On 4/27/2015 12:24 PM, Vincent Pelote wrote:
> As one of the pitifully few members of ARSC who are of African descent ('Black" if you need me to spell it out), I must say that I always find it interesting that the most outspoken critics of political correctness are usually NOT the people for whom political correctness was meant to shelter from racist speech, images, etc. I happen to have a thicker skin than most, yet I find myself subconsciously cringing every time I hear the so called "N" word no matter what the context (and I don't buy that clap trap that the "N" word wasn't offensive in the day). Since neither of you gentlemen will ever have that word hurled at you the way it has been at me, I think your calling political correctness a "cancer" instead of racism interesting and while I understand that political correctness can go overboard at times, I see nothing wrong with trying to ease the years of hurt that certain people in this society has had to endure for so long when racist words and images were "acceptable." Think
about it gentlemen. Do we really need to call a football team the Washington Redskins, if it offends Native Americans? Just my 2 cents worth and I really don't want to go into a long series of emails about this.
I want to second Vincent's opinion. A very wise man, speaking on the
issue of offensive language, said, "When you know somebody has a
sunburn, it's rude to clap them on the shoulder."
Rude. If we frame the discussion, not in terms of "political
correctness", but simply as being polite vs. rude, I think the
discussion would be more fruitful.
Peace,
Paul
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