Political correctness
- Thread starter FamoFunk
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It's occasionally taken a bit too far, but personally - and given the site's general opinion, I suspect I'll get burned at stake for this - I'm glad it exists. Nice to have, after being stuck with the polar opposite for entirely too long.
Besides, it's fun. Why call someone short when you can call them altitudinally/vertically challenged?
Besides, it's fun. Why call someone short when you can call them altitudinally/vertically challenged?
Some instances of political correctness are justified, but others are just plain stupid.
Like how "negro" has been use as a derogatory term.
Or how some terms have transformed from their original meaning, like "retard" or "bastard".
But how is "deaf" or "blind" demeaning?? o,0 "visually challenged" just soundsretarded mentally challenged.
Like how "negro" has been use as a derogatory term.
Or how some terms have transformed from their original meaning, like "retard" or "bastard".
But how is "deaf" or "blind" demeaning?? o,0 "visually challenged" just sounds
i dont think most people have a problem with PC, they have a problem with it going to far. like changing the name of black boards to chalk boards or not being able to say black coffee.Cogwheel said:
PC is a good thing, its stops people using racial slurs in publics etc. But when it forces people to use crazy words to be PC then thats when people hate it.
That's what I thought for a while. Somewhat less sure now, with all the people I see going on about how it should be abandoned as a concept so slurs and whatnot can be used left and right. Common reasons: It's funny/the intent matters, not the words used/"it's a word, it's only offensive because you're told it is" etc.Merkavar said:
Don't like it, myself, but that sort of thing is why I expected to catch a fair bit of flak for my comment. That said, yes, the examples you mentioned are quite ridiculous.
Banana is already a derisory term for East Asians who "act white".Kadoodle said:
See also "Oreo" and "coconut" for darker-skinned people who act white.
The implication is that the people are one colour on the outside but white on the inside.
Although I've never heard the opposite ("lychee", perhaps?) used of white people who act in a way usually associated with another race.
its starting too get pretty stupid outside the US too for example you cant say "Flikkerlichtje" because flikker is the equivelant of fag (curse word for gay people not british for cigaret) in English eventhough the term is widely accepted
I still use it I HATE PC nes we already used the terms/rimes/songs etc. so why change it?
PS
in some cases African-American is actualy discriminating because you asume the person lives in America and comes from Africa Obama is a prime example he comes from Hawaii that makes him a American not African-American (his ancestors come from Indonesia)
I still use it I HATE PC nes we already used the terms/rimes/songs etc. so why change it?
PS
in some cases African-American is actualy discriminating because you asume the person lives in America and comes from Africa Obama is a prime example he comes from Hawaii that makes him a American not African-American (his ancestors come from Indonesia)
Political correctness isn't just mucking up words and all. It is also messing up any kind of interaction, normal concepts of life.FamoFunk said:
Lots of school examples, where harmless things that are normal with life are determined to be oh'so harmful to a child growing up in the world:
Back in the day, when kids did exceptionally well in school they would get special perks because they worked hard. Like getting a sticker, or when I was in elementary school in one grade, don't remember which(since all the grades I was in had different reward systems), if I got an A on an assignment, I would get a sticker on a card on the wall, everybody had there own card. Once I got five stickers, I got a small piece of candy. Of I filled up a whole card, something like 25 stickers, I would get a whole candy bar.
Nowadays(from what I have heard from my nieces and nephews), one school gave out rewards for anything and everything. The kid that gets a 100% on the test gets the same sticker as a kid that fails. This is because of the PC thought that we can't have the kid that failed feel bad and not get anything and have to see the 100% kid get something he doesn't. So the like the 100% kid, the failure kid, gets a sticker because he wrote his name correctly and did well on one or two questions of the test.
The problem with that is that it shows the students a false picture of life that they are going to get the same outcome in life whether they succeed or slack off, slide through or fail.
Then there is the other side of the spectrum, one nephew of mine said that there are no rewards at school. If you do good, you just do good, nobody gets anything, their are no incentives to do better. Now some might say that pass the grade and moving on in life is the incentive, but really I never knew many grade school kids that saw that as an incentive to do better, heck I didn't see it that way when I was in school. But, they don't want to make one kid look better than the others.
The problem with this is that kids need something to strive for; they need to know that in life they are going to be rewarded for their successes. Do well on some assignments, get candy. Just like if people work hard at jobs they can get promotions or raises to get more money.
Other place where this PC idiocy has corrupted our schools is in the lunchroom. I've heard from girl, when I was in college, about her sister who was still in high school. She said that at her sister's school, people that brought their own lunches to school weren't allowed to have special items in the lunch, like cookies, cake, candy, or any other thing that make other students mad or sad that they don't have such things. We can't have students that are poor that only can afford the cheap school lunches to feel bad because other people have things that they can't have.
Example in that school: Some parents that had time off of work like a lunch break would come over to the school and bring their kid something from in town. The girl I was talking to, said that her mother on Fridays would bring to the sister a Subway sandwich for lunch. But when the stupid policy took effect, students couldn't have fast food or other restaurant food in their lunches. Somebody might feel bad that they didn't get to have the Subway sandwich that the girl had. The mother ended up getting around it, by taking off the Subway wrapper and wrapping it up in aluminum foil.
The whole mentality is that, we shouldn't let kids see that other kids have better things.
Hmmm, well I thought that was a part of life(which it is). Kids need to understand that other people in life will have better things. It is a point to get a kid to work harder and strive to do better, because if they do that, they can one day be able to have nice things and allow their kids to have nice things for lunch.
This whole PC thing in schools is a way to control people. It removes motivation and something to strive for. Why try and succeed if you get nothing tangible out of it. It treats people like fragile eggs. It punishes students by not letting them have the normal things they get to have in there lives away from school.
That is why if I ever have kids, I will never send them to a school that makes them wear a uniform. It puts on the air that everybody is the same and nobody is different. Everybody is even and proper and must fall in line and there is no room for kids being creative with who they are to make themselves stand out and get noticed.
I also saw this starting to show when I was in little league basketball. In the first 60% of the time I was in little league basketball, only the championship team got trophies. Then it slowly started to change. The next season the losing team in the championship got trophies as well. Then the next season the third team from the top would also get trophies. Then all teams in the league would get some kind of trophy. The winning trophy use to be the biggest trophy, then it started to get smaller and smaller, and then you could barely distinguish the championship trophy from the runner up and the "you did your best" loser trophies. They just couldn't have kids on the other teams feel bad that they didn't make it as far in the play offs or win as much, because that would be just terrible.
This stuff just makes me sick.
If this whole concept of political correctness was a real thing that I could hold, I would grab it and rush to the nearest incinerator and throw it in.
exactly. Columbus thought he arrived in india, so the people who met him must be indians.farscythe said:
If only they had known...
???????NeutralDrow said:
Let's see, a common thought about the right is that they are in bed with big business, the right doesn't want people to be equal, that they are the rich that want people to be lower than them, that want a hierarchy that is leveled where some people are lower than others.(Thought that is a fact of life, some people will be lower than others, right or left).
But then we have political correctness which is a tool to keep everybody level and nice to each other, that people all people even the rich, aren't allowed to stand out because it could be hurtful to the lower people. It's a tool really of the left.
Sonic Doctor said:
I found out that all those things that were implemented in the schools and other events, were brought about by people on the left, who thought their kid shouldn't be seen as bad compared to the successful students or players, or get hurt buy not being equal in some aspect.
...Wait...Baa Baa....RAINBOW SHEEP?!?!
How the hell is black sheep offensive? There ARE black sheep, ya know. And it's not an insult to those of darker skin, is it?
....Sheez...Rainbow sheep...Now kids will believe rainbow sheep exist, and the rhyme will get all screwed up. >_>
How the hell is black sheep offensive? There ARE black sheep, ya know. And it's not an insult to those of darker skin, is it?
....Sheez...Rainbow sheep...Now kids will believe rainbow sheep exist, and the rhyme will get all screwed up. >_>
Well, I brought sickening facts from my experiences growing up, and the experiences of family and friends.Blitzwing said:
Saying what I did was well worth it.
Besides, why say anything to me at all, when you didn't bring anything to this.
You didn't bring anything to the table, while I brought concrete point after point. Why, in the future, should my kids not be able to bring the food they want for lunch to school? Why should the kid that fails get a reward?
Because the other kids that don't do well or get the things they want will feel bad is not an answer.
A world where success is brought down to be level with failure because of political correctness, to protect children from feeling bad(so that they don't experience the facts of life), isn't a world that I or any of my family and friends want to live in.
Political correctness can be cured with a big enough dose of brutal honesty.
I'm not going to bother to read all the posts to see if someone said this earlier, and if someone did - good, but i didn't read it so there.
I can be political correct, but that will end up telling you that i might be in some ways a little difficult to deal with, usually me being a complete loon, misunderstanding things and telling you and your direct superiors (or mine) to A: go find omeplace else to play, or B: i'm doing it my way no matter what you want me to do (autism has it's advantages).
The best thing is probably looking for BRIAN BLESSED in the first Blackadder series. "You want the diplomatic or the honest answer?" "Diplomatic" "Tell them to stuff it."
I'm not going to bother to read all the posts to see if someone said this earlier, and if someone did - good, but i didn't read it so there.
I can be political correct, but that will end up telling you that i might be in some ways a little difficult to deal with, usually me being a complete loon, misunderstanding things and telling you and your direct superiors (or mine) to A: go find omeplace else to play, or B: i'm doing it my way no matter what you want me to do (autism has it's advantages).
The best thing is probably looking for BRIAN BLESSED in the first Blackadder series. "You want the diplomatic or the honest answer?" "Diplomatic" "Tell them to stuff it."
These terms are quite subjective, I think. Each one can have a very different meaning or effect. I find some terms stupid like insisting upon "firefighter" over "fireman" or "police officer" over "policeman". In my opinion the suffix "man" is just an archaic term for the job, not specifically derogatory to females in that line of work. On the other hand I can see how it would grate to be a female in the police force and having a constant reminder that you were once deemed too weak to do the job.
"Retard" has heavily negative connotations and is an offensive word on a par with most racial slurs in my opinion. I have a sister with Downs Syndrome so obviously I'm a little sensitive to the issue and pick up on the negative connotation more, but it may not be as offensive to someone who doesn't have that connection, if you catch my drift. To someone with no connection to anyone with such disabilities "retard" may still be the original medical term, and have no connotation for them. This can lead to the term being used benignly but offence being taken anyway.
So to answer the question I think political correctness is needed to a certain extent for polite discourse, but not to the extent that it actually infringes on free speech, as has happened in some examples endlessly cited by the Daily Mail or Fox News. I can think of very few cases where political correctness has objectively gone mad, but from someone else's point of view it very well may appear that way. Personally, I don't think so.
"Retard" has heavily negative connotations and is an offensive word on a par with most racial slurs in my opinion. I have a sister with Downs Syndrome so obviously I'm a little sensitive to the issue and pick up on the negative connotation more, but it may not be as offensive to someone who doesn't have that connection, if you catch my drift. To someone with no connection to anyone with such disabilities "retard" may still be the original medical term, and have no connotation for them. This can lead to the term being used benignly but offence being taken anyway.
So to answer the question I think political correctness is needed to a certain extent for polite discourse, but not to the extent that it actually infringes on free speech, as has happened in some examples endlessly cited by the Daily Mail or Fox News. I can think of very few cases where political correctness has objectively gone mad, but from someone else's point of view it very well may appear that way. Personally, I don't think so.