Lethos said:
Why do you assume that black people would be offended to be called black?
I don't assume that
all will. I assume that
enough will to make it worthwhile to just avoid using this particular method of pointing people out in a crowd when there are other, better ways of doing so that are neither difficult nor inconveniencing.
I grew up in a small town in New England. It was about as close to a real-life "Leave it to Beaver" set as you could get. At the time I was in grade school only about 5% of my town's population was made up of various minorities. I grew up with everyone telling me the same stuff that's being said in this topic; that it's not offensive, that no one's going to be bothered by it, etc. I believed it, because at the time, I had no real-life experience to work with. I had to trust the wisdom of the people who had lived and experienced more than I had. Then I moved to Georgia for a few years, then moved to North Carolina where I attended university. Between my time in both states, where I had far more exposure to this sort of thing than I had back home in New England, I encountered enough instances of people telling me that it wasn't cool to do it - even when it's done in a friendly and respectful manner - that I made the decision - for myself - that I would try to set aside my upbringing to avoid an easily-avoidable situation where someone could become upset. I'm not telling people that they
have to handle things the same way I do. I'm telling people how
I handle things, because that's what the intent of this topic was.
People can call it being politically-correct. That's fine. I call it being a decent person who genuinely doesn't want to go around hurting other people's feelings - intentional or unintentional - especially when it's something like this which is so incredibly easy to avoid. If someone's going to go around behaving in a manner that upsets others for little reason other than trying not to be the dreaded 'politically correct' label, I really don't know what to say to them. I just find it pretty inconsiderate.