Equality & diversity or political correctness?

[JockSporran]

Today I had to go on an equality & diversity course through work. We were given a list of things you should and shouldn't say, and were warned that you had to call 'minority' people the right terms or it might be offensive. It wasn't just a case of avoiding obvious racist terms. It was things like avoiding even the use of 'Asian', 'an epileptic', 'the deaf', etc. This has done more harm than good, and now I feel nervous in the company of all coloured or disabled people in case I say the incorrect thing and end up in trouble. I sometimes think we are the last generation to enjoy freedom of thought.

[mallam]

beso, I would be interested to know the provenance of your user name, if you are happy to reveal it. In Japanese it means something like 'crybaby'!

[mallam]

Anyway, beso, if people feel that 'disabled' is negative, they are obviously going to feel that 'impaired' is no less so. Another norm is 'differently abled', and whatever else you might think of it, at least it's relatively positive, and answers their objections about not having their abilities recognized.

[mallam]

123everton, I quite agree that a spade and a shovel are 2 entirely different implements and perform 2 entirely different tasks, but the expression I mention is well established. The OED has "colloq. phr. to call a spade a (bloody) shovel: to speak with great or unnecessary bluntness", with citations from 1919 on. At least nobody can credibly say that the spade in this is anything but an agricultural implement. Perhaps it's you and I who are in for a very long day!

Your (actually quite affectionate) Chinese term for foreigners is the Cantonese 'gwai lou' (roughly gwy-loe). The corresponding Mandarin term would be 'guǐzi' (roughly gweydzz). 'Foreign demon' is 'y�ng guǐzi'. I would agree the latter terms really are offensive.

Gentile is actually a definition by non-creed or non-race, isn't it? One of beso's neg defs.

Kuffar is an outright obscenity. It is simply the plural of kaffir, which is bad enough whether used by S Africans or Muslims, but once again it's the associations that make the difference, for me at any rate.

[mallam]

Gormless, INvalid (as in disabled) and InVALid (as in not valid) are indeed pronounced differently and must be regarded as separate words. They of course have the same etymology, but are separate dictionary entries.

[mallam]

Quinlad, you've really found an admirable clip there. But Stewart Lee, brilliant as he is in it, in and shocking tho those memories those of us also "of an age" share, seems not to quite accept that it is possible for PC to go mad, and I'm sure we can all think of conclusive examples of it doing so. Of course I fully acknowledge his point that any PC at all is a vast improvement on what went before it.

[mallam]

BTW, 123everton, when a Cantonese says 'faan gwai lou' for 'foreign devil' (lit. barbarian devil), a bit of paranoia is entirely in order!