Update:
Political correctness, no matter how well intentioned, is still an attack on freedom of speech. - The Disappearance Of The Universe, Gary R. Renard
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Lucid commented:
""My" girl, "my" man... I don't get those terms. Who wants to own another person?"
Wonko commented:
While I can see where that point of view is coming from, using the term 'my' to refer to your partner does seem to be very common. And you can go too far the other way. There was a famous example of a University in the UK that banned its staff from using terms such as; 'my wife' or 'my husband' because they implied ownership. Instead they would have to be intruduced thus: "Hello, this is [insert name], the woman/man to whom I am married." Trips off the tongue doesn't it?
Universities do seem to be rabid breeding grounds for Political Correctness. While they may be both good and necessary for higher education, they often seem to be demonstrations of what happens if people Think Too Much. They are often at the spearhead of campaigns like not calling women 'girls', always using 'he/she' instead of 'he', and calling blacks 'African Americans' (I suppose even if they come from Australia or Haiti or whatever), etc etc. They tend to suffer from the Intellectual and Liberal Guilt syndrome. If a person belongs to a minority which has been wronged in the past, you don't dare do anything harsh to him which you'd not hesitate to do with most people (like fire him if he is incompetent).
Education and civilization are the salvation of mankind. But you have to beware that the sensitivity and empathy that come with them don't bleed you of all your power.
My master.
ReplyDeleteMy father.
My Father.
My President.
My boss.
It's not possesive; it's Perspective (something you should be acutely atuned to).
Yer silly. But English is your second language, yes? Stop trying to find complexity in the simple.
they strain at a knat and swallow a camel...........i don't really think its so bad to be considered someones "my." JMHO
ReplyDeleteThe Danish gays did it successfully. They took the only realy derogatory term for gay ("boesse", which also means gun) and used it for themselves. Now it's the standard word, and there is to my knowledge no strong derogatory term anymore.
ReplyDeleteM'n viejo ... Portugese for my old man. Said of a young friend among soccer players. :)
ReplyDeleteUniversities are definitely the breeding ground for political correctness -- they invented it. In fact, were I not moving house this weekend, I would have time to tell all about the history of the term "politically correct," refer to the Newsweek cover article and the maelstrom of supposedly "liberal" complaint about a PREVIOUS article that led Newsweek to run their expose about thought police on American campuses, and then treat you all to a story or two about my own incarceration for actions I did not perpetrate.
But I'm moving house this week. :)
I once belonged to a meditation/dialogue group. One member, for years, refused to use the personal pronoun "I" because it suggested he possessed a "self", which, apparently, as a spiritual aspirant, he didn't. He constantly said, "One does this, one does that, one want to understand" etc. It got so annoying. "One" wanted to bop him on the head.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was married, I liked saying "My husband." I liked the feeling of belonging to him, and he to me. It felt nice.
Now I like saying, "My boyfriend." "My friend."
once on an old job, there was a really nasty, unfriendly staff member. She scowled at everyone. I was new on the job, and the first day i came in and said "Good morning, Leslie" she gave me the nastiest meanest face, and said nothing. Her prerogatvie, granted. But she saw me walk away upset, and called out, "Don't take it personally!" I turned around and said, "Leslie, I am a person."
We can get too abstract about certain ideas.
I've enjoy Hitchhiker's in ALL its incarnations, and I don't recall that thing. Where is that, Wonko?
ReplyDelete"they often seem to be demonstrations of what happens if people Think Too Much."
ReplyDeleteYeah, TMT (Too Much Thinking) is a very hazardous substance to handle. Especially in places where sparks are flying!
"and calling blacks 'African Americans'"
Well, aren't 'African Americans' black indeed? Okay, so it tends to become relative with mixed marriages, but... even people who are one-eighth or less "of African descent" are automatically classified in this "community". This strongly reminds me of the notions of "purity" in the former South African apartheid regime. Coincidence?
At least, Blacks aren't afraid of greeting each other with "Whassup, my nigger?" I guess THEIR "P.C." doesn't run on Windows...
I'm mostly worried that this trend to over-respect "minorities" verbally may very well serve as an alibi for those who don't truly FEEL respect for them. A new, "modern", 21st-century hypocrisy. "If I supremely respect these persons in every one of my words, I definitely must be innocent of the wrongs of my fathers... and of their consequences today, like ghettoes, unemployment, poverty, etc. They are not my fault!"
BREEP! Wrong answer, buddy! Actions speak louder than words! As long as there are consequences remaining of the past that can and must be fixed, nobody's absolved. Letting an evil continue is still wrong, no matter how much you coat the bitter pill with sugar. Or aspartam. :-P
"But you have to beware that the sensitivity and empathy [...] don't bleed you of all your power."
There's a better formulation for this : "you have to beware that the stupidity and hypocrisy"
I know of a very interesting oriental proverb : "The slave once freed knows no mercy." It's just too damn easy to buy back a wrong with an opposite one.
Do I dream, as a Lebanese, of ruling and oppressing Syria for 30 years to get even? No. I'm just weary of wars, and want peace and equity at last. Just let the pain end, and I'll be contented.
Which won't make me renounce "homsi" jokes! (Homs is a famous Syrian city, with a persistent reputation for having thick denizens.)
;-)
"Lucid Twilight said...
I know my intent"
You remind me of an episode many years ago. Once, in a very heated dispute with my father, I said these seldom heard words : "Well, guess what? I DO love you." In ira veritas.
That's precisely the reason why I'm not afraid to speak out in the heat of passion. Because nobody fears of saying things that, even deep inside, they don't think.
When I use the "N-word", it's always, and I know it, in a sarcastic intent toward racists. The fear of words is only the fear of the ideas behind them.
How precious it is to be honest with oneself!
Lucid,
ReplyDeleteAnonymous is right. My first language was baby talk. Not you?
;-)
Bram,
I like to think that "I'm fun" too!
See? The verb isn't needed. :o)
Wonko OTA,
"I didn't get the job; I obviously wasn't the right person for it."
That is correct. You are over-qualified for most of this planet's jobs. Having sense is a near-universal handicap.
Say, maybe you should use this next time, to benefit from positive discrimination?
:-D
Final,
"Portugese for my old man. Said of a young friend among soccer players."
By Jove, you said it, old boy!
I hope you can find us a web link to these historical articles.
"One does this, one does that, one want to understand"
"One is the queen of England, methinks..." ;-P
"Don't take it personally!" I turned around and said, "Leslie, I am a person."
An intelligent retort if I ever heard one! :-)
"the HHGTTG example of a people who discovered that the best way to not be unhappy was to not have a word for it!"
Hey, isn't that precisely what happened to the Danish gays?
Looks like it works. :-D
"The only other way to temporarily drown out these thoughts was to play host to a Disaster Area gig."
ReplyDeleteA very efficient trick. We tried it last summer in Lebanon. Made us forget all our OTHER worries.
Out of gratitude for the fine artists of D.A. and their efforts, we renamed half the country after them. :-)
But it is rumoured that our neighbors down south complained about the music's volume...
All those who are against those simple and natural terms are denialing the "common sense" that should rule our lifes,they are ridicule snobs no matter how many university degrees they have.
ReplyDeletePaul Alexandru Cazacliu
artmanro@yahoo.com
Paul,
ReplyDeleteTry clicking on the "Other" option instead of "Anonymous". That way, you can put your name a the beginning of your posts.
:-)
It won't take your e-mail address in the "website" space, though.
I said:
ReplyDelete-----
Universities are definitely the breeding ground for political correctness -- they invented it. In fact, were I not moving house this weekend, I would have time to tell all about the history of the term "politically correct," refer to the Newsweek cover article and the maelstrom of supposedly "liberal" complaint about a PREVIOUS article that led Newsweek to run their expose about thought police on American campuses, and then treat you all to a story or two about my own incarceration for actions I did not perpetrate.
But I'm moving house this week. :)
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Well, I've moved house. Or, the stuff in it. It's all in boxes and bins in the big formal living room of the house where my grandmother used to host Sunday afternoon tea parties in a small town in rural Mississippi. Yes, I do not lie.
Here's the story about "politically correct," as I know it, aided and abetted by various friends within the American journalistic establishment.
First, Ken Burns made a great multi-part documentary about the American Civil War. If you aren't familiar with his work, you need to get to know him. He's done something on Jack Johnson (African-American prize fighter), Jazz, baseball, but his first work that amazed and delighted was this thing on the Civil War. It mounts still images with the backdrop of words from the period, then narrative, then expert commentary. It "redefined" what TV could do with a still image. It aired on PBS in, about, 1985?
Anyway, one of the quoted experts in the documentary was a historian named Shelby Foote. He was already revered by many readers as having "brought the War to life," meaning that his writings had made the experience of the common footsoldier or citizen on either side of the American Civil War (of the 1860s, not the one raging today!) much more understandable to a common reader. Starting in the 1960s, Foote made a name for himself as a scholarly expert by writing books on the Civil War that would appeal to the educated lay reader -- kind of the Barabara Tuchman of the Civil War.
Unfortunately for Foote, this meant he garnered enemies from many camps. Dyed-hard academics refused to accept much of his work because it seemed to them "too popular." And knee-jerk anti-establishment (we'd call them "politically correct" nowadays) African Americans thought that Foote's accomplishment of providing sympathetic stories of, about, even BY, Southern slave-owners, soldiers, citizens, was somehow an apology for slavery. Never mind that he made Lincoln or Grant equally sympathetic; at the time, many were seeking cause for grievance and, therefore, inventing it where (in my opinion) it didn't exist.
Let me say right here, I found that reading of Foote to be idiotic. To quote a slave-holder's letters to his kin from the Shiloh battlefield, and then claim that this means the author doing the quoting somehow approves of slave-holding, is a deliberately misinformed reading of Foote. Stupid.
So, anyway, that's the set-up. Blockbuster TV documentary, Foote already famous, used as expert witness.
Then Newsweek magazine (a major weekly news magazine, rather thin and non-newsy but still vaguely respectable) devoted its cover story to the Civil War documentary. And of course, in order to give "fair coverage," they had to cite the critics of the documentary as well as the supporters. The main critics were these knee-jerk morons I've alluded to (well, I suppose if you agree with them then you won't call them morons...heh). One detractor referred to Foote as someone who ought to be "sitting on courthouse steps spitting tobacco" (I paraphrase), a deliberate reverse-racial slur that equated Foote (a rather mannerly, almost timid, pipe-smoking professorial type) with the prototypical Hollywood "good ole boy" Black-hating murderer of the movies about the Civil Rights era.
That this slam on Foote was so egregious -- and so obviously wrong and inaccurate a characterization -- led Newsweek to look further into the situation. The man who had badmouthed Foote, and his coterie, had hit the radar of the national "semi-sensationalist" press.
A month later, Newsweek ran a blockbuster issue in which the cover story was entitled "Thought Police." I still have a copy of it in some box in my grandmother's sitting room (and, if I remember correctly, the subtitle was, "watch what you say on America's campuses").
This "Thought Police" article made nationally mainstream a few new coinages that were making the rounds of California political circles at the time. It presented the American public with the phrases "politically correct" and "tenured radicals" (later to provide a minor splash as the title of a book critiquing academia in particular). The Newsweek staff unearthed many of the now-tired stories: of very wealthy professional Marxists who are dreadfully arrogant toward their lower-class servants; of women's groups chanting "death to males" across campuses in America; of a student who had asked a gaggle of loud African American women in his dorm to please be quiet during quiet-study hours getting expelled for lack of racial sensitivity.
That's how the issue finally "bubbled up" into popular consciousness in America, and I mark that Newsweek article as a watershed, not necessarily in the rise of political correctness itself, but in the "mom and pop" awareness of what was going on. I had been attending college on a typical American campus and was experiencing a great deal of "reverse discrimination" for the fact that I'm a white, male, Southern, non-Jewish, intelligent, middle-class guy, and therefore must be the devil incarnate. More on my stories of how horrible my college experience was, later. I don't need a sympathy-fest right now. I
hope you've enjoyed this portion of my multi-part presentation. :)
Final said:
ReplyDelete"and therefore must be the devil incarnate."
That's a damn lie. I've never met this "Final" guy before, and even less inhabited his body! I swear on the Bible!
And you can trust me, I know all about lies. For am I not the Lord of Deceit?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a staff meeting with Karl at Crawford Ranch. Buh-bye now!
That sounds like a good and important article. If you find it, online or offline, I'd love to see it.
ReplyDeleteIt really is a ridiculous aberration that African-American is used to describe people who are Negro. They are no more African than I am European -- the meaning communicated is _black_. Besides, a Huge portion of Real Africans are Caucasian. Calling Indians and Chinese both only 'Asians' is just as stupid. This PC crap provides Less communication, not more.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we (white folk) are not allowed to use a term that is no more derrogatory than "whitey": nigger is just a lazy way to say negro. My grandmother had not a speck of malice in her soul and never called them anything else.
Yes, our institutions of 'higher' learning create this shite - ask an anthropology major about 'race' - they will tell you that the term is meaningless - not because there is not obvious physical differences between various tribes, but because scientists have been used by politics in the past - so their solution is to deny reality!
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI have posted a hefty essay about the scientific non-existence of races in a previous post. Look it up in the archives, in all modesty I think it is rather interesting.
The summary of it is, differences in appearance between people of different geographic origins are part of the 10% that IS owed to geographic distance. But 90% of genetic difference between individuals are purely random. Which is why a kidney transplant can come from any donor around the world, there's no telling where you'll have more hope of finding a compatible one (outside your direct family). Could be you neighbor next door, or someone of opposite gender halfway round the globe. This, alas, facilitates organ traffic. :-(
"My grandmother had not a speck of malice in her soul and never called them anything else."
My late grandfather was just the same. The idea of any injustice would make him boiling mad, even towards animals, but he used the N word without thinking twice about it. In that time, is wasn't derogatory in itself. This is precisely why much nastier words were deliberately coined by racists. (Hey, in the past, calling a young unmarried woman "miss" instead of "madam" was very rude! "Miss" was strictly for lowly commoners.)
I don't like to say "nigger" or "negro" because the first is ambiguous in Lebanese talk (it also means "servant" or "slave" in arabic), and the second is demeaning in French (a more neutral translation would be "nègre").
So, because of my two native tongues, I just say "black". It also has the advantage of reflecting my intimate opinions : someone who has medium dark skin is as "white" as he is "black", and this is exactly how I see them. Because I don't mistake darkness with dirtiness. (Don't laugh, I've met people who believe the two are identical!)
Sometimes, I agree with society at large that a term deemed generally inappropriate ("nigger") is indeed inappropriate. Does that make me politically correct?
ReplyDeleteMany other times, I disagree with a sub-set of society at large that is trying to foist its own agenda, and I refuse to adopt their prescribed supposedly non-offensive language or attitude. Does that make me politically incorrect.
To disabuse, the word "nigger" was never MERELY a "lazy" way to say Negro -- it was always a vicious slur, though many with little knowledge of inguistic history would try to argue otherwise. And anyway, there's no such thing as a Negro or a Caucasian, never has been. Outward signs of membership in a given gene pool are merely phenotypic analysis, therefore pointless. More in archives ... :) ...
Another dusabusement. The Confederate battle flag never was representative MERELY of a proud and honest heritage. It was ALWAYS also associated with white supremacism, although many with little knowledge of history would try to argue otherwise.
I don't blame some reactionaries for being annoyed with the (supposedly) liberal political-correct-ization of many arenas. The problem is, that their reactionary response is equally redundant and blinkered. The proper solution, it seems to me, is a middlw ay, in which issues are free to be discussed at all times. Therefore, it is wrong to use the word "nigger" unless you're sure that all opinions on the matter have had fair hearing, the community around you is comfortable with having to listen to you say it, and the people who own large crowbars won't hit you on the head because of it.
That's the way language works. The problem with the politically correct university crowd, is that they wish to legislate from above, rather than participate in the community of speakers as a whole.
I have so much more to tell about my own experiences at the hands of political correctness on a small American college campus in the middle 1980s, but I'm just not happy going back to revisit those days right now. Such negative memories! I'm going to move on, instead. :)
"Does that make me politically correct/incorrect?"
ReplyDeleteThat makes you politically unbearable. (To politicians.) You can't be labeled, you have your own mind. Damn, how DO you influence such people to get their vote? AAARGH!
You'd think with that darn stetson hat in his photo, you could figure the guy out in a second, but nooo, he just HAD to have a brain under it!
;o)
"To disabuse, the word "nigger" was never MERELY a "lazy" way to say Negro -- it was always a vicious slur"
That would happen to be the exact other way round in French. "Négro" is the vicious slur. Trust me on that if you travel. While "un Black" is rather neutral.
"The Confederate battle flag [...] was ALWAYS also associated with white supremacism
Aw, but I'm sure "white supremacism" is a thing of the old forgotten past in "blue" States!
Not. :-(
Therefore, it is wrong to use the word "nigger"
My problem is with those who declare it wrong to use the word "Black". (Some day, they'll even make it "bad" to use the word "child"!)
However, I'm all for replacing the stupid (and erroneous) term "Indian". Now, if the current replacement didn't sound so maudlin, I'd be satisfied. They weren't "Americans" before the european colons renamed that continent.
Alas, the simple word "native" has ALSO taken a negative connotation, through clumsy use.