Political Corectness and Innacurate Terminology

I know that ripping on politically correct (or PC) speech is old news, but I think it needs another punch in the gut.

Like everyone else, I've heard comedians and everyone else making fun of PC-speak. It was really cool in the mid-90's to make fun of it. But the first time I realized something was incredibly wrong with PC-speak was in the 8th grade. I was reading my social studies book, and it was discussing the situation of black people in Africa. It referred to these black people, who lived in Africa, and had most likely never even been to America, as African Americans.

And this is an African American lion, of course. Or, perhaps more PC, an African large cat. It occurred to me then, and it has bothered me until this day, that the term "African American" is an inaccurate term. It only adequately describes a certain group of black people who live in America, but usually it's used in situations in which their citizenship is not really at issue. It neglects to recognize that some people of African descent are not really black, and that some black people aren't of African descent. It also seems to belittle any black people who aren't also Americans.

I believe that words should say what they mean. And if our society wants to put more emphasis on politeness than on accuracy then I think I'm going to go live in the woods somewhere, with raccoons.

I'm sorry. Nocturnal scavenging animals with cute ringed tails. Huh. After I uploaded this I realized that there's kind of an antiquated racist epithet lurking in there, but I think I'm going to leave the cute picture anyway.

The situation with blacks, at least, has a solution. Call them black. Call us white, too, by the way. These are both accurate terms (not in the sense that the color is accurate, but that there is at least a shared meaning to the words in this context) that aren't offensive. "Negro" would be okay, I suppose, but only if you're wearing pantaloons and a white wig. And of course, the problem with that is it sounds too much like something else.

The problem is worse, however, when you talk about Hispanics or Asians. These are both horribly inaccurate or over-inclusive terms, but they seem to be the best ones I can come up with. First, the term "Hispanic." It's a terribly over-inclusive term because it includes all people of Spanish-speaking descent. This is no good because most people in Spain are included, but they're largely white, and it also includes many black people. It's also terribly under-iclusive because it excludes people of Portuguese-speaking descent (e.g. from Brazil). "Mestizo" would, I suppose, be an adequate term to use, but I don't think most people know what it means. "Latin" would not be a good term to use because it means pretty much the same thing as "Hispanic," but is even more inclusive.

I've heard that even the term "Hispanic" is offensive to some people. You're supposed to refer to them by their actual national ancestry, such as "Mexican," or "Cuban," or "Argentinian," and so forth. This is all fine and dandy, but only if you actually know the origins of the particular person of whom you're speaking or if speaking about a particular nationality is adequate. What if you wanted to talk about the position of all people of these groups in America? It would be insane to, every time you need the words, say "Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans," and so on and so forth until you've named every possible ethnicity of the people of whom you're speaking.

But we don't have an adequate term for the group as a whole. The same goes for "Asians." You of course have the same nationality-specific suggestion for this group, but I for one can't tell whether someone is Japanese or Korean simply by looking at them, and you might again want to talk about the situation of the group as a whole. "Asian" is a bad term because it also includes people in India, the Middle East, and large parts of Russia where other racial groups live.

As I understand it, the term "Oriental" is offensive. As far as I can tell, it's an accurate term. The offensiveness of it hasn't been adequately explained to me, but I've heard that "Oriental is a rug." Well, ok. I suppose another problem with it is that as little as 200 years ago "Oriental" also referred to the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. "Mongoloid," though accurate, really doesn't sound good, and also has some mental retardation connotations as I understand.

And I'm not even going to get into the American Indian thing. That's just as confusing.

So anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that we need to have accurate terms to use to talk about things. The terms currently in vogue, while maybe not hurting anyone's feelings, are hampering out ability to speak clearly about issues. I say, get rid of them. Give the races a letter designation, like A, B, C, and so forth. I don't care. Just come up with a way that we can actually talk about things.