But First, Do No Harm – Thoughts on Political Correctness
This is part of a series called the Wushfield Wednesday Write-Off, a friendly competition between my sister and I, where we’ll write on a different topic each Wednesday and share those writings with the world through the (admittedly meek) power of our blogs. This week, the topic was political correctness, and her blog can be found here.
“Look, mommy! A black guy.”
When I was four or five years old, I was walking down a path at a local park when I said this to my mother, who quickly shushed me, telling me that it was wrong to point such things out. To be fair, yes, the man passing us was, indeed, a black guy, but they wanted to let me know that, despite the truth of my statement, it wasn’t appropriate to announce the obvious fact of people’s skin color.
They were right, of course. It was rude, and, to my credit, I haven’t pointed out random people of color since. I consider it a major accomplishment, as should all of you.
I remember the political correctness movement coming to prominence, if such a word is correct, in the early 1990s. I was entering my teen years, and it was then that phrases such as “African-American” replaced “Black,” “Asian-American” took over from the admittedly strange “Oriental,” and so on and so forth.
Generally, these things felt right; there was no real reason to doubt the powers that be that informed the world of such things, and we certainly didn’t want to offend anyone. So, we said Native American, and Little People, and used the word “person” at the end of “fire” and “police” instead of the more masculine term that had been a part of American society since there were men to do those jobs.
As a side note, maybe it’s good that the occupation of Milk Man is essentially extinct, as calling someone a “Milk Woman” may have been impossible to do with a straight face. Try it. I tested it out on my stepsister, and she seemed to get a kick out of it.
Anyway, I generally don’t have a problem with the concept of political correctness, as it all stems from a desire to be kind and fair to all people. Admittedly, it’s likely also a mechanism for a dominant culture or skin color to mollify themselves about being dominant in the first place, but those less than honorable origins doesn’t mean that addressing the issue is unnecessary, and I’m personally glad that we have a few new terms to play with in the hopes of keeping people happy.
After all, I’m a man of words. I love their taste and sound, and love the way that they curl off of the tongue. As George Carlin said, there are no bad words, only bad meanings.
And, in a sense, that’s the problem.
Words that are effectively neutered by the hammer of political correctness lose some of that meaning in the process, and that’s not always for the best. Again, the word “Oriental” certainly needed to go, and replacing “midget” and “dwarf” with “Little People” is a huge improvement, as it makes them, as the name suggests, people, as opposed to sideshow attractions or fictional beings who live in the mountains of Middle Earth. These were necessary steps.
Still, I hate that the word “black” has almost become a dirty word, as there’s nothing wrong with it. ”White” is still acceptable, because “Caucasian” sounds funny, and not everyone considers themselves a “European American.” After all, a number of black people have their origins in the Caribbean, and calling them African-American is, if not an insult, exceptionally wrong at best.
Some of those words were, and are, fine. They’re ways that we distinguish people, not judge them. If I know two men named John Carver, one white and one black, and I’m asked to tell someone which one just had a kid, is it wrong of me to say “White John” or “Black John?” I don’t want to be incendiary, and I suppose I could say “the one with red hair,” or some other physical characteristic, but making note of one’s skin color does not a racist make.
But that’s not what necessarily bothers me. Maybe the words, ultimately, are fine.
Maybe it’s the hyphen.
AfricanhyphenAmerican suggests an asterisk, something to explain that this isn’t a normal American, but someone who’s American and something else. The hyphen is, in this sense, a bit insidious: AsianhyphenAmerican, NativehyphenAmerican, LatinhyphenAmerican, and all of the rest exist to make minorities stand out as others, nonstandards…differents.
I don’t want to upset anyone, but, while using politically correct language can assist in such goals, to embrace politically correct language as it has been created is to do what I did when I was five years old; to point out the differences in our society is, ultimately, rude, and creating subsets of people in an otherwise inclusive society is offensive.
I suppose that what it comes down to is that there shouldn’t be African-Americans or Jewish-Americans or Indian-Americans or any other subset of Americans. We’re all Americans, equally and wonderfully. Some of us are Jewish, some of us are of Indian descent, and some are of African descent. Simple as that.
We’re not hyphens. We’re Americans. That’s correct enough for me.
