Stop Whining about Political Correctness – Or should we?

Turning such things around is a typical tool of the right. Over the last 3 decades, they have done this with words like 'liberal,' and 'feminism,' They have reshaped and repackaged choice to put those who support reproductive freedom on the defensive.

I don't run from the words, and in fact embrace them, but we have to do a better job in the future of dealing with what is now an obvious strategy on their part - turn what we are for into caricature, then define what our views are, what we stand for. We simply cannot allow others to define us.

nelle

You know, if you don't know his name or where he came from and don't have access to that information, but you can see that he has crinkly hair and is very dark, then sometimes a guy is just "a black guy." If someone is missing simply telling the name and what he/she wore, gender, height, hair and eye color, is not enough. Ethnicity, if it impacts appearance, is important in such cases for practical reasons. Do you want the person found sooner or too late?

Knowing a name is good in work situations, but if for some reason I'm trying to describe a man around the corner to someone else whose complexion suggests he's of European ancestry, but I don't know specifically that he's of European descent or which European country he claims, "white guy" works for me. Furthermore, if I say he's Swedish but he's really German, he may also be offended should he find this out. I'm busy and don't have time; I don't know him. My coffee's getting cold. Whoever is looking for him can ask him when they get to him, if it's that important to the searcher.

Obviously if the speaker knows the black guy's name is David, but never uses his name, then they have a problem. They are impolite, not politically correct, and on some level they do not see David as a real person probably because he's "a black guy."

I know the reasoning behind why we now have the term "African-American," stuff like tying American black people to a place of origin, which is good since we've been denied so much of our history and ancestral roots, sometimes by law. I like the term "African-American," but sometimes a guy is just a "black guy."

People come through one of my blogs fairly often searching "African-American Corinne Bailey Rae." She's not African-American, she's British and of African descent on her father's side, I believe. If someone had to find her in a room full of fully-Western-European people and the person didn't know her on sight, they'd find her faster if someone told them "She's black," which suggests she's darker than most "white" people and perhaps of African descent.

I don't know if she'd personally be offended at being described as black, but anyone who's offended by being called "black" should ask themselves, "Why?" And anyone who spends time mulling over using the word "black" to describe someone else should ask themselves, "In my own mind, what's wrong with being black?" They know the intent behind their words better than anyone else and why calling someone else black disturbs them. If they are applying the negative archetypes associated with blackness to people, they will do the same thing with the word "dark." Should we toss out the phrase "dark skinned?" Dark is in the eye of the beholder.

For me, to find "black" as a descriptor offensive flies in the face of a self-esteem movement that precedes the term "African-American," which is the "Black is Beautiful" movement. Society must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water when addressing social ills.

That people are now getting so hung up about this that they can't even describe people with simple terms like "black woman" or "white guy" strikes me as a sign of societal psychosis. True, we don't use "yellow" and "brown," and "red." Maybe one day we won't say "black" and "white" either. Maybe we'll have spectrometers on our cell phones that allow us to determine the exact shade of brown we are, that some of us are more blue than brown. In the meantime we know that "black" usually refers to people of African descent, and "white" to those of European descent.

The colors "yellow," "red," and "brown" have lost significance when describing people. We probably need a sociologist, geographer, and psychologist as well as a couple of social activists to explain that here. I'm none of those things by profession. I'm just a writer who's old enough to have been "colored," "negro," "black," "Afro-American," and "African-American" at some point in her life, who has a cousin who calls her "orange," and who believes that color blindness is not the answer to addressing the evils of racism.

As a "black" woman from New Orleans, I have strong opinions on this subject. It would really take me too long to write and explain them all here. Slowly, I drop pieces of these opinions around the Net and hope someone will give what I have to say a little thought.

Nordette