What are your thoughts on "political correctness"?

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I think blackboard is more generic.

I have a whiteboard in my office (it used to be the conference room) and it is occasionally referred to as the blackboard.

This is discrimination! You "forgot" 'hot zone' and 'hot spot', as well as several of the following definitions from the Free Online Dictionary:


Neither did you take any of these idioms into acount:
hot and bothered
hot and heavy
hot to trot Slang
hot under the collar Informal
make it hot for


I can only assume that you are ignoring these equal definitions in a sinister attempt to belittle them. Accidental? I think not! Shame on you!


Just in case there is any doubt, this post isn't serious.

Your post is hilarious, OliveOilMom!

Damn, I've gotta stop believing everything I read about political correctness.

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I am so sorry! You are correct. I did neglect those other words and concepts. It was not intentional discrimination, but it was without a doubt, discrimination. I would offer to flog myself at the altar of NewSpeak but the word altar may offend those who dislike religion or who dislike religions that have churches or houses of worship that use altars. It's also similar to the word alter which may trigger someone with multiple personality disorder to feel that I'm insulting them, because multiples sometimes call their different personalities "alters". I could also be accused of bookism because those who can't read will never have read Orwell's "1984" and be unfamiliar with the word "NewSpeak" and I am therefore excluding them.

Thank you very much for pointing out what I did. It's amazing how insidious that discrimination is. We can discriminate and bully and insult so many people without even knowing or meaning to. Now that I'm aware of my deficiencies in speech and thinking I am going to attend several seminars, workshops, support groups, and consciousness raising meetings to correct my problems.

</satire>

Those who are offended must ask themselves why they are offended This idea that, "you've said something that offends me, how dare you! You can't say that!" bothers me. It seems the use of a term is more important than meaning. That offending someone rests on using a term they don't like. That they've been socially conditioned to jump when a term is used, rather than understanding the intention of the user.

For that reason, I find the person bothered by politically incorrect terms much more offensive than someone who uses a politically incorrect term. The person using the non-PC term may not be ignorant or insensitive. The person using the non-PC term may wonder what the hell all the hoopla is about. And usually it's simply a case of "I don't like that term, or I've been told not to like that term, so therefore I have a right to be offended and you should change your vocabulary for MY sake."



Suppose I'm a gay gypsy with a mentally ret*d brother. Someone replies, "That cashier gypped me. What a ret*d! How gay is that?"

In assessing the situation, the user was not slamming the Romani people, nor those who are truly mentally ret*d, nor is he being homophobic. In this scenario, while being a gypsy, being gay, and having a ret*d relative are aspects of my identity, they don't play a part in his identity. He may not know the meaning of the word gypsy. He may have nothing against those who are actually ret*d or homosexual. So for me to cause an uproar is a reflection of my own personal aspects of self which may not have any bearing on his life...nor should they.

If he said, "I hate gays, gypsies, and ret*ds," it would be another story. But in this case, he's not thinking about those terms in the way they would be relative to my life. While gypsy/ret*d/gay may have emotional meanings for me as they're pertinent to my life, they don't in his. For me to get upset and say "how dare you!" would be an attempt to force my emotions onto him, when he wasn't even thinking about real gypsies/the mentally ret*d/gays when making the statement.




And we get to the root of it. I don't share your views on being PC. I'm critical of aspects of being PC. Therefore, I must be a closeted racist/sexist/homophobe, what have you.

What I don't like is this idea that "WE" have decided it's "wrong" to say X under any circumstances, therefore the use of the word X gives us carte blanche to be offended.



...but it's okay for them to require you change your vocabulary for their sake?

You can't even say the word "black" anymore in the UK without hearing the R word echoing around. In my school, teachers would refer to the blackboard as "the board" and openly discourage any use of the correct colour. It's political correctness set to an impossible standard - one with which I will not comply.

it seems to be an urban legend that it was ever barred due to political correctness:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness
perhaps some teachers feared the new stories were true and were afraid they would get into trouble so they pre-emptively stopped using the word. but the word was never actually barred because of its supposed implied racism. there is a big difference there.

It's a sad day when noticing and acknowledging that someone else is a different color implies racism. Just because you notice it and admit that you notice it doesn't mean that you think they are inferior in any way. It simply means that you aren't blind.

the chalkboard/blackboard controversy wasn't related to anyone's skin colour, it was related to a bogus news story.

credit black list anyone?

Well if it's all a myth then that's pretty refreshing. In fact I'd rather it was. To think that these "authority figures" programmed us to believe their mistakes in fear that we'd be "bad" or "wrong" people....is appalling. People create problems where there weren't any before. Who the hell ever said "pass me the black pen" and meant it in a degrading way? I've noticed it's PC holier-than-thou white people who invent these "issues", and then minorities hop on board and use them to their advantage. Not a good game to play.

people tell me stuff that i find arduous to listen to, and i fail to comprehend it because i do not care much and when i tell them i am not very much interested they advertise my disinterest to other people and i become a social pariah.

why should i be roped into what i see as a social quagmire, and be considered a bad person because i have nothing to add to it?

i have no interest at all in other peoples angst because they are not relevant to my life.

i will help people in genuine distress as best i can, but i will always hand them over to professionals as soon as it is possible.

why am i a bad person for simply living my life alone?

i make many social mistakes that result in flying feathers that may choke the respiration of reaosnable people.

i just say what i think, and i am surprised to see people sucked into a social brawl that i instigated without my further involvement.

last week i commented that because of the improved safety regulations and practices of airlines, that the show "air crash investigation" was doomed because they have no new shows to compile, and that was all i said (in the tea room of countrywide), and i exited the situation and some people embarked on a social fight that was supposedly sparked by what i said.

i was considered by a boss to be the instigator of that argument, but i left the building before the altercation began.

I know, but the reason they were supposedly not saying it was because "black" implied racism. The root of the issue in the story seems to imply that even mentioning something that is similar to noticing a difference is the same as discrimination. I'm sayng that with the whole PC issue and wannabe word police that we may eventually get to the point where noticing and acknowleding that someone is a different race will be considered the same as making a statement that is actually racist. While the story was fake, the ideas presented in it could very well eventually come to pass IMO.

I use "Happy Holidays" for the same reason. Around here people seem to take it as an anti-Christian message, and a couple of them said emphatically (& kind of grumpily) "Merry Christmas" in return. One lady even said to me, "oh, you are being politically correct". I was not saying it to be politically correct, but it would have been too much to explain so I just didn't.

well, i think the problems come from the other side, most of the time. most of the time the problems are created by people who react against political correctness. these storms-in-a-teacup are manufactured examples of "political correctness gone mad" and are usually created and promoted by right wing media as a way of furthering their own agenda (i.e. anti-desegregation in the south in the past, anti-multiculturalism more recently worldwide, and now it is usually an anti-immigration bent). it pays to examine where the stories are actually coming from.

i don't think anyone ever said "pass me the black pen" and meant it in a racist way, and i don't think that any minority groups would accuse anyone of doing so. but i DO think that xenophobic right wing groups with an agenda would create a story where it actually happened.

I don't understand why it's offensive to wish someone a Merry Christmas if they aren't Christian or don't celebrate Christmas. Dec 25th is Christmas day whether or not someone celebrates it. They can still have a nice day on the 25th even if they downright hate Christmas. I wouldn't be offended if someone wished me a happy whatever their religious holiday was thats different from mine. I would think it was nice of them to tell me good wishes. It's getting ridiculous about what people get offended about. I think that the PC folks should say "Have a pleasant generic Winter holiday".