I was listening to a program on NPR about criticism on political correctness by a London group. They were saying that Political Correctness had impeded attempts to attack Islamic terrorism or other distasteful practices. Political Correctness had also assisted in the spread of AIDS, by not adressing the main way in which HIV was spread-immigration of Black Africans.

It seems to me that Political Correctness should never impede constructive criticism. Its a good idea as long as that rule is followed-otherwise yes it would be dangerous. What political correctness is there for is to stop people from attacking one another-not to stop people from helping each other. Naturally, constructive criticism still needs to be defined, but there is a strong societal idea of what this is.

I believe the point is that Political Correctness has become bad *almost by definition* you see, at it's most fundamental level, Political Correctness is just having manners.

Exactly. There's good parts of political correctness (calling "Indians" Native Americans) and bad parts (as necreo pointed out).

PC is interesting - originally a liberal way of cutting down on offensive language (good manners), and has been taken over by the extremists, partly liberal but mainly conservatives, who are using PC to force thinking into very narrow channels.



a quite interesting comparison in this respect is my experience in DK - danes are far more likely to use perjoritive language about 'physically and mentally disadvantaged people', or spastics as they used to be called. The danes, even liberal ones, will openly use the term 'spazzers'in public with no shame, no PC fear that others will call down social retribution upon their head.

yet the odd thing is that danish society is far more open with 'spazzers', and its very common to see them on the streets being taken out by their family, far more so than it is in the UK which has far stronger social restrictions upon them (presumably cultural ones? I dont think the UK govt has passed laws banning them from british streets... but you can never be sure here ).

so it seems counter-intuitive - the danes are far freer about terms of abuse, and (on this topic) are far less PC than the english, yet they give their 'physically and mentally disadvantaged people' far more humanity than the english do.

which makes me:

1. remember the optimen in frank herberts "eye of heisenberg", and their manipulation of language to hide basic truths from themselves,
2. wonder about the link between shame, thought, and PCness.


personally i think PC was created by unemployable, crack smoking niggas and permanently unemployed council house working class lesbian single mother beggars. Who smoke.

fucking spastics.

Molimo you're behind on the times . Indians are indians again, as that is the term they most commonly define themselves as. (its a long winded speech, and we had long, boring ass lectures on it in my Injun History class). Basically, "Native" implies things about their origin, and "American" is a poor term for them as well. Also, in many ways its more of a culture then a ethnicicity, blah blah blah balh. So basically, its currently fashionable amongst the snivelling "elite" to call them indians.

So I just saved you a bit of embarassement, next time you and your buddies all get together and try to one-up the other in current intellectual fashion. Feel free to thank me.

Safest thing to do when referring to Indians/native americans is to refer to them by their specific tribe. Ie: Navajo, Apache, etc... Lumping them all in as one race/ethnicity would be akin to putting all of Europe into one race/ethnicity... its just... stupid...

i don't think anyone in europe has a real problem with being called 'europeans', in the sense of being from the landmass europe.

amerindians (its what i've used for years, and if its out of vogue i couldnt give a crap) may have a problem however with being called 'americans', as that is the name that the european immigrants (fucking immigrants bringing their problems over ), called the Land.

its all such a load of bollocks though, if you are feeling the wrong emotions (hatred, envy, greed, racism etc), it really doesnt mean shit if youre using the 'right' terms, and equally if youre heart is in the right place you can use any word.

this whole line of crap is just to redress the balance of power felt by abused minorities - i've had too many occasions where the 'minority' person was attempting to use this to gain power *over* me, and frankly, fuck them to hell. I didnt start the slave trade, i am not running the barely hidden slavery systems in the 3rd world, and i'm fucking damned if i'm going to feel guilty about a mere shade of skin.

divide and conquer, divide and conquer, divide and conquer.

White.

You could almost use indo-european, were it not for the basques, hungary, and finland.

How is that good? The majority of American Native Americans prefer to be called "Indians". Just more out-of-touch liberals implementing another restriction upon society.

What about First Nations?

I dunno... Spanish and Polish are quite different people/cultures... Italian and Scottish, Russian and Portuguese... putting them all as one culture/ethnicity just isnt smart... It would be akin to having explorers from America go to Europe by mistake and start calling everyone Africans...



Its worse than that... like the "Indian" from some northeast tribe who came to Arizona complaining about squaw peak saying squaw was a derogatory term in the native language... I was like... you dont speak friggin Apache, so what the hell are you talking about?

lib: those groups are only differentiated because of their language roots, ugric if i remember correctly for finnish and hungarian.

but i can't see what's so wrong with 'european' - how can it be more 'derogatory' than calling someone from africa african?


oh, and BTW - *not* all europeans are 'white'.

lib - also, Persians and at least some parts of Indian (India) people are Indo-Europeans, too. Then there are the basques and the Uralic peoples (although the Samotian peoples are not particularly white IIRC).


gnuneo - actually, Hungarians are the only white Ugric peoples. Khanty and Mansy peoples are asiatic. wikipedia has done a relatively good article on the Uralic languages, Finno-Ugric in specific.

Err, right. "Philosophy of Political Correctness".


The idea of PC is to avoid talking about problems by banning the usage of terms, an ostrich tactic. It's about saying "Blacks are not inferior" and then considering them inferior (Affirmative Action - saying that blacks are inferior, because they are unable to compete with others fairly) while letting the blacks feel superior and thus create more problems. It's about saying "Black people do not commit crimes" and persecuting anyone who points at the facts which speak otherwise.

White still applies as far as filling out forms goes. Sure, it doesn't work correctly. And I think its northern india which has the indo-european language roots. There also used to be an indo-european group called the tocharians out near china.

Affirmative action does not say that anyone is inferior or superior. It also doesn't say that minorities cannot compete fairly with others. AA is meant to correct for years of wrongful discrimination, poverty, and other past and current problems.

Political Correctness is something for me to target, disrupt and maim at will.

I call black people black. I call various Indian tribes whatever they commonly go by (Navajo, etc). I refuse to call them 'African American' or 'Native American'.. If I talked to someone who wanted to be addressed that way, I'd either ignore them or stop talking to them. Or, if sufficiently provoked, something not quite nice.

When I think something sucks, I'll call it gay or retarded. Not to offend gays or Democrats, but because it's a convenient and effective means of voicing my displeasure.

As for political views, I would never alter a view I had for Political Correctness. I believe there are gender roles. I wouldn't want my boys playing with barbies. I think in general blacks make better athletes and asians make better students. I think culture is no excuse for actions - for example, I'd call some inbreeding cannibals from the jungle savages. I'd take "you fight like a girl" to be an insult, and might use it as such... though 'bitch' is much easier and conveys the meaning more swiftly.

I think the worst thing about Political Correctness is that it causes people to be fake.

I call black people "negros", its ok in spanish but in english some people may feel ofended.

Why would I give a shit what they want to call themselves? Just because all sorts of black people refer to each other as "niggas" doesn't mean I think that's an appropriate term for an ethnicity.

"Indians" are not from India nor do they have anything to do with India, so I'm not calling them Indians. Referring to them by their tribe name is fine, but it's not a description of an ethnicity, so it's not a replacement for "Indian."

Well, isn't that actually the spanish (or castilian, if you want) for black?

Yes, thats why i said its OK to say it spanish. So every time you are confronted for using the word "negro" you just have to answer "QUE?".


I do often refer to native americans as indians and i dont fell bad about it, even if its technicaly wrong.

That's the politically correct term is it not?

You must realize that there is a distinction between skin colour and ethnic origin.



Which once again would be the PC thing to do. But how do you refer to all members of these tribes collectively? That is what native american or first nations means. It refers to all these tribes collectively.

"Black" is sufficient to cover both skin color and ethnic origin, and "African American" is the PC term and not worth using.



Calling them by their tribe name is similar to referring to someone by whatever nation they came from. Collectively as a race I would call them Indians or (if there's going to be a point of confusion) Injuns.

"Native American" is not PC, its sensible-at least where I live and there is a significant Asian Indian population. It actually does get confusing.

DS, the thing is that offending people without any sort of constructive benefit is stupid. There are better terms to use than "Gay" and "Retarded" (granted, I use the latter quite a bit, much to my displeasure), as first, it does set a negative assosiation with homosexuality and mental retardation. If you do dislike those two conditions, there are better ways to voice your disapproval.

At the Asian student and African athelete thing, thats not un-PC in my eyes. If you feel that, its constructive to get in that debate, and the two sides can debunk one another. I feel you're wrong and silly for saying that, but not un-PC. I'd feel you're a racist or a bigot for saying "Black people do not seem to me to be genetically able to keep up with whites in class", but in certain contexts that would not in my eyes be un-PC. If you were to shout at a black kid, "You flunked that test because you're a nigger", thats politically incorrect (not to mention, not very bright if you believe that thing on blacks being better atheletes .)

Not really. Black people do not all share the same ethnic origin.



But that doesn't make any sense when there is a country called India whose citizens are normally called Indians. Even the least PC person in the world should realize that it makes no sense to call them Indians. It just causes confusion. You should think of a better term...

I think, as Arilou is saying, that PC now is just a word that is now in definition bad, and is thrown around to discredit some forms of political correctness (as well as some things I would describe unrelated to political correctness). I think a good parallell to this would be "bureaucracy". When someone is complaining about "bureaucracy", is she complaining about the division of administrative labour ("Why can't I renew my fucking passport at the Department of Education!"), or are they complaining about some administrative labour that doesn't make (immediate) sense to them ("Why do I have fill out this fucking form in triplicates!")?

Same with PC, I would say. Noone is complaining about an officials won't write "niggers" in official reports even if she personally really feels like it, however they might complain if she feels compelled to write "African American" instead of "Black".

A bit like the word "Liberal"

Funny how otherwise clean concepts can become tarnished like that.

I usually call the red ones Injuns to distinguish between them. They don't seem to mind.