Did anybody ask Native Americans if they liked being called Native Americans? Whose idea was it? Probably not theirs. If it was a treaty, why haven’t we violated it yet?
As for the misnomer “Indians,” you can blame that on Columbus because he had no sense of direction. The fact that this nitwit actually got venture capital is astounding.
And if the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves get to keep their names, then their stadiums should serve Vindaloo instead of hot dogs.
Here’s one: What am I supposed to call a guy with a complicated ancestry, let’s say an English-Japanese-Liberian-Icelandic-American? Screw the lineage. I’d rather just call him “ancestrally conflicted.” It’s shorter.
And if your parents escaped from Nazi Germany, do you really want to be called a “German-American”?
And where did “ess” go? Why are actresses now actors? Why are hostesses now hosts? Why did they overlook mistresses? And why do I now have to call a waitress a server and a stewardess a flight attendant? What the hell does the term “flight attendant” even mean? They’re sky servers with attitude.
And what the hell is a steward? A misspelling of Stewart?
Okay, is Ms. really that much better than Miss or Missus? Face it: If you’re not married, you’re a Miss; if you’re married you’re a Missus. Being unmarried is no longer a stigma. This is not 1850.
If PC gets any worse, what will I have to call an unmarried woman next week -– “romantically challenged”?
Speaking of which, what’s up with calling a deaf person “hearing challenged” or a blind person “sight challenged”? Deaf people can’t hear and blind people can’t see, so what’s the challenge here? Challenged implies that they could hear or see if they just tried a little harder.
Go tell that to Helen Keller.
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and BRAVO! For the helen keller and hearing/sight impaired questions!
It's about damn time an ABBIE (Able-bodied folk) talked about this issue! hehehe
I have a *deaf* child. I don't call her "hearing impaired" or "hearing challenged". She's stone deaf. She won't EVER hear... she's missing part of the brain that processes speech due to a brain tumor. Since she'll never re-grow that part of her brain OR have a brain transplant... there's no way she's going to ever be anything other than DEAF.
Among my friends are Inupiat, Athabascan and Navajo natives. Every one of them has told me they regret the removal of proud Indian names and mascots in sports. At least one woman told me she thinks Americans are trying to erase Native Americans from the nation's memory by these well-intentioned (as they usually are) efforts. She said, "I don't remember us voting!"
R
Mr. doesnt tell you marital status. No-brainer here. Ms. Period. Thought we settled this 30 years ago :)
-R-
Oh, I am laughing out loud. That would be me!
This post is absolutely perfect!
My family fled Germany in 2 waves: First, in 1880, because they were socialists and Bismarck didn't like them. The other half came over in the 1930s, because they were Catholic and didn't want to go to Hitler Youth school (they were being forced out of Catholic School into Nazi-School, and they didn't like it).
I still call myself German-American, but mostly because of little things that distinguish me from other white ethnic Americans (like Irish or Italians), such as Xmas eve traditions (we never open presents in morning, but only at midnight, after mass), holiday meals (roast pork, sauerkraut, Riesling, beer), and other foods. I love pumpernickel bread, chicken liver pate, pickled herring w/ cream and onion sauce. When I eat it, it reminds me of my now deceased Grandma.
Now, German delis are rare, as most Germans have assimilated. The last German deli in my old town of Glendale, NY, closed in the late 1980s. The only other group in the US that eats alot of this food are Jews. As such, I am able to feel closer to my deceased German relatives by shopping in Jewish Delis. Lachs, whitefish, chicken liver pate, herring in brine, herring in cream sauce. It's interesting how similar German, Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian and Jewish foods are. This post is off track, a bit, but its late and I'm going to bed. Good post.
My father always referred to himself as "white trash" from the hills of Kentucky. Is that PC if it's in self-description or does no one care because it describes a white guy?
From the Bureau of Indian Affairs:
"The term, 'Native American,' came into usage in the 1960s to denote the groups served by the Bureau of Indian Affairs: American Indians and Alaska Native (Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska). Later the term also included Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in some Federal programs. It, therefore, came into disfavor among some Indian groups. The preferred term is American Indian."
As for Native Americans, those who care about such things generally prefer the term First People, tho' most much prefer tribal allegiance and prefer to be called Lakotah, Tsalagi (Cherokee), Ojibwa (Chippewa), etc, etc. In general, I don't object to culture appropriation for team names except for those that are clearly racist such as Redskins. Can you imagine the furor if the New York Knicks decided to call themselves the New York Kikes?
She's got the most clearly understood explanation of why using the term Native American is, in fact, white-washing history.
Lezlie
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1179835/how_the_fighting_whities_came_to_be.html?cat=9
How about some more like it? The Hurling Honkies, Courageous Crackers, White Devils...
@MrsRaptor - My wife concurs that the Lakota people she worked with in Nebraska preferred to be called American Indians, and scoffed at the "Native American" epithet.
Rated.
Some of the most romantically-challenged people I know are also married.
@ jane smithie redux: 44 isn't that old. You are merely age-conflicted.
@LadyMiko: What a coincidence. I'm a whip cream lech.
@sweetfeet: To be fair, instead of she and he, we should all be called "it".
@Stellaa: Thanks. You seem to be senseofhumorly challenged.
@Cindy Ross: Thanks. You see to be spellingly challenged.
@O'Really: The reason you're not married is because you are sexually challenged.
period
It is, in fact, degrading and insulting, for example, to call someone a hero, if THEY do not believe THEIR actions to be heroic. Of course it is also insulting to call someone an idiot or asshole, if they do not ask for it, but I think the point of calling someone an idiot or an asshole IS to insult them, whereas if you call someone a hero, who did not ask for it, you may be insulting them and not intend to.
We need to let the TARGET of the particular label define how they interpret the label that others give us.
Period
End of story
Anything else, no matter how well meaning, is insulting and degrading
@ Lady Miko who says, I'm a chocolate slut . . . .is that PC? LOL
FYI: I love both words; it's PC with me!
@OEsheepdog ... I knew PC was some kind of moron.
Personally, I just want to be known as Lacking Color. JB, Politically Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you Gentile challenged? {{{R}}}
As an unmarried woman I would much prefer to be called romantically charged. :)
V
XOXOXO
I'm tired of all the PC crap.
Thanks for the laugh!
I am a Dr. now, so don't need to use Ms. Glad there was never a Doctress to be concerned about changing.
I loved it.
Nowadays, I don't care what someone calls me as long as I'm called...
2) If the fancy-pants new stadiums in Atlanta and Cleveland are anything like the new San Francisco ballpark, they probably *do* serve Vindaloo. And sushi. And lattes.
3) My brother in law has a complicated ancestry--I just call him "Wil." Cuz, ya know, that's his name and all. And he's bigger than me.
4) If your parents or grandparents escaped from Nazi Germany, you call yourself "Jewish," like as not.
5) "Actor" and "host" are perfectly good, asexual words on their own, not unlike "Senator" or "Judge"; no need to sex them up with an -ess.
6) "Ms." is better when you don't know if the person you're addressing is married or not--yeah, usually people wear rings, but not always. So it's safer.
Glad I could clear some of these up for you, dude!
Now, as for 're-branding' I'm all for that.
Nice skirt around the most obvious misnomered PC challenged heritage designation in our 200 year history ... I dare ya.
;)
Rated just for the heck of it.
Joking aside, on the Miss/Mrs./Ms. thing...aside from the fact that "Mr." conveys no marital information while "Miss" and "Mrs." do and in that regard it IS an issue of equality (though not sameness) between the sexes, "Mrs." doesn't really work for those married women who don't change their names.
Though I hope to get married someday, I won't change my name. It's mine, dammit. (I really don't give a crap if our kids have his last name; I just like the continuity of having one name throughout life.)
But it's highly unlikely that I'll be marrying someone with the last name "Nolting" considering to do so would also mean it's highly likely I'm marrying a relative of some sort. If I called myself "Mrs. Nolting" after marriage, people would assume that my husband, Mr. Whatever, was named Mr. Nolting.
Just call people what they want to be called. And I've yet to hear a blind person want to be called "visually challenged" or a deaf person want to be called "hearing challenged."
Signed, Miss/Ms. Leeandra Nolting, a (German-French-Swiss) American waitress
You said "rather just call him “ancestrally conflicted.” We called ourselves "Heinz 57" growing up.
Thanks for sticking up for Helen
Originally the name "American" was a just a synonym for the name "Indian" i.e. "savages" indigenous to the Americas or the West Indies -- the use of one or the other name was determined by whether you supported the Germanic cartographers championing of Amerigo Vesbucci's continental theories, versus the Latin cartographers championing of Columbus' theories -- The Spanish aimed to colonize China eventually, and they saw the West Indies as a beach-head for the Invasion of Asia which never happened.
What DID happen is that the English colonists eventually claimed the name "American" for themselves, during the Revolutionary War period, right around the same time that they were "playing Indian" by dressing up as Mohawks to throw tea in Boston Harbor. They romanticized the noble savages and made them a national symbol (on coinage, turkey day etc, some would argue even by adopting Iroquois law into the Constitution), but sought to terminate native cultures and denied them citizenship until WWI.
Basically, what I'm saying is that the very name "American" is yet another thing that we stole from the American Indian.
I don't know.
Am I supposed to be pissed?
We know not to call African -Americans the N word, Italians- the G
or D or W word, homosexuals- the F word and so on. This is not only common sense it's common decency. However, when we keep changing or adding terms one can understand how someone may inadvertantly offend another simply due to confusing terms. As for Mrs. or Miss or Ms. - I don't want Mrs. because it will associate me with a raging ...hole. Miss or Ms. is fine with me. I remember as a kid reading the comic strip "Family Circus" and the one kid was telling the other kid:" Mrs. means you're married, Miss means you're not married and Ms. means it's a secret!"
1. What's the plural? (Kind of sounds like Missus, no?)
2. If you'r a Ms. and you have a wedding ring on, isn't that kind of a tip-off?
Really, though...does anyone really have much call to make Mr./Mrs./Miss/Ms. plural?
2.) My mother was Mrs. Nolting, nee Abplanalp. She hasn't a wedding ring since before I was born (her hands swelled up during pregnancy, then it never fit right again so she never wore it). Dad didn't wear a wedding ring either--got his caught on a piece of machinery on the back of a garbage truck when he was working as a trash man. Luckily the ring broke and he didn't lose a finger or hand. Since he worked with heavy machinery, he never got it repaired and never wore one again while married to Mom. He's remarried now and works as a teacher, but I still don't think he bothers wearing a wedding ring. I know my stepmother has an engagement ring, but I don't know if she has a wedding ring from Dad.
3.) In addition to not really working for married women who keep their names, Mrs./Miss doesn't really work for divorced or widowed women.
And call a woman ministering to your non-carnal needs aboard a plane anything other than a flight attendant and she'll kick you in the groin.
I'll see what I can do with your Miss/Missus businenus.
I prefer Mizzz, but will accept anything other than "hey you" or "Whaaaat?'
the noble redman was actually just as 'un-pc' as your average [white] redneck, and it's only in recent years though management of casinos that they have become tolerant of white cultures so long as they leave lots of money in the res.
Too funny, sir.
Rather than answering my legitimate, thoughtful question, the guide sternly lectured me, in front of the entire group of about 20 people, that the word "Indian," is a derogatory American word for a people that are properly called "Aboriginal Inhabitants," or "First Nations People," after which I promptly asked, "Does that mean I can't call them Redskins?" I was promptly booted from the tour. True story.
R
I'm with you on blind and deaf though. I always think of those terms as simply factual descriptions of a person who cannot see and/or cannot hear. I never thought of it being intended as an insult, or a judgement on their value as a person.
What if one wants to be a defiant person, always daring oneself and others to go beyond their "limitations" -- but lack the chutzpah? Does that make one challenge-challenged?
It's about time, don't cha think?
Bloodlines are pathetic and racist by definition.
I prefer however to be known as a proud member of The Seminole Nation!
Go Noles! Win the College World Series in Omaha!
The Germans use the Frau (Mrs.) to mean adult and Fraulein (Miss) to mean girl, kind of like the English Mr. Man and Master Boy. The Germans sensibly ditched the married/unmarried connotation for women's forms of address.
Which is all a way of saying whatever "rules" you think there are for when to use Mrs, Miss, or Ms, they only exist within the boundaries of your social group. And therefore, women can be free to choose whatever combination pleases her. That's what I did.
Why did we get landed with it? Why not name all groups for the mountain range of their continent of origin's highest mountains. Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Uzbeks, Indonesians and Turks can all be called Himalayan. (Oh, and the Nepalese and Tibetans, too).
The Latinos can be Andean, and then of course, we'd have the mouthful of Kilimanjaran-American.
And you know, if the Hawaiians complain about being called Denali-Americans, the Republicans can point out that it's their fault for settling on such a puny set of islands and the Democrats can be the good guys and promise that if Kilauea gets off its duff and proves that good-old American volcanoes can whip any wimp from Iceland, they (and the Navajos and Eskimos) will be called Kileauea-Americans as long as the eruption produces another another 7,000 feet of mountain.