Political correctness

[Azure-Supernova]

There's a particular reason I don't like the types of Political Correctness we're discussing in this forum. It's degrading and condescending. I understand that people of different skin colours get insulted and offended by certain names that have been adopted; but what I don't understand is why lengths are taken to side step acceptable terms.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel that black and white are acceptable terms to describe the colour of someone's skin. I'm not offended when someone calls me white and the number of black friends I've had haven't been offended (and rather prefer) to be referred to as black.
The way I see it is that if you're purposely avoiding calling someone black and instead refer to them as 'coloured' or 'afro-britain'; isn't that equally as (if not more than) offensive as calling them black? Because you've acknowledged that the person is black and yet you're purposely avoiding it.

Political Correctness; no matter how blown out of proportion it may be, puts the taboo on the very word it's trying to avoid simply by enforcing the PC term. For a slightly different example I have an acquaintence who purposely refers to woman as 'females' to avoid calling them women or ladies.

A Serious Question For Women: Would you rather be called a lady/girl/lass/woman/gal over simply being referred to as 'female'. Maybe it's just me, but that bugs me to no end.

 

[Necrofudge]

I try to follow political correctness when talking about race and minorities, but other than that, I don't care a bit about it.

When someone says that I "shouldn't say the R word" I laugh at them and call them a child.
My logic here is that, unlike with the other groups, using the word "retard" supposedly insults a group of people incapable of comprehending that they've been insulted. (I use the word supposedly because when I was growing up, mentally retarded was the proper term to call them).
I guess family of said "mentally handicapped individual" might be insulted though, so I apologize in advance.

I think that the gender neutral idea for words is kind of stupid but I've never bothered anyone since I always say firefighter and police officer in place of fireman and policeman anyway.

As for the physical impairment thing, I've never had that be an issue so far. I would just say that the person can't hear or see.

 

[tzimize]

But baa baa rainbow sheep doesn't even fit. . .

What about 'the gays'?!?! Rainbow sheep. Clearly homophobic Lolololol!

This. If someone wants to take offense, they will damn well find a way no matter WHAT you say. Political correctness...blarg...just about the only thing on earth that ticks me off as much as rap music.

Sigh. People. Think how far we could have come if people werent so god damn stupid.

 

[Madman123456]

Well, some of those new terms have at least some functionality. "Indians" may be confused with "Indians"...
Ok, Native Americans can hardly be confused with People from India.
There are Firemen and Firewomen, and they all fight against Fires. So Firefighter isn't too bad.
What i don't like is "African American". Used for everyone that has enough pigment in his skin too suggest that somewhere in his ancestry, some People from Africa may be found.

Used also for People that don't even know where and when their Ancestors came from Africa. Maybe their Ancestors came from elsewhere. The People who are called "African American" may have as much to do with Africa as i do and i'm as white as the background of this Page.

Why aren't the Whities that came to america called "European Americans"? Bleh.

 

[Merkavar]

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"

i will never say baa baa rainbow sheep and i will laugh at anyone who does. i dont really care about people saying deaf or hearing impaired. i dont really care either way.

But changing a song that have been taught to to people for hundreds of years is just taking it too far.

Why is black sheep bad? is being black bad? it has nothing to do with black people so i dont see why it needs to be changed. its a freaking black sheep, is it a black sheep in the nursery rhyme because its just a black sheep or is it because its a black sheep as in not part of the herd, the outsider?

 

[Marik Bentusi]

It's stupid, but then again society is full of stupid social rules and rituals.

 

[Cogwheel]

It's occasionally taken a bit too far, but personally - and given the site's general opinion, I suspect I'll get burned at stake for this - I'm glad it exists. Nice to have, after being stuck with the polar opposite for entirely too long.

Besides, it's fun. Why call someone short when you can call them altitudinally/vertically challenged?

 

[Voodoomancer]

Some instances of political correctness are justified, but others are just plain stupid.

Like how "negro" has been use as a derogatory term.
Or how some terms have transformed from their original meaning, like "retard" or "bastard".
But how is "deaf" or "blind" demeaning?? o,0 "visually challenged" just sounds retarded mentally challenged.

 

[Merkavar]

It's occasionally taken a bit too far, but personally - and given the site's general opinion, I suspect I'll get burned at stake for this - I'm glad it exists. Nice to have, after being stuck with the polar opposite for entirely too long.

Besides, it's fun. Why call someone short when you can call them altitudinally/vertically challenged?

i dont think most people have a problem with PC, they have a problem with it going to far. like changing the name of black boards to chalk boards or not being able to say black coffee.

PC is a good thing, its stops people using racial slurs in publics etc. But when it forces people to use crazy words to be PC then thats when people hate it.

 

[Cogwheel]

It's occasionally taken a bit too far, but personally - and given the site's general opinion, I suspect I'll get burned at stake for this - I'm glad it exists. Nice to have, after being stuck with the polar opposite for entirely too long.

Besides, it's fun. Why call someone short when you can call them altitudinally/vertically challenged?

i dont think most people have a problem with PC, they have a problem with it going to far. like changing the name of black boards to chalk boards or not being able to say black coffee.

PC is a good thing, its stops people using racial slurs in publics etc. But when it forces people to use crazy words to be PC then thats when people hate it.

That's what I thought for a while. Somewhat less sure now, with all the people I see going on about how it should be abandoned as a concept so slurs and whatnot can be used left and right. Common reasons: It's funny/the intent matters, not the words used/"it's a word, it's only offensive because you're told it is" etc.

Don't like it, myself, but that sort of thing is why I expected to catch a fair bit of flak for my comment. That said, yes, the examples you mentioned are quite ridiculous.

 

[Woodsey]

"Political correctness" is an overblown phenomenon, mostly bandied about by the right to avoid talking about actual issues. It's otherwise totally insignificant.

Arrest this man, for he has stolen my thoughts!

 

[Benny Blanco]

Someday, the word banana will be politically incorrect, because it will have become a slur for some group of people. We will no longer be able to say banana, because banana is offensive.

****** used to mean branch or twig, and it was also the name of a type of meatball. Now, that word can only be used on /b/.

Banana is already a derisory term for East Asians who "act white".

See also "Oreo" and "coconut" for darker-skinned people who act white.

The implication is that the people are one colour on the outside but white on the inside.

Although I've never heard the opposite ("lychee", perhaps?) used of white people who act in a way usually associated with another race.

 

[farscythe]

Well, some of those new terms have at least some functionality. "Indians" may be confused with "Indians"...
Ok, Native Americans can hardly be confused with People from India.

umm i may be completely wrong on this. but isnt that exactly why they are called indians in the first place vaguely remember something bout columbus landing there thinking it was india

 

[Wintermoot]

its starting too get pretty stupid outside the US too for example you cant say "Flikkerlichtje" because flikker is the equivelant of fag (curse word for gay people not british for cigaret) in English eventhough the term is widely accepted
I still use it I HATE PC nes we already used the terms/rimes/songs etc. so why change it?
PS
in some cases African-American is actualy discriminating because you asume the person lives in America and comes from Africa Obama is a prime example he comes from Hawaii that makes him a American not African-American (his ancestors come from Indonesia)

 

[Sonic Doctor]

*Snip*

Political correctness isn't just mucking up words and all. It is also messing up any kind of interaction, normal concepts of life.

Lots of school examples, where harmless things that are normal with life are determined to be oh'so harmful to a child growing up in the world:

Back in the day, when kids did exceptionally well in school they would get special perks because they worked hard. Like getting a sticker, or when I was in elementary school in one grade, don't remember which(since all the grades I was in had different reward systems), if I got an A on an assignment, I would get a sticker on a card on the wall, everybody had there own card. Once I got five stickers, I got a small piece of candy. Of I filled up a whole card, something like 25 stickers, I would get a whole candy bar.

Nowadays(from what I have heard from my nieces and nephews), one school gave out rewards for anything and everything. The kid that gets a 100% on the test gets the same sticker as a kid that fails. This is because of the PC thought that we can't have the kid that failed feel bad and not get anything and have to see the 100% kid get something he doesn't. So the like the 100% kid, the failure kid, gets a sticker because he wrote his name correctly and did well on one or two questions of the test.

The problem with that is that it shows the students a false picture of life that they are going to get the same outcome in life whether they succeed or slack off, slide through or fail.

Then there is the other side of the spectrum, one nephew of mine said that there are no rewards at school. If you do good, you just do good, nobody gets anything, their are no incentives to do better. Now some might say that pass the grade and moving on in life is the incentive, but really I never knew many grade school kids that saw that as an incentive to do better, heck I didn't see it that way when I was in school. But, they don't want to make one kid look better than the others.

The problem with this is that kids need something to strive for; they need to know that in life they are going to be rewarded for their successes. Do well on some assignments, get candy. Just like if people work hard at jobs they can get promotions or raises to get more money.

Other place where this PC idiocy has corrupted our schools is in the lunchroom. I've heard from girl, when I was in college, about her sister who was still in high school. She said that at her sister's school, people that brought their own lunches to school weren't allowed to have special items in the lunch, like cookies, cake, candy, or any other thing that make other students mad or sad that they don't have such things. We can't have students that are poor that only can afford the cheap school lunches to feel bad because other people have things that they can't have.

Example in that school: Some parents that had time off of work like a lunch break would come over to the school and bring their kid something from in town. The girl I was talking to, said that her mother on Fridays would bring to the sister a Subway sandwich for lunch. But when the stupid policy took effect, students couldn't have fast food or other restaurant food in their lunches. Somebody might feel bad that they didn't get to have the Subway sandwich that the girl had. The mother ended up getting around it, by taking off the Subway wrapper and wrapping it up in aluminum foil.

The whole mentality is that, we shouldn't let kids see that other kids have better things.

Hmmm, well I thought that was a part of life(which it is). Kids need to understand that other people in life will have better things. It is a point to get a kid to work harder and strive to do better, because if they do that, they can one day be able to have nice things and allow their kids to have nice things for lunch.

This whole PC thing in schools is a way to control people. It removes motivation and something to strive for. Why try and succeed if you get nothing tangible out of it. It treats people like fragile eggs. It punishes students by not letting them have the normal things they get to have in there lives away from school.

That is why if I ever have kids, I will never send them to a school that makes them wear a uniform. It puts on the air that everybody is the same and nobody is different. Everybody is even and proper and must fall in line and there is no room for kids being creative with who they are to make themselves stand out and get noticed.

I also saw this starting to show when I was in little league basketball. In the first 60% of the time I was in little league basketball, only the championship team got trophies. Then it slowly started to change. The next season the losing team in the championship got trophies as well. Then the next season the third team from the top would also get trophies. Then all teams in the league would get some kind of trophy. The winning trophy use to be the biggest trophy, then it started to get smaller and smaller, and then you could barely distinguish the championship trophy from the runner up and the "you did your best" loser trophies. They just couldn't have kids on the other teams feel bad that they didn't make it as far in the play offs or win as much, because that would be just terrible.

This stuff just makes me sick.

If this whole concept of political correctness was a real thing that I could hold, I would grab it and rush to the nearest incinerator and throw it in.

 

[Madman123456]

... umm i may be completely wrong on this. but isnt that exactly why they are called indians in the first place vaguely remember something bout columbus landing there thinking it was india

exactly. Columbus thought he arrived in india, so the people who met him must be indians.

If only they had known...

 

[Sonic Doctor]

"Political correctness" is an overblown phenomenon, mostly bandied about by the right to avoid talking about actual issues. It's otherwise totally insignificant.

???????

Let's see, a common thought about the right is that they are in bed with big business, the right doesn't want people to be equal, that they are the rich that want people to be lower than them, that want a hierarchy that is leveled where some people are lower than others.(Thought that is a fact of life, some people will be lower than others, right or left).

But then we have political correctness which is a tool to keep everybody level and nice to each other, that people all people even the rich, aren't allowed to stand out because it could be hurtful to the lower people. It's a tool really of the left.

Spoiler: See my talk on what I have encountered with PC in schools and other things.

Political correctness isn't just mucking up words and all. It is also messing up any kind of interaction, normal concepts of life.

Lots of school examples, where harmless things that are normal with life are determined to be oh'so harmful to a child growing up in the world:

Back in the day, when kids did exceptionally well in school they would get special perks because they worked hard. Like getting a sticker, or when I was in elementary school in one grade, don't remember which(since all the grades I was in had different reward systems), if I got an A on an assignment, I would get a sticker on a card on the wall, everybody had there own card. Once I got five stickers, I got a small piece of candy. Of I filled up a whole card, something like 25 stickers, I would get a whole candy bar.

Nowadays(from what I have heard from my nieces and nephews), one school gave out rewards for anything and everything. The kid that gets a 100% on the test gets the same sticker as a kid that fails. This is because of the PC thought that we can't have the kid that failed feel bad and not get anything and have to see the 100% kid get something he doesn't. So the like the 100% kid, the failure kid, gets a sticker because he wrote his name correctly and did well on one or two questions of the test.

The problem with that is that it shows the students a false picture of life that they are going to get the same outcome in life whether they succeed or slack off, slide through or fail.

Then there is the other side of the spectrum, one nephew of mine said that there are no rewards at school. If you do good, you just do good, nobody gets anything, their are no incentives to do better. Now some might say that pass the grade and moving on in life is the incentive, but really I never knew many grade school kids that saw that as an incentive to do better, heck I didn't see it that way when I was in school. But, they don't want to make one kid look better than the others.

The problem with this is that kids need something to strive for; they need to know that in life they are going to be rewarded for their successes. Do well on some assignments, get candy. Just like if people work hard at jobs they can get promotions or raises to get more money.

Other place where this PC idiocy has corrupted our schools is in the lunchroom. I've heard from girl, when I was in college, about her sister who was still in high school. She said that at her sister's school, people that brought their own lunches to school weren't allowed to have special items in the lunch, like cookies, cake, candy, or any other thing that make other students mad or sad that they don't have such things. We can't have students that are poor that only can afford the cheap school lunches to feel bad because other people have things that they can't have.

Example in that school: Some parents that had time off of work like a lunch break would come over to the school and bring their kid something from in town. The girl I was talking to, said that her mother on Fridays would bring to the sister a Subway sandwich for lunch. But when the stupid policy took effect, students couldn't have fast food or other restaurant food in their lunches. Somebody might feel bad that they didn't get to have the Subway sandwich that the girl had. The mother ended up getting around it, by taking off the Subway wrapper and wrapping it up in aluminum foil.

The whole mentality is that, we shouldn't let kids see that other kids have better things.

Hmmm, well I thought that was a part of life(which it is). Kids need to understand that other people in life will have better things. It is a point to get a kid to work harder and strive to do better, because if they do that, they can one day be able to have nice things and allow their kids to have nice things for lunch.

This whole PC thing in schools is a way to control people. It removes motivation and something to strive for. Why try and succeed if you get nothing tangible out of it. It treats people like fragile eggs. It punishes students by not letting them have the normal things they get to have in there lives away from school.

That is why if I ever have kids, I will never send them to a school that makes them wear a uniform. It puts on the air that everybody is the same and nobody is different. Everybody is even and proper and must fall in line and there is no room for kids being creative with who they are to make themselves stand out and get noticed.

I also saw this starting to show when I was in little league basketball. In the first 60% of the time I was in little league basketball, only the championship team got trophies. Then it slowly started to change. The next season the losing team in the championship got trophies as well. Then the next season the third team from the top would also get trophies. Then all teams in the league would get some kind of trophy. The winning trophy use to be the biggest trophy, then it started to get smaller and smaller, and then you could barely distinguish the championship trophy from the runner up and the "you did your best" loser trophies. They just couldn't have kids on the other teams feel bad that they didn't make it as far in the play offs or win as much, because that would be just terrible.

This stuff just makes me sick.

If this whole concept of political correctness was a real thing that I could hold, I would grab it and rush to the nearest incinerator and throw it in.

I found out that all those things that were implemented in the schools and other events, were brought about by people on the left, who thought their kid shouldn't be seen as bad compared to the successful students or players, or get hurt buy not being equal in some aspect.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

...Wait...Baa Baa....RAINBOW SHEEP?!?!

How the hell is black sheep offensive? There ARE black sheep, ya know. And it's not an insult to those of darker skin, is it?

....Sheez...Rainbow sheep...Now kids will believe rainbow sheep exist, and the rhyme will get all screwed up. >_>

 

[Sonic Doctor]

*Snip*

So much effort and yet you say nothing.

Well, I brought sickening facts from my experiences growing up, and the experiences of family and friends.

Saying what I did was well worth it.

Besides, why say anything to me at all, when you didn't bring anything to this.

You didn't bring anything to the table, while I brought concrete point after point. Why, in the future, should my kids not be able to bring the food they want for lunch to school? Why should the kid that fails get a reward?

Because the other kids that don't do well or get the things they want will feel bad is not an answer.

A world where success is brought down to be level with failure because of political correctness, to protect children from feeling bad(so that they don't experience the facts of life), isn't a world that I or any of my family and friends want to live in.

 

[Dirkie]

Political correctness can be cured with a big enough dose of brutal honesty.
I'm not going to bother to read all the posts to see if someone said this earlier, and if someone did - good, but i didn't read it so there.
I can be political correct, but that will end up telling you that i might be in some ways a little difficult to deal with, usually me being a complete loon, misunderstanding things and telling you and your direct superiors (or mine) to A: go find omeplace else to play, or B: i'm doing it my way no matter what you want me to do (autism has it's advantages).
The best thing is probably looking for BRIAN BLESSED in the first Blackadder series. "You want the diplomatic or the honest answer?" "Diplomatic" "Tell them to stuff it."