politically correct

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by mathman, Feb 15, 2015.

  1. Doug Coulter Registered Member

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    Right on, CT, but sometimes even claiming "human" is embarrassing, since most of them are so ignorant. I've seen "normal" and am glad to be called "not".
    As far as jobs, I've never gotten a really good one via going through anyones HR dept. It's meeting some other engineer or whatever in a bar or something, and them deciding to try and recruit me - by the time I meet HR, the deal is done.
    Just as I won't work for anyplace that needs a union. If the atmosphere is that poisoned, they can look elsewhere for "talent". One boss that pays me is bad enough - two, one of which I have to pay, and who prevents me from helping a buddy due to "Work rules" - you have to be kidding. I also have axes to grind towards anything that smells like anti-meritocracy, favoring tenure over quality.

    But I've not been in the job market for a really long time...my last job was CEO of a company I owned, and I retired 16 years ago, pretty well off.
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I am also retired and did own and operate my own plumbing and electric company which I was doing all of the work but did hire on temporary help from a temp agency who paid their employees instead of me. Made my life allot easier. I was non union so that I could easily "adjust" my prices if I needed to with no one overseeing me. A gave breaks to low income people so that they did not have to go broke over a job they needed done. Didn't make much money but felt like a good human being.
     
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  5. Doug Coulter Registered Member

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    I operated in a similar fashion, though this was a different business - product development, systems/hardware/software. All my guys chose to be contractors, rather than employees (I didn't hire dumb people). I told them we could charge $X for their hours, and would they rather just have me pass through the money, or would they like me to take out bucks for unemployment, disability, fees, medical bennies, tax witholding and on and on - EG all the job-killing stuff. No one wanted that. Not one. They'd rather have the money and take care of themselves, themselves. Kind of says it all about our nanny state, now getting even worse on a number of fronts. I didn't even take a cut for being the front man. I already was getting paid by the same customers, and could get more fun work due to having those other guys...it was total win-win.

    We always did computer support for the neighborhood for free. Lucky to live in a real neighborhood with nice people in the first place - we all do good things for one another because it's fun to live that way - I got no end of crap for calling it "libertarian communism" but I've not found better words for it so far. No one tells anyone what to do. If you're a "good person" people help you. If you're a jerk, this is a hard place to live and you'll be leaving sooner or later. If your roof blows off, the entire neighborhood turns out, like an Amish barn raising. If you're a jerk...not so much. All voluntary.

    My attitude is "screw political correctness" - let's just figure out how to make it work on our own. I don't need someone else to tell me that stuff - they are likely a lot less qualified to do so anyway. I sure as crap don't need some ivory tower academic to show me how to get 'er done - I know far better than they how to do so - they are the ignorant ones, self-insulated from all reality, living on a skim from those of us who produce actual value (which includes worthwhile knowledge, they stopped leading that field a long while back).

    I have noticed that things that just work here tend to break down in high population concentrations. I have the "small town advantage" here (though I'm from DC). Here, no one can be a con artist - everyone knows and you're toast. Whereas in a big city, you can go 3 blocks and start over, here that just won't work for you. It tends to make for better people...

    And that's not politically correct. Just correct. It'll do.
     
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  7. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Well it's good to know your living environment has not led you towards stereotyping. That would be such a shame.
     
  8. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Then it will likely remain a mystery to you why a black person might take offence at a white person callin 'em nigger.!!!
     
  9. mathman Valued Senior Member

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    My impression about the two Koreas is that there is not that much hate, except possibly in the North leadership.
     
  10. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    That's common among many ethnic minorities in the USA. Asian-Americans can call each other "Gooks" (which is actually Korean for "Korean" but American soldiers picked it up in the Korean war and took it with them to Vietnam, and now it's a derogatory term for most East Asians), but if a Euro-American uses it, it will be interpreted as a slur.
    Sure. The partition at the end of the Korean war split families. The people who run the North Korean government are envious of the South Korean economy, but they don't exactly hate them.
     
  11. birch Valued Senior Member

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    To understand what is offensive or not, you have to consider connotations with any slur, because that is it's intent. People of the same ethnicity may use a slur as benign terms of endearment (N word, for example) or parody but as with any slur, context and the target is key to determine whether it's offensive and attack mode. There is little insult in a white person calling another "cracker," for instance as that is the pot calling the kettle black etc.

    Also unfortunately, the derogatory nature of racial slurs that have been invented by caucasians (and which are many) are much more crass and demeaning than usually known slurs for whites/caucasians which either are quite goofy ( whitey, cracker) or just a term for 'foreigner' in most cases. So it is not arbitrary but easily understandable why racial slurs are more offensive toward nonwhites, if you consider the degrading level of one slur vs another.
     
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  12. Sylvester Registered Senior Member

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    467
    Semantics.hyperbole, conjecture...blah, blah, blah....
     
  13. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Since semantics deals with the meaning of words and meaning is essential to communication, I can't figure out what you find to be unattractive about that.

    Hyperbole? Where is there demonstrable exaggeration for effect in Cosmic Traveller's post?

    Conjecture? Do you think CT does not know how many jobs he's failed to get? Do you dispute that we are all members of the human race? In short, where is the conjecture?

    blah, blah, blah......indeed, but it seems to be originating from you in this instance.
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Anyone insisting on pretending that the sociological races do not exist in social reality - which is the reality of a job application, as well as most workplaces - would raise a red flag in my hypothetical job-filling mind. But then I would not have put such a question on the job application in the first place.

    Anyone in the US who puts down "human" as their racial identification is almost certainly white, anyway - for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that only a white person in the US could believe that.
     
  15. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Not all racial slurs were created out of disrespect. The one considered most egregious in North America is "nigger." (We can spell that word out in the Linguistics subforum because we're actually discussing the word itself, but please don't do it elsewhere on this website.)

    The Spanish colonists and traders in the New World referred to their African slaves as simply "black (person)," which in Spanish is negro, pronounced NEH-gro. The English-speaking colonists further north adopted the same word, but read it in English phonetics: NEE-gro. It's worth pointing out that this spelling and pronunciation is still accepted in polite discourse everywhere in North America, although it's more often encountered in institutional names, such as the United Negro College Fund, than in speech.

    But as the Southern states developed their own dialect, with phonetic influences other than those which shaped Northern dialect, the word became nigger, and also nigra. These words were not consciously and deliberately coined as insults, but were merely elements in a culture that regarded all Africans and (especially) Afro-Americans as inferior.

    As the United States slowly evolved socially, we established "polite" names for these people, starting with "colored" (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is still quite active), "Afro-American," and now "African-American"--with "black" also regarded as polite, although not as common as it was 40-50 years ago.

    Many other racial slurs, such as "gook" for East Asian people, also have etymologies that were not originally meant as slurs. This one, for example, is a colloquial shortening of Han-gook, which means simply "Korean."
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2015
  16. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    Does the Spanish word for black (the colour) have any connection to the word "nega" used as a prefix, for example in the word "negative"?
     
  17. mathman Valued Senior Member

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  18. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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    3,133
    Ah, cool.

    I thought there was some Latin root or something, with black being seen as an "absence" of colour.
     
  19. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The words for "black" in most of the Romance languages (Spanish negro, French noir, Italian nero, Romanian negru, etc.) evolved from Latin niger. None of the other Indo-European languages have a similar word for "black." It may be derived from the same ancient Indo-European word that gives us "night," or it could have been borrowed from the Etruscans like several other Latin words.
     
  20. Kajalamorth The Doctor Registered Senior Member

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    I find the whole "white" thing to be laughable. Like Europe was ever united by skin color right?
     
  21. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Or by anything else.

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    The E.U. is barely half a century old and some of the members already have secession movements.
     
  22. Kajalamorth The Doctor Registered Senior Member

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    76
    Dissent and Conflict is the main feature of humanity. Visit Earth now for some barbarity

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