What are your thoughts on "political correctness"?

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about 5 years ago, when it was christmas time in australia, the shopping malls had piped christmas songs playing, and the TV ads had a christmas jingle kind of flavour, there was christmas "cheer" in schools and generally on the streets, and there were yuletide decorations everywhere. people had christmas decorations and lights on their houses. shopping centres had christmas trees in them and there was a very large christmas tree in martin place (a plaza in sydney)

last year (the first year i actually noticed), there were no christmas carols to be heard anywhere (TV, shopping centres etc) and most schools have banned the singing of christmas carols out of "respect" for the middle eastern "community". the schools who stubbornly refuse to surrender their culture are lambasted by middle eastern people on talk back radio and on public forums for their "disrespect". there were no public decorations in public places and some houses that had christmas lights on them were deemed offensive by councils who ordered them to be removed.

i have no interest in christmas so i did not care about the lack of the christmas feeling, but i was mildly annoyed that people from overseas are changing the way of life in australia because they are offended that the country that accepted them continues to have it's own tradition "regardless of the growing proportion of inhabitants from different cultures".

i do not think we should surrender our culture because it offends muslims who do not recognize christmas.
they have schools that preclude non muslims but we have no schools that preclude muslims as it would be unthinkable (i agree)

they have mosques where non muslims are not permitted to "tresspass" on their grounds, but there are no non muslim churches that exclude muslims.

it is not a level playing field because people who are not of australian heritage are treated with kid gloves at the expense of preserving our traditional way of life.

even with what i have already said, i expect to be called racist and bigoted and that is my point.
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me and my father used to fish for "black" fish. they were called that because they were mainly "black". political correctness was responsible for their renaming to "ludericks" because "black fish" was deemed to be an offensive name.
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my family had a recreational property near a town called "black head" , and political correctness forced it to be renamed "hallidays point"

why is the word "black" now the property of black people?
why is the word "gay" now the property of homosexuals?

there was once a childrens song we sung in primary school that was worded
"kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
merry merry king of the bush is he
laugh kookaburra laugh kookaburra
gay your life must be".

it was changed due to political correctness to

"kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
merry merry king of the bush is he
laugh kookaburra laugh kookaburra
fun your life must be".

good grief!

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i was listening to talk back radio the other day as i was driving home from katoomba, and the female radio host smelled a potential scandal concerning one of her callers sentiments, and she insanely rejected his ideas and became hostile toward him for expressing what many people really think. i have a very good memory, so will provide a transcript of the conversation.

the hosts name is "poppy savakis". the caller was an older australian called "john" who i guessed was in his late 60's. he had a drawling accent

poppy: hello john. what would you like to talk about today?

john: i just want to talk about how our society is being changed by immigrants who refuse to learn our language and conform to our way of life.

poppy: really? (! !) what immigrants are you referring to?

john: well i suppose i'm talking about people who make no effort to learn english, and they don't assimilate, and they set up enclaves.

poppy: really? why is that important to you?

john: well.. i guess it's because they impose their demands on us to change the way we live to suit their requirements.

poppy: what nationalities are you talking about?

john: well the middle eastern people and indians and asians who never make any effort to learn our language and...

poppy: why should they have to learn our language john? is our language any better than their language?

john: well of course not, but after all they are living in our country and....

poppy: "our" country??! !??

john: well i guess yes.

poppy: what make it "our" country john?

john: we've been established for donkeys years and...

poppy: and so that makes them inferior?!?

john: no not at all. i'm just trying to say that we had a free and easy way of life here and it's changing so fast that...

poppy: so john, are you saying they don't deserve a "free and easy" way of life according to their values ?!

john: that's not what i'm trying to say at all. i'm all for people from other cultures coming here, but it shows a level of disrespect when they don't even bother to try to learn english at all...

poppy: so john, are you saying that english is a superior language to their native languages?

john: no... i'm saying that australia is an english speaking country and if they can't speak it then they can not integrate with ....

poppy: sorry john, but i think what your saying is quite racist!!

john: but if we can't understand what they're saying then....

poppy: then their words are less valid?!?! is english is the only language that is valid?!?

john: the way it's going, we will be in the minority, and they will have the power of the vote and we won't even know what they are voting for because...

poppy: sorry john! at the moment they are in the minority, and i sense you're unwilling to to let them have equality.

john: well, australia has always been easy going and they want to change the way australia is and...

poppy: sorry john! i find your comments to be quite offensive. why do you think the "australian way" is the only way to be?

john: well because it is australia and...

poppy: and i suppose you think it's better than other ways to be? why do you think the australian way is better than the ways of other cultures?!?

john: well we are becoming a minority in our own country and...

poppy: hold it right there john!! they have been in the minority for too long! i embrace multiculturalism and i welcome the change of our culture!! it's time that everyone has a say!

john: yes but if i do not understand what they say then i have no say if i am in the minority.....

poppy: which is exactly the position they are in right now john!! maybe you should learn their language!! what do you think about that!?!?

john: but what i am trying to say is...

poppy: thanks for your call john. hello michael.

michael: hello poppy....etc etc.

poppy will never elicit accusations of racism.

@Skilpadde: even the term Oriental is un-PC in the UK. I have no idea why. But there is an actress called Barbara Windsor, older generation, and I think it was her, who I saw on a programme describing people from what used to be called the Orient, such as you described, as Oriental. The person she was talking to corrected her and said you couldn't refer to those people in that way. It used to be OK, it surely is a factually based term, and I don't know why it is un-PC now.

Even in movies you see black people refer to each other as [mod edit: racial slur removed] but it is considered highly racist for anyone else to use that name for them.

What you said about older books, we have that here too. Enid Blyton's children's books are very out of favour now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_blyton look under the section Controversies & revisions) because her terminology is considered old-fashioned and not PC any more.

We used to have a character that was used to sell marmalade called a "gollywog" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwogg) which they got rid of because it was considered un-PC and insulting towards black people. But there are probably loads of caracatures of white people used as marketing gimmicks which are allowed.

@B9: I can't believe that transcript! Savakis is a Greek name, it seems perhaps she was highly sensitive because of her family roots originating from outside of Australia. She completely distorted what the poor man said and barely gave him a chance to speak.

Also B9's transcript (which I don't want to re-copy because it's so long) reminds me of a time in high school where my very good English teacher got a reputation for being a racist beacuse she told some Chinese kids who were speaking Chinese to each other to only speak English in her class. It's an English class....you learn a lanuage better if you practice conversing in it. In French class we were told to only speak in Frech and no one called that racist.

Anyway I'm not against showing respect for or representation of different cultures but the way political corectness is sometimes used I do have a problem with. Some people use political corectness to refer to what's politically trendy and the respect and representation often does not extend to everyone-only those who it's politically trendy to symathize with.

b9 I wish I could say that the transcript surprises me, but I have heard somewhat similar things here, so it doesn't. We also have problem with Muslims being offended by our Christian traditions. I'm sure the Australian authorities, just like the Norwegian ones, refuse to see the problems we're starting to have.

Now they're demanding their own schools, which will really help integration. We already have children born here of immigrant parents, and by the time they start school, some of these children know little or no Norwegian. It shouldn't be possible to not know the language of the country you're born in. Women in jobs where they wear uniforms demand to use hijab. There was even talk about lowering the requirements in order to get more immigrants into the police force. A drawing of a pig had to be removed from a door on the children's wing of a hospital, because Muslim parents "couldn't" visit their children otherwise.

I remember in elementary school we had a ball in the classroom. The ball was for the entire class so if anyone wanted to play a ballgame during recess, they could not exclude anyone from our class. In 4th or 5th grade a bunch of us played football (soccer) together. Then some of the Pakistani boys in my class wanted to join. No one had any problem with that. Soon after the same boys took the ball and left us, and invited other Pakistani children to join them. When we went after them, they refused to give the ball back and refused to let us play with them. The next time we played, the same thing happened. The third time we told them they to get lost when they tried to join. Guess who got in trouble for “racism”? Yep, that'd be us Norwegians.

There was a Pakistani girl in my elementary school class who I played with occasionally, but we stopped playing because she was beaten at home for playing outside. Her brother was allowed to play as long as he played with Pakistani boys.

That’s the only type of ‘racism’ I have seen immigrants be subjected to. It makes me go "yeah right!" whenever I hear someone claim racism because I have seen too many false accusations, so I tend to not believe them. They're ruining for themselves.
I have seen a bit of racism from them though, both towards other immigrant groups, Jews and ethnic Norwegians.
There was a nightclub in Norway where there was a problem that third world male immigrants wouldn't respect the Norwegian guards of the place. But according to the news story, it had a "happy" ending: They hired some immigrant guards, and they listened to them so the that 'solved' the problem. WTF? It solved the problem?? I can imagine the outcry if Norwegians refused to listen to something a POC authority figure said! Incidents like that should be a huge red flag for our authorities!

There's a recent case in the UK where Moslem men were regularly gang raping underage British girls over a period of years. The police were apparently loathe to investigate because of the race issue. I read that one of the rapists said that it wasn't a big deal to rape British girls because it wouldn't ruin their lives like it would for Moslem girls.

From http://www.siotw.org/modules/news_engli ... itemid=966

From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... tions.html

Can you imagine someone receiving a suspended sentence raping little girls because they didn't know it was wrong?

From http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfiel ... was-wrong/:

Well, I'm asking for it with this, but I for one hate to hear people of unknown gender referred to as "he" or "men", humans referred to as "mankind", etc. I know what it is supposed to mean, and it is still a slap in the face. I know there are women who don't feel this way but I'm under no obligation to feel the same way they do. I hear things literally even when I know what they mean, and what I hear is "you don't exist" or "you aren't a real person".

On a similar note I would never assume or expect all black people, all gay people, etc. to feel the same as the most unflappable among them.