posted
*pulls out vast knowledge of PC-ness along with an amused look*
Actually, apparently "people with disabilities" is out and "disabled people" is in, because if you're talking about an "opressed people" you don't say "people who are opressed" because it weakens the effect of opression. Or somesuch. However, if you are referring to a person with a specific disability, then it's people-first language. "the child with autism" rather than "the autistic child," etc.
Sorry. Couldn't help myself. I am in communication with PC-land on a very regular basis. *shrugs*
*Begins discussion of labels and terminology in general*
However, I believe the words you use depend on the point you are trying to convey and the audiece to whom you are speaking and writing. Myself, I try to use people-first language when I talk about these issues in the abstract due both to the company I keep and due to the fact that I truly wish to be respectful.
Also, I use the most politically correct terminology I can find in my formal writing. This is because I would rather my audience have to hear my point than become stuck on my terminology. However, I'm aware that the audience I'm generally writing for does care about this a great deal, and generally the impact of the term is not the point I'm trying to make. I'm not trying to generate emotional response or certain connotations. Therefore, I really want the blandest terms I can find. Your essay might differ on that level.
On the one hand, I do think that using sensitive terminology is important. I think that connotation of certain words in particular can make a difference when you're talking to people. And I do generally like people-first language and don't find it difficult to incorporate.
On the other hand, sometimes miniscule differences ultimately have very little impact. It just depends on the term and on context. There are within-community disputes about appropriate words as well (Latino or Hispanic or Chicano? Native American or American Indian? African American or Black?) When you get down to differences like these, the person who spends a great deal of time and energy criticizing you either has a specific investment in a term or is ignoring whatever else you're saying. And THAT is where things become problematic. When someone uses ideology and understanding of a term to shut down the attempts at communication or understanding by another.
Also, I think WHAT you actually say says a great deal more about you than the terminology used. Example: My ex-roommate's purse was stolen from the mall. What she said to me, verbatim, "I know it was those African-Americans who work in the booth near there." (No, she had absolutely no evidence of this.)
The fact that she used the term African-Americans does not make this a non-racist (biased? stereotyped?) remark. In my mind, the fact that she immediately snapped to the judgment that it must be "those people" says much more about where she's coming from than the words she used.
Likewise, I believe that if a person is speaking from a place of respect for others, of curiosity, of genuine goodwill or open-mindedness, that will show itself more in the content of what is said, in the tone in which it is spoken, and in the actions that person takes than it ever could show itself in the labels chosen.
When I'm talking to a person from a group that is not my own, I'll try to use whatever terms that person uses to describe themselves, and - here's the biggest thing - I try not to get so caught up in my worries about what term I'm using that I end up not communicating, not asking questions, not learning from my cultural gaffes.
Posts: 99 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Bravo for starlooker! I would like to point out, as well, that if you're going to use the term black or Black, please be specific who you are talking about. "What I like about black people I have known" or "Blacks I have seen here" is so much better than "the blacks are..."
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Being white, black, and latino are not merely racial discriptions. They indicate a cultural disposition towards American institutions, including democracy, majority-rule, even taxes and the work and place of the American government.
I know the great minds of Hatrack can come to understand that being a white American is both a racial claim and a cultural claim. This shouldn't be more difficult than understanding light as both a wave and a particle. All you have to do is look at the voting rolls in the 2004 election to know that there is something different that falls along racial lines. Yes, we are all Americans, but we are all looking at American from a different vantage, and there is a pervasive myth that the white view of America, in its diversity, somehow encompasses the others and is more authentically American.
For the last few years, the white culture has adopted a smug disdain for Political Correctness. There are reasons for this, it could be as simple as white America resenting losing control of dictating the American language. The palpable revusion in the face of the PC movement is most likely the result of a confluence of historical events.
I am saying that race in America creates general dispositions that, while not internally uniformed, are generally different towards American institutions, and that those differences shouldn't be looked away from in debate because those differences are relevant in debates concerning "Political Correctness." Gender is a similar distinction, and I think that explains why the leading PC movement haters are white men.
The rush to make Americans one people under the banner of white America isn't appropriate. It's a little bit Catholic, as in if the Pope dismissed the differences of the Protestants and said that Christianity is really Catholicism and everyone else is merely a hyphenated Catholic.
I think we would be better served understanding how we are different, and then letting the ways we are the same emerge from that. Rather than look for the ways we are the same, and ignore the ways that we are different.
When I say "understand," I don't necessarily mean celebrate the differences. I celebrate the good ones and deride the poor ones. My issue with the white American ethos is only indirectly tied to with racism. Directly, it's what I see as the willingness to degrade humanity for the sake of the accumulation of goods. It happened to fall on racial lines with slavery and civil rights, but all of that fighting in the 1860s and the 1960s only cut the stalk, the root of the problem, the willingness to give over your humanity, and sacrifice others, for the sake technique and efficiency, is still alive, scary, and deep.
quote: I think the funniest thing I've been called is an "LSDer". The guy was trying to say "LDSer", which is itself amusing, but got the letters switched. [Big Grin]
And Spock did too much LDS back at Berkeley during the 60's. Has that ever come up on Hatrack before?
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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