Its an adjective, thats all. Its not a "label" in the sense that all the Levis jeans are the same, or all bottles of "Blue" taste the same.


If I were purple with pink spots, it would be reasonable if asked, to describe me as a purple guy with the pink spots. Its just not reasonable to say, "Hey, all those purple guys with pink spots are way smarter than the rest of you...." Or "Hey, all those purple guys with pink spots spend way too much time dogging off work in that internet forum"

See the difference?

Too many cases of "racial profiling" in the past have sadly made this the case now. Its a hot button topic in some places.

I'd have to check if the law was rescinded but it was certainly the case three years ago.

On edit, the current practise is that the police do include colour in suspect descriptions but do not keep statistics by race. The newspapers edit race out of suspect descriptions, whether by policy or law I don't know.

Oh Yes I see the difference, unfortunately many dont (as we are all aware). eg ALL brits have 'cute' accents. (sorry I'm not gonna offend anyone else).

So we should all dumb down and pander to the lowest common denominator?

Unfortunately that does seem to be the basis of a lot of political correctness, and therein lies the problem. Rather than build a society that admires intelligence and beauty and tolerance and tries to drag the rest of the world up to that level, we generate a culture that accommodates the lowest basest standards, and then we stand back and wonder why more and more people are dragged down to that level:curse:

Brilliantly put, Iain. Spot on.

But there's only one "l" in "tolerance." Tut tut.

Sorry Iain, I think I'm missing your point

Sadly, dumbing-down vs building-up has been a battle for well over a century. I came across a quote the other day from the guy who founded the company I now work for - he was an Indian (Parsee) businessman and philanthropist in 19th century Bombay, and was in some ways years ahead of his time in the way he treated employees and the communities they came from. I think his words have a strong resonance in this debate about the evils of unchecked political correctness:

My point is that you seem to be arguing that we, as intelligent people, should not describe a man who is dark skinned, as "black", because other, more bigoted people, will make assumptions about him based on that description.

So we have to dumb down our use of a perfectly fine english adjective, in order to accommodate their prejudice.


And whats worse, if they are bigoted, then they will associate his appearance with negative connotations no matter how we choose to describe him, and the word "black" is left in the command of the Neanderthals and doesn't get to be freely associated with someone who by most accounts is an outstanding man....

And society as a whole gets a little bit dumber.

Let's be clear... this is not only about race. The same situation occurs when referring to fat people, bald people, disabled people... there is an increasing tendency to avoid any suggestion that we have noticed any obvious physical differences.

I repeat my point that noticing obvious physical differences is not the same thing as equating them with any pejorative connotations, nor should it be.

NO my point is that we should educate (not recondition) people to be 'blind' to colour\age\sex\religion etc when deciding on their abilities\morals\athleticism etc. I disagree with the use of the words 'black' 'hispanic' 'asian' etc only when used in order to 'promote' or 'demote'. In the case of Obama, he is using as a method to promote himself (IMHO) just as much as Clinton used it to try to defeat him (and just as McCain will use the same tactic).

So what do we call the man who is 40+, over weight, bald, wears glasses, has a speech impediment, a limp, and is of non Caucasian origin?

No the answer is not Dave or unlucky either. But if you were chatting about "him" to explain who he was at a party as he had the most amazing brain power and was really interesting....how do you describe him so that it is clear who "one" is referring to?

It'd depend who I was talking to. If it was someone I knew well and was confident understood the absence of prejudice in my description, I'd probably say "you know, Dave, the fat, bald, speccy, gimpy limpy black guy." Or, on reflection, I might say "you know, Dave, my black Doppelgänger"

So who decides that then? The hand wringing minority is my guess.


Bigoted people will promote or demote anyway based on their perception of a person, it doesnt need someone else to use a particular word for that to happen.

All those words are simply adjectives to describe a persons appearance. Anything that people want to add to that in there own mind is not the responsibility of the person using that word...and you are right, there is a place for education / whateveryouwanttocallit in those circumstances.

I agree though that there are certainly times when the addition of an adjective is not required and its done precisely to influence peoples perception. For example, it really is no more necessary to describe Obama as the "Black Presidential Candidate" in a newspaper article than it is to describe McCain as the "White Presidential Candidate", but if you ask me "what does he look like?" then I'm not going to stop at "tall" for the sake of political correctness.

Not using adjectives where they rightly apply is just dumbing down, and we are all the poorer for that.

Its the same thing as saying you cant fly a St Georges cross in the UK because its become a racist symbol. If all the proud multicultural, tolerant Englishmen flew it, then it wouldnt have been possible for it to have been hijacked by the BNP...If you are scared to use words like black or asian or hispanic, then it hands control of them over to the people who want them to have a negative connotation, so the mindless idiots win once again.

BAX - well, 5 out of seven ain't bad