Political Correctness

[BrokenQuill92]

Firstly, PC is certainly a thing -- and abstract thing that see concrete usage. Secondly equating PC with intellectual dishonesty or non-PC with needless bigotry are both equivalences which need support.  Are you really saying that people who prefer blunt speech are automatically bigots?

Agreed. It's a power play. But I do think bluntness differs from insult, like saying someone is acting like an idiot versus saying someone is an idiot. But even that seems insufficient.

I once overhead a black mother tell her misbehaving son to "stop acting like a nigger." There's a lot going on in that seemingly simple admonition. I had to think about that one. She seemed to be distinguishing between two kinds of black people, but used a term that only gets used with reference to blacks. To me that was much different from the time I heard one white guy say that he'd rather have a nicer car than a bigger house. His friend replied, "Now you're thinking like a nigger." I know the latter is racist because I know the person who said it and he meant all black people. But if I hadn't known him personally, is that really a safe assumption. He could have meant it in the same sense as the mother. Even if he did does it matter?

I don't have an answer. Even if I did have an opinion I still wouldn't don't feel it is something white people can discuss without the very likely possibility of being accused of bigotry and outright racism. In today's culture, it doesn't matter how carefully you express yourself or the lengths to which you qualify your statements with respect to certain topics in a serious discussion. Eric Holder said that this nation (the US) needs to have a serious conversation about race. Bullshit! What he really means is only on his terms. People cannot have a serious debate when only one party gets to decide what can and cannot be said by everyone else.

I think most people can say that in polite discourse vulgarities should be avoided, except when absolutely necessary. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits. I say 'nigger' is more vulgar and ugly than any of these. But I refused to have written this post without using it. I'm not going to say "N-word" because maybe people aren't saying it out loud, but they're still thinking it in their heads.

There's this great new thing called internalized racism.