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Originally Posted by usnamom  Look, American Indians are called American Indians. Black people are called African Americans. It is as simple as that. You don't have to call them either name. But I can guarantee you will be thought of as bigotted or ignorant.
Boy is a term that to Black men is extremely offensive. don't believe me? Call an AA male boy and see what you get. It was a word that was said to put black men in their place. To take their manhood away. Of course it is hurtful and I believe in the context that it is used it is racist. In that context. So is uppity.
But the most telling thing is that even though you are told that they are offensive terms, you still continue to try and defend the words for what reason I can't tell you. The fact that you still want to use words that are hurtful to other humans is weird to me.
I can tell you that once I heard someone say "jew them down". My mother said that was hurtful to people of Jewish descent so I never used it for that reason. I would never ask a Jewish person, to explain why it is hurtful because I know that it is hurtful. Which is why it is interesting to me when people here are told something is racist, they insist on saying "no, it shouldn't be". WTH is up with that.
You can't change history. The majority of my relatives more than likely were slaves. Lived in the South. I know that my parents drove across country when I was five and couldn't stay in a hotel and knew what cities to stay in and I remember not being able to eat in certain restaurants. All because of the color of our skin. Can you say that? You may be fat, but you can lose weight. I can't change my color. You may say that you have been discriminated against because of your weight, but again, that is something that can be changed. |
*sigh* I don't continue to use any offensive terms--Nor am I "defending" their use. What I'm saying is, and apparently doing a crappy job of it, the pendulum of political correctness has swung too far the opposite the direction. EVERY word can have negative connotations or meanings. Boy is the perfect example! Good Grief! I have seen black parents get offended when asked "is that your boy over there?" from another parent on the playground. No hidden meaning, no negative implication--just wanted to know which child belonged to which parent. KWIM?
You say you can remember no being able to stop at certain places because of the color of your skin--I'm probably a good 10-15 years younger than you, and I can remember not being able to drive through certain areas because I was white, and the predominately black communities didn't like whites. No, they wouldn't serve us in "their" restaraunts. On the occasions that we played certain teams in basketball tournaments we had to have police escorts to our team bus and out of town. One night we had to leave the game in the middle of the game because of the unrest in the stands--we were in Oklahoma at a predominately Indian school. Racism, bigotry, and hate swing both ways. Blacks don't have the market cornered. No race, religion, creed, sex, etc. has market cornered.
oh and FWIW--none of the 6 or so recognized tribes in Montana care if you call them Indians or Native Americans. They would just like to be seen as equals. Isn't that what we all would want? To be equal?
I guess the succinct version of all my posts: I don't see colored as overtly racist or bigotted. Just like I don't see terms like Redneck or Hick as overtly offensive. I tend to look more in the context of the whole.