PC again
Last week it was a politician being rebuked for comparing disabled with ‘normal’ folk for the purposes of employment. This week Snow White is making an appearance on stage but friends have to take the place of dwarves.
Is the norm – in any social context – no longer a suitable topic for comment? Are we not allowed to refer to any less usual combination of attributes except by avoiding mention of the usual?
The trouble is that a significant number of common English adjectives is now outlawed: blind, deaf, crippled, etc., unless euphemisms replace them. Which ironically takes us back to the reign of Victoria, when so many conditions were unspeakable.
I am not proposing offensive bluntness. Just a proper understanding that censorship tends to have effects quite opposite to those intended. Calling a spade a coloured person doesn’t advance the cause of integration.
What it does do, though, is spark resentment and then fosters it.
White is allowed. Black isn’t.
Normal is allowed. Abnormal isn’t.
Tommy or Brit or Yank, even Frog is allowed. Paki isn’t
I am just happy that there is still one company in the world making Gollywogs.
http://www.stuffedwithplushtoys.com/c/golliwogs/116
Janus, “Calling a spade a coloured person doesn’t advance the cause of integration”.
I am trying to work out whether that is meant to be offensive or not.
An example of offensiveness?
It’s an attempt to re engineer society.
It is an insulting term for a member of a race, a feature of which is a broad flat nose shpaed rather like a spade or, if you prefer, a shovel. It is a racist insult in southern Africa and I was not sure if your use of the word was deliberate or uninteded irony, given the nature of the post.
Moi? Irony? 🙊