Political Correctness

[teckmaster]

You always hear people correcting others so that things they say are politically correct. I have a question that I'm gonna ask and it may come out wrong and sound racist but all I want is an answer to the question. I was told the other day that the correct term for colored is either Black or African American.
Aren't African Americans really just Americans now? My family down by the tree trunk came mostly from Germany and I'm not called German American, I was born here so I am an American. Does that make sense or am I thinking too hard about a simple subject?

 

[conjur]

My thoughts exactly. How many people in the States now were actually born in Africa? Or even had parents/grandparents from Africa? Very, very few I would suspect.

 

[waggy]

yeap you are 100% correct.

 

[Feldenak]

Pshaw, I list European-American as my race/ethnicity.

 

[Rob9874]

<Getting marshmallows ready>

Mmmmm....s'mores!

 

[Aftermath]

One thing drives me freaking crazy, and I remember someone some months back on this board did this exact thing:

I, or anyone else, refers to a black person as black, and it's met with accusations of being racist. How fvcking rediculous can you get. Black is a color. Nobody said "That black n***er." or anything else negative or derogitory. It's said like you would describe a black car, or a black crayon, or black hair. I don't care if anyone calls me "white", because I am. It's not a freaking insult. (Unless obviously it's ment to be.)

But this kind of crap drives me nuts anyway, because around any of my black friends, I treat them like I do with any of my other friends. Their ethnicity, gender, race, whatever, is not a giant exposed nerve that everyone tries to tip-toe around. But for some reason, some people act like slavery just ended last week and if the slightest possible hint of racism could possibly be nitpicked and twisted from what you say, some people will try to do it. But that goes for a lot of things, not just racism.

Edit: *Puts on flame suit just to be safe.*

 

[GasX]

Originally posted by: Aftermath
Nobody said "That black n***er." or anything else negative or derogitory...

Ever see a red one? :Q





note #1 - I am just pointing out the curious semantics and not making a statement

note #2 - Anyone needing to read note #1 in order to get their panties OUT of a bunch can kiss my ass

 

[Vic]

"Politically Correct" is a politically correct way of saying you don't like freedom of speech and opinion. I guess the Political Correctness advocates didn't like Orwell's more appropriate expression, "CrimeThink".

 

[bandana163]

Political correctness is a manifestation of stupidity.

A similiar phenomenon is trying to take place in my country, too. Hopefully it won't succeed. Sometimes it's grammatically and logically incorrect and sounds so inane it hurts. A lot of people can't use it right, either. Problems of the society will not be solved this way.
Why would saying the same thing differently change anything? There is no need for P.C. There is supposed to be something called freedom of speech.

By the way, who invented this political correctness and what for?

 

[Warthog912]

Political correctness is a manifestation of stupidity.

We have a winner!!!

 

[dullard]

Political correctness has one and only one goal in mind: to make the terminology so large that people won't use it in jokes/insults. It is not about being 100% accurate, but about eliminating jokes/insults. Thus they know that few African Americans are born in Africa - that isn't the point (in fact I have many white friends from South Africa, who got American citizenship, yet who aren't to be called African Americans...) The point is that it is difficult to get the phrase "African American" into a short pun.

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This is the conclusion of my race/gender Honors class in college. In fact that same argument is in many textbooks on the subject. I can think of a half dozen common insulting quips using the word "colored" and another half dozen using the N word (it is easy to slip in 2 syllable words into a short joke, and there are many rhymes for those two words). Yet I know of none that have been created using "African American".

 

[silverpig]

The funniest thing is the PC term for something is whatever term society isn't currently using.

Remember when old people were just "old people"? Remember how the PC bitches whined about that being derogatory and made everyone call them "elderly"? Well it's come full circle again. There was an article posted here a few months back about this guy bitching about how "elderly" was a derogatory term and how they were just simply "older people".

Fvcktards.

 

[MaxDepth]

You'll get no argument here, my techian american friend.

 

[sandorski]

Political Correctness, IMO, is a misused term, or more accurately, is attributed to a subset of political correctness. IOW's, Political Correctness is used as a Noun when it should be used as a Verb, not denoting a particular Social Force, but denoting the use of Social Force.

When someone uses the term, one automatically assumes Liberal Social Force, but there is also a Conservative Social Force at work which also has similar intent. That intent(for both Liberals and Conservatives) is to create uniformity of Social Norm according to their particular values, using various forms of pressure. Those pressures are Political Correctness, a method used to create uniformity.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: sandorski
Political Correctness, IMO, is a misused term, or more accurately, is attributed to a subset of political correctness. IOW's, Political Correctness is used as a Noun when it should be used as a Verb, not denoting a particular Social Force, but denoting the use of Social Force.

When someone uses the term, one automatically assumes Liberal Social Force, but there is also a Conservative Social Force at work which also has similar intent. That intent(for both Liberals and Conservatives) is to create uniformity of Social Norm according to their particular values, using various forms of pressure. Those pressures are Political Correctness, a method used to create uniformity.

Used as a verb???

I political correct
you political correct
he/she/it political corrects
we political correct
they political correct

?

 

[tweakmm]

Originally posted by: Aftermath
One thing drives me freaking crazy, and I remember someone some months back on this board did this exact thing:

I, or anyone else, refers to a black person as black, and it's met with accusations of being racist. How fvcking rediculous can you get. Black is a color. Nobody said "That black n***er." or anything else negative or derogitory. It's said like you would describe a black car, or a black crayon, or black hair. I don't care if anyone calls me "white", because I am. It's not a freaking insult. (Unless obviously it's ment to be.)

But this kind of crap drives me nuts anyway, because around any of my black friends, I treat them like I do with any of my other friends. Their ethnicity, gender, race, whatever, is not a giant exposed nerve that everyone tries to tip-toe around. But for some reason, some people act like slavery just ended last week and if the slightest possible hint of racism could possibly be nitpicked and twisted from what you say, some people will try to do it. But that goes for a lot of things, not just racism.

Edit: *Puts on flame suit just to be safe.*

Odd, I've never had someone get upset for refering to them as black. All of my black friends refer to other black people as black, and don't seem to care when I refer to black people as black. I think if I was pointed someone out or something and said "Look at that african-american" they would wonder what the hell I was smoking.

 

[Gravity]

Technically, I'm white. My 6 year old daughter once told me...."dad, why is mommy white and you are brown?"

I was tan and stay tan longer than wifey.

There are black folks, then again, there are quite a few shades of brown too. I guess I'm one of them.

I think that the term "african american" is a polite way or PC way to refer to one's race without including their skin color.

Would this same term "african american" apply to white africans, formerly of their ruling dynasty, that we raised here or had citizenship here?

Just a thought.

 

[StageLeft]

I refuse to call Blacks African American. Many of them haven't come from Africa in the first place, and then many actually don't like the term, plus what is a white guy from south africa? Are you going to call me a European American? The term is used to denote COLOR, not origin, so why beat around the bush? There was recently a case of a white guy from south africa who was nominated to win a competition in his school for african americans. His school said no because he's not Black, so why not just call it a competition for Blacks in the first place?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: sandorski
Political Correctness, IMO, is a misused term, or more accurately, is attributed to a subset of political correctness. IOW's, Political Correctness is used as a Noun when it should be used as a Verb, not denoting a particular Social Force, but denoting the use of Social Force.

When someone uses the term, one automatically assumes Liberal Social Force, but there is also a Conservative Social Force at work which also has similar intent. That intent(for both Liberals and Conservatives) is to create uniformity of Social Norm according to their particular values, using various forms of pressure. Those pressures are Political Correctness, a method used to create uniformity.

Used as a verb???

I political correct
you political correct
he/she/it political corrects
we political correct
they political correct

?

An Action, not a Thing.

 

I wrote an essay about the "N-word" (Fusetalk has censored it) last year in my English class. My peer editor was a black student, he told me it'd be better if I change my references to "African-American" to "black" in my paper. I asked him why, and he said that most blacks prefer such a term because it denotes more of a cultural history. It's not about political correctness - it's about treating people with respect.