I find it odd...

a place to discuss my "ongoing" series of rants and raves on my rants/raves page... so far, it's not too ongoing, but i will probably be adding more soon...

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anarky
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I find it odd...

Post by anarky »

I'm not going to go on a long rant, though I could. I try to be as PC as I can, not for the sake of being PC, but because I A) don't want to legitimately hurt someone's feelings unintentionally, or B) be P-un-C in front of some asshole who will lecture me, because I've got better shit to do than listen to stupidity. Most people I know who are descended from the folks who were here before Columbus (who aren't "Native American," since their forefathers walked their asses over the Bering Strait) have no problem with "Indian," most dark-skinned people I know actually prefer "black" to "African American."

What I find kinda funny, though, is the way that every minority group (or a vocal minority of that minority group) gets upset about what they're being called, no matter how innocuous, and come up with a new term everyone's supposed to use. Then, a few years later, that term is supposedly offensive and there's a new one (witness negro -> colored -> black -> African-American), and sometimes they'll "take back" a terminology that has always been intended in an offensive manner, as if it was ever acceptable (like queer or "the N-word").

What's funniest is when the new term is either a throwback to a term they decided was offensive earlier, or something that just sounds like it would only be offensive. I'm hearing more and more, referring usually to all minorities but increasingly just to the primarily darker-skinned people descended from African slaves, "people of color." So "colored" was bad in the 1960s, but now an almost identical term is okay? How exactly does that work? I thought it was all about getting into terms of ethnicity rather than skin color, since that was a kind of bad frame of reference. (I know a lot of Japanese people and some black folks who are lighter than I am, and I'm practically an albino. Are they white, then? If I get a tan, am I a person of color? Not trying to be a wiseass, but they should think this through.)

The fucking best, or worst, has to be the current term for people under a certain height (I think four feet): little people. What the fuck? Really, is "midget" offensive? Does "dwarf," which is akin to the medical term "dwarfism," hurt feelings? Are people that upset about the fact so many mix up the terms, as they were used interchangeably in the past? Admittedly, I'm not a "little person" by any stretch (though I ain't tall, neither), but I imagine that if I was, the term "little people" would be far more fucking offensive than anything else. I think I'd rather be called a munchkin than a little person. That sounds like a fucking mythical being who lives in a tree, fixes shoes, and makes shitty cookies.
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Ran
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by Ran »

The whole thing confuses me.

To honor this month, the hockey station on XM has these 3 minute blurbs about certain black NHL players. But after they call it "Black History Month" they proceed to refer to the players as "African-American" and "African-Canadian".
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by Diabolical »

I want to be referred to as "Caucasian American" or "European American."
I now find the term "White" highly offensive.
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anarky
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by anarky »

Another thing: people from the Caucasus are, predominately, not white. How the hell did "Caucasian" come to mean "white person," then?
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by Diabolical »

anarky wrote:Another thing: people from the Caucasus are, predominately, not white. How the hell did "Caucasian" come to mean "white person," then?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
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anarky
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by anarky »

Gotcha. So a racist theory of European/Middle Eastern superiority was further watered down and twisted to mean one particular subgroup of Europeans (mostly from the north).
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by Slicker »

I personally have always hated the term African American. None of them are actually from Africa. Yes they are descendants but that doesn't mean a damn thing. I think I put it up on the other site in a thread about Charlie Theron. She was born in South Africa. She became a US citizen. Do you classify her as African American? Most wouldn't because she has white skin. Or what if a black British man comes over here. I'd be furious if I was him and someone referred to me as African American. I think it's all dumb as fuck anyways. People care far too much about the most trivial of things.
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anarky
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by anarky »

Go back far enough, and we all come from the Great Rift Valley, so every damned one of us is African-American.

Mrs A was teaching Othello to a mostly white English class. They tried to scold her for using the term "black" to describe Othello. "No, Mrs Anarky, he was African-American." They didn't seem to understand when she explained that America didn't even fucking exist when the play takes place.
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Re: I find it odd...

Post by Antropov »

anarky wrote:How the hell did "Caucasian" come to mean "white person," then?
Its because of the similarities between our wieners and those of folks from the far east.

Cock=Asian
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