Beats me, Spexx.

To be fair, different people sometimes want different things.

Not to mention that if some group of people, let's say some sports team, wants to be called something like say the Redskins, you might think why is it so difficult to have the consideration to refer to people as they want? But nooooooooooooooo, somebody's going to say we don't like what you want to be called even though no one is calling them that. Those who make political correctness demands on their own behalf invariably start making demands about what others are called, whether THEY want them to or not, ad nauseum. Political correctness goes from being an instrument of self protection to being a means of controlling others. Some people abuse power to control others, some abuse wealth, those with neither have found that abusing political correctness so easily sways sheeple into bolstering their control over others. The political correctness patrols are quintessential hypocrites.

To me, it's not about being offensive, it's about feeling appropriate shame at our past. Having a team called the Redskins is like having a team called the Doodieheads. It's like a grown man telling you his name is "Billy Boy." It harkens to a less mature time, and we should be embarrassed not at the words themselves, but at our past immaturity. Sometimes you have to change the words just because you want to distance yourself from your past.

That's jump on the bandwagon peasant talk. People are called white (Caucasian-ruddy complexion) , black, and Mexicans even sing about their color in pop culture songs like Piel Morena (brown skin).

When relating medical information it starts with e.g. I have a 23 y.o. black female ..., in that order, because age takes precedence over race which takes precedence over gender when it comes to relative importance of other information in medical context.

Yet this generation is not supposed to call ANYONE red skin because it was used as a derogatory comment how long ago? And how exactly am I responsible for that? How is a sports team that chose its name with pride mocking it? Do you think the US government put a Native American heads on its one cent coin, five cent coin, in 2001 on a commemorative silver dollar, and on previous gold coins calling them Indian head coins just to mock them?

Impractical vocabulary changes are a panacea, an easy out for sheeple, throw a dog a bone because it's too much like work to change actual circumstances. If you think you should be embarrassed by the past, be embarrassed by the white trash reckoning you haven't evolved out of that attributes what the passage of time and fading memories are accomplishing to your changes in vocabulary so you can feel good about yourself.

"In God We Trust" is still on our currency; because, it has protected historical accuracy status. There's no shame in taking an historically accurate negative and trying to turn it into a positive by being able to point to it and say look how far we've come rather than just trying to delete it. Lazy, lazy sheeple.

*raises cultural difference flag*

retarded has entirely different levels of offensiveness in UK and US.

And yet you most definitely would not say, "I have a 23 y.o. red male," or "a 64 y.o. yellow female..." The world changes, and refusing to accept that just paints a person as old, whose opinion will be removed by attrition if not adaptation.

Striving for that kind of brevity with understanding is the current direction in most forms of communication. Just read a typical text message. Political correctness often undermines such practical considerations to put the interests of a few above the interests of the many even when they're in need. Leaders of any age are people of vision, they get the big picture and avoid the mistakes of the past by not living in it. They accept change by living in the present; but, that doesn't mean they have to concur with it as being the best direction for the future.

Followers of any age are happy just riding the bandwagon and leaving the driving to someone else...

This is it, I agree. Hence nothing to do with "what people want to be called" but entirely about what the majority believes about language, themselves, and their fellow man. In order it's 1) Address My Own Guilt, 2) Shame Others, 3) Assert Which Beliefs We Must Share, and way way way way way down on the list is 4) Help Others by Making Them Feel Better About Their Condition.

As we are addressing history, "Mentally Retarded" was a scientific term along with "Idiot", "Moron" and "Imbecile".

Also, "Black" was adopted as a term because "Negro" was offensive; "Negro" was adopted because "Colored" was offensive"; and "Colored" was adopted because "Black" was offensive. This is a game that cannot be won, and the only people who have actually been helped are the majorities who get to feel better about themselves, for thinking they have really done something, when in fact they have done fuck-all.

Each generation changes the words that are acceptable and the words that aren't.

The reason negro became offensive, is because of how that word was used, and what it it meant - not just a simple description of skin colour, but a delineation of racial status. That was replaced by a new word - which then became offensive because of how it was used.

It's about being sensitive to how words are and have been used.

Not so long ago. Only just out of living memory. And used to describe a people who were the victims of an appalling genocide, by the people who committed that genocide.

Words have power.

@ Monster: I did not know that.

All of whom are dead and gone: "One does not heal the past by dwelling there. We heal the past by living fully in the present."
Then why didn't they talk their way out of becoming victims? "Talk is cheap."

I said words have power - I didn't say they had bullets.

Ergo "sticks and stones may break my bones; but, names can never hurt me."

Do you remember when UT started a thread to demonstrate that by inviting everyone to say whatever they wanted about him, call him whatever they wanted?

Is it your belief that this can only work with individuals and not with groups?

I think it's contextual.

The cultural context of the insult along with current and historic power disparities.

There are people alive today whose grandparents lived with the direct effects of a policy of ethnic cleansing in America. They themselves may be living with the ongoing effects of that policy.

It's all well and good to hold your hands up and say, hey, wasn't me - fuhget about it already. Little difficult to forget about it if you're living on a reservation with massive unemployment levels and the broken remnants of a shattered culture - surrounded by the grandchildren of the ones who shattered that culture and killed your ancestors in a vicious and uncompromising landgrab - and who still incidentally commemorate that act of genocide with a cartoon picture of a 'Redskin', feather headdress and all, as the mascot for a football team.