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[pmcd9]

Save your bait buddy, I ain't biting.

[AugustWest]

I think if we tried a little harder we could turn this thread into a flame war about racism.

I'm tryin' as hard as I can, Captain!

But the engines, they canna take the strrrrain.

[jay-ell]

What about descriptive words for people that aren't race-based?  Pedro and I have been having this discussion because he doesn't get why the word "hermaphrodite" has been replaced by "intersexed." 

I tried to explain that it's like the difference between "midget" and "dwarf," but he didn't get that, either. 

There are lots of these, though -- homosexual vs. gay, retarded vs. mentally challenged, fascist vs. Republican*...the words we use change over time because our attitudes towards people who are different also change. 

Back when people with Down syndrome were taken away from their parents and institutionalized for life, we called them retards.  When we started realizing that what they need is extra help and accommodation, we changed BOTH the way we treat them AND the words we use to describe them. 

The same is true for people with autism.  Kids with autism used to be labeled "retarded" and locked up too.  When autism became an official diagnosis in 1980, we started treating autistic kids differently because we started viewing them as a separate and unique category.  There is still debate among parents of autistic children about phraseology -- I've heard the following permutations used with utmost seriousness:

My son has autism. 
My son is autistic. 
My son is an autistic. 
My son is an autist.   
My son has special needs. 

Yes, that's right -- some parents refuse to use the word "autistic" in front of their autistic kids.  Like it's a dark secret.  My brother and his wife are in this camp, and they're now struggling with deciding when to tell my nephew -- he's eight -- about his diagnosis. 

We're of the "tell 'em early, tell em' often" school of thought.  Reminds me of what Cort has said before when asked when his parents told him he was adopted: "When did yours tell you you weren't?"  Putting it off attaches a stigma to the word that is impossible to mitigate.  If there weren't something wrong with being that way, why wouldn't you want him to know about it?  [/autism denial rant]

Anyway, the point here is, I think changes in language reflect changes in attitude, and I think the debate is less about what the groups being described want to be called (we could, after all, just ask the individuals we associate with which they prefer) and more about "outsiders" being unsure how to relate to groups of which they are not members. 

Personally, I go with "black" because "African-American" isn't correct in many cases.  Colin Powell and my black sister-in-law are both Jamaican-American.  (Technically, my SIL is part African-American and part Afro-Jamaican, and her kids will be Afro-Jamaican-Euro-Hispanic.)  So unless I know someone's actual heritage, I tend to go with the word that describes their outstanding physical characteristics (whether that's dark skin or red hair) than to make assumptions about when her family arrived and from where.   

*just joking, guys.   

[Doc]

My son is an autist.   

Does he play the Aut?

I don't have much need to worry about the black thing because there just aren't that many black people around here and the ones that are around aren't coming from the same slave-based history anyway. I might use black as a physical descriptor and I'm certainl I've used it when referring to 'black culture' in america but not often enough for me to get particularly hung up on it.
What I did get hung up on for ages was using asian as a general term, it just seemed disrespectful because although there are tonnes of asians where I live they come from a bunch of different countries so it didn't seem right being generic. In the end though I got over it when I realised the asian people I knew tended to self identify as being part of that larger group. Tune in next time for TALES OF BEING PARANOID ABOUT NOTHING.

[theinevitable]

The more I think about it:
I think the difference is one of who is using it.
When Halle Berry talks about "women of color" in her Oscar acceptance speech, she's showing solidarity with people she thinks have a lot going against them in life.

When this prissy white girl in my anthro class uses it, she's trying to show her enlightened racial attitude, but actually what she's saying is "there are two groups of people: one is us whities and the other is everyone else."

This makes me OK with it.

we also have problems in this class with people saying "African-American" when they really mean... African.


Also, what is the joke from some show where they had the joke about the Blackula-Hunter?
"Oh, you mean you hunt african-american vampires?"
"What? no, they're mostly british... I don't know, I just call them Blackulas."
"[cringes]"

In re: doc's initial comment:
Yes, I imagine people with not-R-saying (non-rhotic) accents talking about how Autistic their children are, what with the painting and cello.

[wombat]

Back when people with Down syndrome were taken away from their parents and institutionalized for life, we called them retards.  When we started realizing that what they need is extra help and accommodation, we changed BOTH the way we treat them AND the words we use to describe them. 

I'm not sure you've got your history right there. All of those words that we use as insults - moron, idiot, retarded - were originally technical terms. Each started to be used as insults over time, which meant people had to choose new words to use as the polite description.  I don't know that these changes necessarily reflect an improvement in attitude - it's just that we'll always need a polite technical term, so when the old term becomes too stigmatized, a new one comes into use.

All of those words eventually become insults because - although we are somewhat more enlightened nowadays- basically people have a bad attitude toward the conditions the word describes. The word will always eventually take on an insulting connotation because of that attitude. Words don't control how people think, they reflect it.

Also, I thought 'midget' and 'dwarf' were two different things, but apparently now we can't use them for the two actually different things that they used to describe because 'midget' has been deemed insulting. I find this annoying.

[Doc]

We also have more precise diagnoses now, which is another reason those terms aren't used. We know that although both people with autism and down syndrome have learning difficulties they manifest in different ways and require different management, so although they might both be 'mentally retarded' in the classic sense it is more useful to be specific.

[theinevitable]

Words don't control how people think, they reflect it.

YES!
Oh man, talk about arguments that got really heated around the dinner table a few weeks ago.

[iron_felix]

Words don't control how people think, they reflect it.

YES!
Oh man, talk about arguments that got really heated around the dinner table a few weeks ago.

Exactly. It's that damn Statler-Waldorf hypothesis, giving people ideas.

[jay-ell]

Part of me is kicking myself for having this debate with someone so much wiser and linguistically educated than I.  But that part is not nearly strong enough to stop me., so...here goes. 

I'm not sure you've got your history right there. All of those words that we use as insults - moron, idiot, retarded - were originally technical terms.

Well, yes -- that's exactly the point I was making.  Once upon a time, "idiot" was a perfectly reasonable thing to call someone, provided they'd scored sufficiently low on a standardized intelligence test.  Once the term became a slur, however, we had to come up with some other way to say that someone had less-than-average mental capacity. 

I would argue that these older terms are more offensive than the newer ones because of the way society responded to the people we now call "mentally challenged" back when they were known as retarded. 

Connotation is important.  Think of it this way: if you're crippled, you can't do the things a "normal" person can do.  If you're disabled, you get specialty parking and legal protection.  Crippled makes me think of Tiny Tim.  Disabled makes me think of FDR. 

Furthermore, what about words that refer to disabilities that haven't changed?  "Blind" and "deaf" are still with us, because we haven't significantly changed how we think about blind and deaf people since those words came into common use. 

I do agree that language reflects thought.  But it follows that changes in language must also reflect changes in thought; otherwise, the "old" words for conditions and races wouldn't become offensive over time. 

[wombat]

JL, I think you are too good hearted and believe too much in progress to see the forest for the trees here.

The terms didn't change because we have a better attitude towards the disabled. They changed exactly because we have a bad attitude. The words take on a bad connotation eventually because we think these are bad ways to be. Language in this case hasn't changed because thought has changed; it's changed because some thoughts never change, like that mental disability has a stigma, and we can't keep these words from taking on that stigma.  I've already heard people using 'special needs' in joking ways that indicate that it's probably going to undergo exactly the same process and have to be replaced by a new term.

I would also totally disagree that attitudes toward the blind and deaf haven't changed. People didn't even used to think sign language was a language; now the deaf are recognized as having a fully independent language and even a separate culture to some extent. Vocabulary has changed, too - like 'hearing impaired' is a recent term, and no one uses 'dumb' for those who sign instead of speak anymore. I suspect that the same is less true for blindness because it doesn't have the same stigma - no one ever thought blind people were stupid.

[wombat]

Huh, this one really deserves a Supermegawandering Thread Award, doesn't it.

[jay-ell]

JL, I think you are too good hearted and believe too much in progress to see the forest for the trees here.

I'll take that as a compliment and leave the argument here.  I may pick it up again tomorrow, but at the moment, I have a headache and work to do, and also I think I've probably already lost. 

[CortJstr]

I've already heard people using 'special needs' in joking ways that indicate that it's probably going to undergo exactly the same process and have to be replaced by a new term.

I've heard this too. In high school I also remember people calling things "homosexual" since "gay" was overused. Of course I've also heard "Texan" as a catch-all pejorative.

[AugustWest]

Isn't intent the real determiner?  We can all imagine examples of someone using the "wrong" term out of ignorance.  Likewise we can come up with situations where someone uses the "right" words to express a truly offensive or hateful idea.

Certainly it is respectful to call someone what they wish to be called -- we should all try to do it.  But I have little patience for someone who is so concerned about words that they cannot focus on ideas.

That we which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, no?