My mind isn't really in the right mood for a top-line blog because I'm just too excited about going to the Padres-Giants game tonight for Opening Day!
One of my biggest problems with this country is the idea of "Political Correctness", or as I refer to it "Political Spinelessness". People are so afraid of offending people that they've created this whole language of generic terminology that usually is inaccurate or just plain dumb. My #1 political correct term that annoys me is "African-American" to refer to black people. I'm sorry, but I've never used that term to refer to the race of my black friends simply because it's inaccurate. When I was in high school I had this huge crush on a girl named Talya Kesselman, who was born and raised in South Africa and moved to the US some time before high school. Now she was more of an African-American than my roommate at Exeter, Will, because she was born in Africa and lived in the US, but Will had never been to the continent and neither did anyone in his immediate family. Now if Will moved to France (a distinct possibility, since he's lived there before), would his race change to African-French?
When I was on Semester at Sea, I took a class in Antrhopology where we had discussions on this very topic. After our first port visit this one (rather dumb) girl said something about how she was surprised how many "African-Americans" she saw in the South of Spain. First off, it shouldn't have been a surprise considering the fact that that part of Spain was controlled by the Moors for centuries, but the main thing that annoyed me was that the only "African-Americans" in Cadiz were the 4 or 5 black students on our program. This got my professor agitated too, saying that the very usage of the term to describe people 3000 miles away from America was an ethnocentric way to describe a people. Many blacks in America aren't African-American, but rather Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino or just plain African. But there are also white people from Africa...so everyone with black skin is black, white skin is white, and so on...
What also irks me is the new wording of occupations like Bus Driver (terrestrial transport engineer), Janitor (custodial services specialist) or Sandwich maker (Sandwich artist). These are all crappy jobs and shouldn't have these stupid names just to make the people feel better for having a shitty job.
This is something that I know George Carlin and Bill Maher feel, that the English language is being diluted by all of these PC terms. My mother isn't short, she's vertically challenged; my sister isn't skinny, she's fat-defecient; my friend Mikey isn't balding, he's folically declining; and Cam doesn't have ADHD, he has attention differences. And my gay friends aren't gay at all, they're heterosexually challenged.
See how dumb that is? Imagine if we continue down this path what will happen. Will Tobacco Lawyers become morally-challenged legal advisors? Will convicted felons become persons with legal challeges? So the next time someone refers to another person as African American, ask them if that person has one African and one American parent, because that's pretty much the only way that term is accurate. So I hope that some of you were not too offended, but maybe I hope you were since one of my points is that people are way too offended by words which don't really mean anything. It's one thing to call someone "Nigger", "Faggot" or "Kike" in an effort to insult them, but it's a whole other thing when someone gets offended by someone innocently using a term that some people have deemed politically incorrect. All that should matter is intent...if someone doesn't mean to offend, DON'T GET OFFENDED. Anyway, that's it for me today...
One of my biggest problems with this country is the idea of "Political Correctness", or as I refer to it "Political Spinelessness". People are so afraid of offending people that they've created this whole language of generic terminology that usually is inaccurate or just plain dumb. My #1 political correct term that annoys me is "African-American" to refer to black people. I'm sorry, but I've never used that term to refer to the race of my black friends simply because it's inaccurate. When I was in high school I had this huge crush on a girl named Talya Kesselman, who was born and raised in South Africa and moved to the US some time before high school. Now she was more of an African-American than my roommate at Exeter, Will, because she was born in Africa and lived in the US, but Will had never been to the continent and neither did anyone in his immediate family. Now if Will moved to France (a distinct possibility, since he's lived there before), would his race change to African-French?
When I was on Semester at Sea, I took a class in Antrhopology where we had discussions on this very topic. After our first port visit this one (rather dumb) girl said something about how she was surprised how many "African-Americans" she saw in the South of Spain. First off, it shouldn't have been a surprise considering the fact that that part of Spain was controlled by the Moors for centuries, but the main thing that annoyed me was that the only "African-Americans" in Cadiz were the 4 or 5 black students on our program. This got my professor agitated too, saying that the very usage of the term to describe people 3000 miles away from America was an ethnocentric way to describe a people. Many blacks in America aren't African-American, but rather Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino or just plain African. But there are also white people from Africa...so everyone with black skin is black, white skin is white, and so on...
What also irks me is the new wording of occupations like Bus Driver (terrestrial transport engineer), Janitor (custodial services specialist) or Sandwich maker (Sandwich artist). These are all crappy jobs and shouldn't have these stupid names just to make the people feel better for having a shitty job.
This is something that I know George Carlin and Bill Maher feel, that the English language is being diluted by all of these PC terms. My mother isn't short, she's vertically challenged; my sister isn't skinny, she's fat-defecient; my friend Mikey isn't balding, he's folically declining; and Cam doesn't have ADHD, he has attention differences. And my gay friends aren't gay at all, they're heterosexually challenged.
See how dumb that is? Imagine if we continue down this path what will happen. Will Tobacco Lawyers become morally-challenged legal advisors? Will convicted felons become persons with legal challeges? So the next time someone refers to another person as African American, ask them if that person has one African and one American parent, because that's pretty much the only way that term is accurate. So I hope that some of you were not too offended, but maybe I hope you were since one of my points is that people are way too offended by words which don't really mean anything. It's one thing to call someone "Nigger", "Faggot" or "Kike" in an effort to insult them, but it's a whole other thing when someone gets offended by someone innocently using a term that some people have deemed politically incorrect. All that should matter is intent...if someone doesn't mean to offend, DON'T GET OFFENDED. Anyway, that's it for me today...
posted by Dan Pasternack at 2:28 PM
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