Political correctness

[Caligulove]

It fits in closely with censoring.

I think it would be better to teach kids context instead of just making our language so bland and neutral. Context and how something is used it what makes it offensive or hurtful for someone to hear- not the actual word, itself.

Trying to change the terms around just gives the original "wrong" forms more power and more reason to use them in a more derogatory manner, I think. This is entirely hearsay, but I have never met a black person who has actually preferred to be called an African-American, etc or other affected people that prefer to be called by their PC term.

I mean, I have a friend in Uni who can trace his family history back to slaves brought over nearly 300 years ago, while I'm from Sweden and a naturalized American. We're both American, yet I'm classified as "typical" American while he's still African-American, as if he's the immigrant. Ironic since his family has been here far longer than mine.

 

[iLikeHippos]

WE NEED THIS VIDEO (Hopefully not yet posted)


I rest my case with this, since I sincerely agree with him.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Back in my day political correctness was called politeness. And being "not PC" meant making an ass of yourself.

I guess those terms are no longer PC.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Political Correctness = Bullshit

I refuse to use P.C. terms or listen to people who insist on using them simply because they're worried about offending someone because they say "BLACK" or "INDIAN" instead of "African American" or "Native American". It's the 21st fucking century. If people are still offended by this, they can grow the fuck up already. I refuse to not say stuff like "Black Sheep", "Blackboard", "Black Light" etc. Why change it because someone of a different skin color insists it is meant to be offensive? It isn't! He's just an idiot!

(sorry to rant, but I've hated political correctness since the term was coined and I understood what it meant. There went my youth).

 

[cicaba]

"If a Black person wants to be called African American or an Indian wants to be called a Native then whats the big deal? Do you feel like you should have the authority to call them something they don't wish to just because you don't feel like it?"

Yes

I think political correctness is awful and thankfully it doesn't seem to do a lot right now.

 

[Verlander]

"Mentally challenged" in place of "Retard" and other terms
"African American" in place of "Black," "Negro" and other terms
"Native American" (or "First Nations" in Canada) in place of "Indian"
"Gender-neutral" terms such as "firefighter" in place of "fireman"
Terms relating to disability, such as "visually challenged" or "hearing impaired" in place of "blind" or "deaf"

Well, calling someone retarded is an insult, especially when you don't know exactly what their problem is. It's like accusing a person on a wheelchair of being lazy.

Calling someone "black" isn't politically incorrect, but calling someone a negro is pretty racist, considering the slave connotations.

Native Americans were called Indians by ignorant sailors who thought that they were in India, and kept on by the ignorant masses of American settlers who were not only disinterested in the natives, but also sought to actively decimate their population.

Gender neutral terms are only used in an official capacity, for example in paperwork, and calling someone blind or deaf isn't politically incorrect.

No one except for the media or gullible idiots use, or believe even half of the "political correctness" shite. It doesn't exist in the way that you are understanding it. Basically, real political correctness (which is a horrible term coined by Conservatives), is to stop discriminatory slurs. At best, such as in the example of the nursery rhyme in England, it's a sales pitch.

I have a friend who is a policeman, even though she is in fact a woman. Does she refer to herself any differently? No. Do we? No. Does her bosses? No. Frankly, on everyday life, it doesn't exist. If anyone thinks that it's taken over the world, or it's gone mad, then they are spending too much time reading papers or on the computer, and not enough time living.

The only people who moan about "political correctness", however, are the people looking for an excuse to find a way to insult others based on some arbitrary designation. If someone feels the need to insult someone based on something inconsequential, they are a failure of a human being, and are holding the gene pool back.

Im from the UK, PC is a cancer, I can say whiteboard but not blackboard

I live in the UK. I can safety say that what you have written is bull. Don't believe the papers.

Although if you want to call it a blackboard go right ahead. Although, I may point out that they are all, in fact, white.

 

[JoshGod]

How about bah bah white sheep?

 

[slightly evil]

Here is a News artical (from 2006) where Children are now being taught to sing "Bah bah rainbow Sheep" instead of "Bah bah Black Sheep"
(snip)

in fairness, baa baa black sheep is about slavery, maybe we should just not sing it instead of replacing it with something that doesn't even fit.
but i agree with replacing fireman/policeman, because it instills a mental image of men in positions of authority
although black board to chalk board is just stupid

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

But baa baa rainbow sheep is just offensive to gay people!

OT: Political correctness is bull shit. Everyone has such thin skin nowadays. Grow a pair.

 

[higgs20]

it's fucking ridiculous, it's spineless, it doesn't even make sense.
i say things the way they are, i will never call a blind person vision impaired because the term blink is not offensive.

my town no longer puts up Christmas lights to ensure we do not offend the non-Christians in our community, I say pretend they are Hanukkah lights, or dwili lights, but don't expect us to take them down.

 

[rutger5000]

For me any kind of political correctness that isn't regarding a handicap is wrong and harmful. It should be battled against, for it only causes people to drift away from each other.
There is a huge difference between politeness and respect.

 

[Sneeze]

Am I the only one that finds PC to be *more* offensive?

Oh no you can't say "******" or "queer" because that's offensive to homosexuals. I'm sorry did you just tell other people what I find offensive?

The word makes no difference, its the context its used. You can say something equally of offensive with a PC word in place of an offensive one, in fact in the situation of the first it just makes it sound pataronising to boot.

 

[darkman80723]

PC to me makes no sense simply from the fact that if I call someone ******, spic, fag etc...its a crime. But when someone calls me a honky, chalky, cracker, or hick....well thats ok and not discriminatory at all

 

[Arawn.Chernobog]

Political Correctness represses individual expression, thus it's a threat to personal rights and freedoms, 'nuff said.

PS: Even if the person is saying something like "You stupid negro", the person should still be allowed to his/her opinions and the ability to express them, no matter how idiotic or unfounded they may be, as long as these don't PHYSICALLY block someone else's liberties.

 

[meticadpa]

Actually, I think we're saying "black" now.

But yeah, I think political correctness has gone mad. It's best reflected in comedy: the majorly successful comedians now (at least in the UK) are a sea of vanilla, ITV, family comedians. They're no longer able to make jokes that they once would have. Some people are still pushing limits like Frankie Boyle, though.

 

[maturin]

Heard the word n****r or kike recently in polite or public society? Thank political correctness. It was from the start an earnest effort to change the language of a culture, because language has very real power, and it is impossible to effect necessary social change without changing the terms of public discourse.

The very term 'politically correct' was used by its detractors, and those who have most embraced the idea and the terminology as you know it are primarily corporations, businesses and spineless/overzealous public institutions. They are all petrified of our hyper-litigious culture, a problem that goes far beyond this one issue. Most ordinary people don't subscribe to the excessive and insincere propagation of political correctness that so many love to rag on.

But the detractors of political correctness go far beyond the pale. I've heard more veiled bigotry expressed by people ranting about how political correctness has victimized them than I care to relate. Political correctness has made racism cool again.

 

[Johnwesleyharding]

I think we need to define PC-ness.

Politically correct

? adj
demonstrating progressive ideals, esp by avoiding vocabulary that is considered offensive, discriminatory, or judgmental, esp concerning race and gender

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009

Key line: "avoiding vocabulary that is considered offensive, discriminatory, or judgmental, esp concerning race and gender". Political correctness is about not offending people. This is a good thing from an individualistic persective, because if you don't offend people, they tend to like you more. Ergo, people who like you have more potential to benefit you than people who don't like you.

This phenomenon has been labelled political correctness because, as well as helping some minorites reclaim their identity, it also helps a given politician to offend the least amount of people possible, and thus get the maximum amount of people to vote for the given politician (after policy, ideology, etc.).

Racism and sexism are bad for "races" (see people with "black" skin) and genders (see female) who have been historically repressed or are currently a minority. The goal with political correctness is to replace words that have offensive connotations with words that do not. The offensive connotations of words such as "******", "retard" and "******" come from the contexts in which they have been historically used. "******" was used by people trying to seriously deride people who had a different skin colour from, for having that skin colour. Retard has been used as an insult. Likewise, so has "******".

But this is where we hit dead-end. Why should people be offended? After all, why would a homosexual person be offended by being called "******", which effectively meant "homosexual" anyway? The simple answer to this question is the minority status of the offended groups.
Minority groups, put simply, are outnumbered by majority groups. If the label for their group, e.g. "retard" for mentally impaired people, starts becoming used as a label for bad things (e.g. "that movie was so retarded"), then they lose their sense of identity to a denotion for bad things in general. When your label becomes an insult, the insulting part of the label comes from the connotations attached to it by the minority. Eventually, it came to the point where calling a mentally impaired person "retarded" became insulting, not because it wasn't apt in a technical sense, but because of the implications attached to it by wider society. Thus, another label, free from these connotations was created.

Using the term retarded, although apt to describe things that are broken or disfunctional (by definiton of the word), was also the term for a minority group. The best thing that political correctness can do is to pick labels for minority groups (if labels must exist at all), that do not also correspond with negative things, whether the negative things are implicit or explicit. If over time the word begins to gain negative connotations, then the label should be scrapped. Sticks and stones do break bones, but words can attack something even more important without physically hurting a person. The mind.

 

[sarethed]

A friend of mine is blind, and he doesn't care about being called blind... hell, he calls the rest of our group "sighted people".

But then, our group is not big on being politically correct. As George Carlin said: its soft language!

 

[Kortney]

I'm with him. Nothing annoys me more than someone saying "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS GONE MAD!". Oh poor you. Are you upset because you can't use racist terms anymore? That must be awful.

 

[Bobbity]

Political correctness is just a way of avoiding real issues, but I also think that it exacerbates problems. If we didn't think about these things, they probably wouldn't be so much of an issue. However, because everyone is so damned determined to be politically correct - which isn't the same thing as merely being polite or respectful - then it becomes so much more of an issue.