By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
When I was a lad, there were Colored People. They became Afro-Americans for a while, then African-Americans, then Black and now are Persons of Color, which seems to be full circle but apparently is not.
Persons of Color is politically correct but Colored People is a deadly insult, even though the nation’s largest enforcer of political correctness – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – still uses the deadly insult as an essential part of its own name.
I don’t know about you, but speaking for myself as middle-aged White Male Americans, it’s getting harder every day to remember who I’m oppressing and who I’m subsidizing.
Joe Doakes
It does get confusing.
July 5th, 2013 at 8:00 am
I try to call people by their name, as individuals and describe them as they choose to be described. (The last poll I saw on this, many ‘people of color’, prefer to be described by the term ‘black’, but it has been a while.) I try not to assume that because one black person acts a certain way, that all black people act in that way. I try to do the same with all people, regardless of their color (or lack thereof), religion (or lack thereof), sexual orientation(s) or their ethnic heritage (I’ve met plenty of Italians who don’t wildly gesticulate while talking and Irish who don’t want to fight after they’ve had a nip).
I have often wondered if people who choose to exploit our surface differences (generally Liberals and ‘Progressives’) listen to Martin Luther KIng say he ‘dreams of a time when… are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin” and say to themselves – “hey, Marty, why don’t you just shut the f*** up” about that?”
July 5th, 2013 at 10:16 am
Persons of Color is politically correct but Colored People is a deadly insult […]
Which explains why the NAACP is so schizophrenic.
Naming “races” is a pretty funny thing. I was doing some genealogy research and came across a Mohawk great-great-grandmother. In talking to the tribal historian we got to discussing her ancestry and I made the mistake of calling the tribe Native Americans. He looked at me and said, “You’re as native as I am. We were both born here. We’re American Indians.”
July 5th, 2013 at 12:31 pm
Nerdbert,
I believe the term that the perpetually aggrieved would apply to that tribal historian is “apostate”.
July 5th, 2013 at 9:12 pm
Nerdbert; one of my fellow gunners in Vietnam was a Choctaw from Oklahoma. He said the same thing about being native Americans. Funny though, on the back of his helmet, he had the initials FBI. When anyone asked him what it stood for, he replied;
“F—ing Big Indian.”