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Originally posted by Cerek the Barbaric:
Uhm.....excuse me, Moni, but are you suggesting that anybody that doesn't go along with PC is unintelligent??? 
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Excuse me? Where, or better yet,
how did you pull that out of what I said? I would never
suggest anything...if that is what I had meant, you can be damn sure that is what I would have said.
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A lot of black people use the "N" word themselves. Of course, that doesn't mean it's "acceptable" for white people to do it, since it has historically been a racial slur when used in that manner. I guess that's a situation where "It's Ok for ME to call my brother a jerk, but NOBODY ELSE better try it."
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You know as well as i do that when the "N" word comes out of a white person's mouth and is directed at a black person, chances are in favor of it not being meant in a friendly way. Not to say that black and white friends can't use that term (and "cracker") between themselves, I am aware that it happens, but you know what I mean. Calling anyone a JERK doesn't compare.
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I agree with "most" of your commentary here. I always try to treat everybody with respect, despite any social, racial, or theological differences we may have. In college, I lived in a boarding house with several blacks and got along with all of them very well. It was kinda funny. Towards the end of the school year, I went out to eat with them and several of their friends at a local pizza place. As we sat around the table, I suddenly started looking around the table and mentally "counting" everybody there. Michael, who lived in the house with me, said "What's wrong?" (I had a strange look on my face too, I guessk).
I looked at him and said "I just realized......I'm the ONLY white guy here."
He chuckled and said "Is that a problem?"
"No" I said "I mean I JUST NOW realized it. Earlier in the year, I would have been nervous about it from the time we left the house".
The bottom line is this.....skin color doesn't make a person who they are. Underneath the pigmentation....we are all just PEOPLE!
That's one reason I resist PC Labels. I refer to black people as black....simply because they are - but I do it in a respectful manner. I don't expect them to call me a European-American. I'm a white boy.
The one exception I make is for Native-American...because the term "Indian" is incorrect. They didn't come from India, but Columbus thought that's where he had landed originally.
Ok, that's enough of the Barbarian Rant on Political Correctness.
There may not be anything wrong with the word "niggardly", but (as Azred pointed out, MOST people don't know what it means....so it is automatically assumed to be negative by association). Therefore, I would not use the word in mixed company.....or ANY company for that matter. I had never heard of the word until the incident with the congressman a couple of years ago. I hadn't used it before then, so there is no reason to start now. Moni is correct in that there are plenty of acceptable synonyms that communicate my message just as effectively - perhaps even more so.
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Which is going along with some form of PC, is it not?
What makes people think that "Native Americans" are comfortable with that term as opposed to "Indian" anyway? We may be native to this country but my Apache ancestors certainly didn't call it America! Native American is more of a label than Indian is. At least when they learned the white man's term for the tribal people's, Indian is what they understood it to be.
[ 09-05-2002, 02:47 PM: Message edited by: Moni ]