ago. And this continues to go on. The National Federation of the Blind is ok with the word blind, but the government says don’t use it. My friend’s teachers are saying don’t use it.
And I won’t say my friends aren’t “nutjobs.” They truly mean well. They get this from sensitivity training in school. I wrote about this particular friend in a thread about racism ( I don’t know how to link to the post, but here is part of what I wrote that I am referring to here:
"The other day I was called out by a friend for what she considered was a racist remark I made. She knows me well enough to know I am not a racist. But in her world, what I said was racist, and she wanted me to know that I shouldn’t say such things, because others who didn’t know me well would assume I was a racist if they overheard my remark.
I told her I thought she had gone over the edge, and by nit-picking every word I used, she is actually hurting her cause. She disagreed, and started to think perhaps I was racist. Things went downhill from there. I told her she was nuts if she could throw out all she knew about me for all these years, and judge me a racist based on one sentance. She thought that was how racism should be fought, by focusing on the subtle hints of racism that people who think they aren’t racist sometimes say, exposing what they really are. She thought by pointing out my racist remark, I could then face my racist tendencies, and then correct them. She just wanted to help me be a better person, and was surprised I didn’t appreciate her help.
And what was it I said that revealed to her my hidden racist thoughts? When I told her about a party I was having, and she asked who else I invited, I ran off the list of names I could think of. I mentioned a name she didn’t know, she asked who he was. I saw him sitting at the bar on the other side of the room, and pointed to him and said, “I guess you haven’t met my friend Dan yet, he is the black guy at the end of the bar.”
That is what exposed me as a closet racist in her mind. Number one, I shouldn’t have referred to his race at all, she said. He happened to be the only black guy around there. He was wearing jeans and a college sweatshirt, just like all the other guys he was sitting with. It would have seemed silly to me to try to single him out by using anything else. “The guy with the jeans and U of L sweatshirt, dark hair, brown eyes.” would have described pretty much everyone down at that end of the bar. I chose what was the most likely thing for her to notice, the one black guy in a group of non-black guys.
Number two, she said I was wrong to call him “black”, I should have said African American. I told her if she was going to call racism on ridiculous things, I would to. I told her she was racist for assuming just because he was black( the word he always uses when needing to describe his race) he was an African American. Isn’t that what racism is? When you assume something about someone because of the color of their skin? Instead of focusing the individual, you focus and draw conclusions based on what you know, or have heard, about other members of the group they belong to. I told her I felt a need to point out her own racism, so she could be a better person. This did not go over with her at all. She was very offended I called her a racist. At least she knew how I felt."
Since I posted about that, this particular friend has changed her ways. She now agrees she was over the edge. But those ideas were taught to her in college. And I do know of others that still jump on people anytime they hear a word they were taught was “wrong” now.
And I came across it many times when my father was in a wheelchair. I would take him to therapy, and when I used the word “handicapped,” the therapist said I should use the word disabled instead. That made no sense then, it makes no sense now.
Perhaps I have had more encounters with people who correct my words because I am connected to several of the groups that these words are intended to protect. And I also have many friends that are in school and currently being taught this stuff. But it does happen, and often enough to me that I know that it is not imaginary.
Sorry. Indeed that’s what you were talking about; I sorta drifted into the frequent claims that professors “indoctrinate” students with liberal views. I guess it’s hard for me to see how you could prove that students are intolerant of other people’s politics; I don’t doubt that it happens sometimes but it’s not particularly been my experience that it happens a lot.
But that’s the thing I’m challenging here. My understanding is that “politically correct” actually did arise as an expression in leftist circles to describe people whose views were, well, “correct” - but in the sense that I might pretend that my views on whatever issue are inherently “correct” and everyone who disagrees is incorrect. But it strikes me as a phrase that was almost certainly tongue-in-cheek - who, with a straight face, would describe political views as “correct” and “incorrect” the way math problems are? Obviously some people are more strident than others in their beliefs; some people probably do approach that point, but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone using such a perfectly absurd term seriously.
It’s been popularized, though, as essentially a demonization of the left, and particularly of the academic left. One thing that becomes obvious in academia, especially in the humanities, is that there is a major anti-establishment streak, which means that people are encouraged to have unorthodox views. Argument and debate should be at the core of academic life - and, from what I’ve seen (and I’m only an undergrad; perhaps the indoctrination starts later on), argument is a pretty treasured aspect of academia. (I keep referencing academia because in my experience the term “politically correct” seems heavily associated with the aforementioned escargot-driving, Volvo-listening, NPR-eating ivory tower stereotype.)
I don’t think there’s some particular group or power enforcing “correct” politics; on the contrary, I think it’s an entirely fallacious idea, and I think the term is an effective bit of propaganda put out to encourage people to think there is such a force. The notion of actual “correct” thinking is a scary one indeed - but that idea has been ascribed to the left by the right; it’s not a common viewpoint in leftist thought as far as I’ve seen (at least, no moreso than in any school of thought.)
Mostly, though, I’m just sick of people congratulating themselves for being “politically incorrect”. Wow, way to take a stand and jump on the bandwagon with everyone else, dude. I’m, like, impressed and shit.
I can’t quite understand how you can denyt it when it’s there in black (purple) and white in your citation; there was a growing discontent with the term ‘black’ amongst black Americans of African heritage, resulting in a new term arising.
But this discussion has already turned into a simple case of “yes it is”/“no it isn’t”. I can’t even be bothered anymore.
Except that it says no such thing. Your own link contains the entire memo, and they don’t take issue with the use of the word “blind”. They just ask that phrases first stress the individuality of the person, and then their disability. In other words, “the blind” is not recommended, while “people who are blind” is just peachy.
As an aside, in many cases the “PC” term is actually far more accurate of a description. “Deaf” connotates images of people who hear absolutely no sound, when in reality many people suffer from various levels of hearing loss, thus “hearing impaired” is much more accurate. The same scale applies to many impairments.
You missed something here. It’s generally considered stylistically preferable to describe groups as, say, “blind people” rather than “the blind”. “Gay people” is definitely more polite than “the gay” (or “the gays”, or whatever). That’s the issue that this sentence is discussing; it’s considered politer not to regard a group of people as nothing but whatever their minority status is.
I have to wonder whether this is as garbled in transmission as the previous example you gave. At any rate, as the saying goes, any fool can make a rule, and any fool can follow it. If her teachers really are unreasonably telling her what to call herself, that’s pretty objectionable. But I have to wonder what the original circumstances were and how often it happened - my experience, and it certainly hasn’t been contradicted by anything in this thread, is that such things are frequently so heavily exaggerated that it’s hard to figure out the original story.
Funny how the anti-PC seem to be just as likely as the supposedly PC (though no one yet has turned up who identifies themself as PC) to engage in that silliness. Haven’t we seen people earlier in this thread talk about how they see others as “human” and are apparently [del]blind[/del] visually-impaired as to any other characteristics those “humans” possess?
Obviously it’s sometimes necessary to note a person’s skin color, sexual orientation, height, disability, and so forth. If some people are so ridiculously hypersensitive that they give lectures to anyone else who happens to so much as notice someone’s skin color, then they’re ridiculous idiots. Isn’t the problem, then, ridiculous idiots? There’s a lot of them out there. You should see the roads.
Ahh, yes, back to that old “indoctrinated in college” canard. Funny how my college forgot to indoctrinate me.
You should use whatever term your father prefers. Again, I’
Perhaps I have had more encounters with people who correct my words because I am connected to several of the groups that these words are intended to protect. And I also have many friends that are in school and currently being taught this stuff. But it does happen, and often enough to me that I know that it is not imaginary.
[/QUOTE]
I am entirely in agreement that companies and government agencies should not use thug tactics to scare people into using politically correct terms. If anyone ever attempts to impose such a policy in my department, I’ll fight back. I started the thread more to discuss political correctness by social pressure rather than authoritarian means.
In certain cases, changing to a new term is a good thing if it redirects people’s thinking. It may be useful to remember that there was a time when “moron”, “imbecile”, and “idiot” were the official and proper terms for people in certain IQ ranges. “Retarded” was introduced to replace those, and then we eventually moved to “mentally challenged”. Thus, “retarted” is just as much a term designed for inoffensiveness as “mentally challenged”.
The relevant fact is that some mentally challenged people are capable of achieving independent living. And if we see that as a worthwhile goal–as hopefully we all do–then we should pick terms that encourage viewing them that way. “Mentally challenged” inherently suggests a person who has difficulty reaching average human mental functionality, but doesn’t put limits on what they can do. The original terms “moron”, “imbecile”, “idiot” had come to suggest an absolutely worthless person. “Retarded” is an improvement, but still carries the suggestion of inherent inability to function in a normal way.
Is “mentally challenged” less honest than “retarded”? Individual judgements may vary, but in some cases we could surely agree that it is. In other cases, however, it’s useful, whether honest or not. If you’re dealing with a child growing up who’s in the higher range of mental abilities among the mentally challenged, then using “mentally challenged” helps remind their family and others than independent existence is an reachable goal.
All I’ve maintained is that A-A was originally coined to describe a particular ethnic group separate and apart from other black ethnic groups. That doesn’t mean that “black” is wrong or offensive to most blacks, nor does it mean that it was intended to replace black as a catch-all term for any person of sub-Saharan African descent. There will always be a place in our collective vocabulary for “black” and that is specifically because it is not synonymous with A-A, despite what some people may prefer to call themselves.
Overall, I just haven’t seen it. And to a certain extent, it seems to me that a lot of universities have spots for particularly outrageous academics - whatever their particular political views. There’s a number of pretty visible liberal wackjobs in faculty positions at a lot of schools, but there’s plenty of people whose ideas are pretty starkly opposed to the “accepted” standardsr who still have faculty positions. Camille Paglia enraged a lot of feminists when she wrote some things about rape that were really unpopular at the time, but she didn’t get kicked out of her office. (Incidentally, if you track down that essay - it’s pretty infamous, but I’ve forgotten the name - it doesn’t seem all that outrageous nowadays.).jpg){kind=link}