{"id":80264,"date":"2016-02-13T21:54:41","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T02:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/?p=80264"},"modified":"2016-02-13T21:54:41","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T02:54:41","slug":"newspeak-lexicon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/newspeak-lexicon\/","title":{"rendered":"Newspeak Lexicon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PC<\/a>Personally, I do not much care for the prospect of changing the way I refer to things or people when word comes down from the home office of Political Correctness that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for a vocabulary change. I once tried to fall in line, rejecting the generic use of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153men,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153man,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and mankind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I tried my best to find gender-neutral equivalents.<\/p>\n

The easiest trick was using \u00e2\u20ac\u0153one\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153he\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have anyone in particular in mind. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153One will find that one nearly always agrees with Price.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not too hard to use plurals instead of singulars that are going to entail a singular pronoun later on. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Readers will find that they love this column.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The reader will find that he loves this column.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind alternating \u00e2\u20ac\u0153she\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153he\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when I did use a generalizing singular. (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The reader will find that she loves this column.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)<\/p>\n

But after a while I decided I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had enough. The lords of PC made such a big deal out of it, especially in the academic and publishing circles in which I move, that I figured I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d buck the party line and go back to the more classical sounding \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the reader\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 he\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153man-made\u00e2\u20ac\u009d usages. When PC fascists try to enforce Newspeak, I have to react. It becomes my duty to defy them. I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say their passwords. It reminds me of a favorite Jesus saying from Sufi sources. Satan appears to Jesus and proposes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Say, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcGod is one.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Jesus answers, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is a true saying, but I will not say it at your<\/em> behest.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00c2\u00a0Exactly. Thanks, Jesus. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let the bastards get you (or me) down!<\/p>\n

I find other officially approved jargon to be merely mystifying, self-contradictory, and hypocritical. Get this: you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t call anyone \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colored people\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (not that I want to; I never have), but you should call them \u00e2\u20ac\u0153people of color.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the hell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the difference? And if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play that game, you are accused of racism. More Newspeak.<\/p>\n

But I find it creepy to use pigmentation as a category description at all. I admit, that does<\/em> smack of racism to me, because it still implies that the color of the skin matters. We know better than to refer to anyone as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153darkies\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (God forbid!), but I admit, calling folks \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blacks\u00e2\u20ac\u009d appears equally racist to me. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not saying you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re<\/em> a racist if you say that; it just hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hit you yet.)<\/p>\n

So I welcome the neologism \u00e2\u20ac\u0153African Americans.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It revives the short-lived 60s designation \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Afro-Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is just as good. It is properly descriptive. We are used to denominating various other ethnic groups according to their pre-American heritage, and when we do, we speak of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Irish Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Italian Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d etc. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fair and not at all contrived. So \u00e2\u20ac\u0153African Americans\u00e2\u20ac\u009d does not strike me as in the least forced or ideological. A few more syllables, but who cares?<\/p>\n

Has it ever occurred to you that racism is implicit whenever you call President Obama \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the first black president\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Of course he is actually biracial. If you flip the coin and decide to label him \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d this seems to me to hark back to the bad old days of classifying mixed-race individuals (as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153octoroons,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d etc.) according to how much \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black blood\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153polluted\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with. If any African blood makes one \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it implies African heritage is a taint<\/em>. But it ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. I am not trying to tell anyone what to say or not to say. But this example seems to me to show what a futile exercise it is to try to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153purify\u00e2\u20ac\u009d language. After a while, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to make the best of it and use the tools you have, even if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re nicked or dull.<\/p>\n

\"liberty<\/a>Call me a curmudgeon, but I resist and resent the meaning of words getting ideologically redefined. I guess I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to call myself an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153anti-sexist.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not entitled to the tag \u00e2\u20ac\u0153feminist\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because apparently you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t qualify if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not pro-abortion or a member of the Democratic Party. Some would even say politically conservative women do not qualify as true women<\/em> because they do not hold the party-line on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s issues.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The same people will say Bill Clinton was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the first black president\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because he was liberal, while Dr. Ben Carson is not really \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because he is a Republican. (Again, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is not my preferred usage, but I am commenting here on current, familiar usage.) I have trouble identifying as an atheist because I am not a liberal, and it is generally accepted that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153critical thinkers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can only be liberals. Condescending, propagandist nonsense, I say. Boy, stereotypes just ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what they used to be!<\/p>\n

How about new terms aimed at eliminating sexism? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always hated neologisms like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chairperson\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spokesperson,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at least when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re speaking of a particular individual whose gender you know. Why not call her<\/em> the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chairwoman\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Why not refer to him<\/em> as your \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spokesman\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? You wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have called Frank Sinatra the Chairperson of the Board. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have slugged you. But I do kind of like the egalitarian term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Spokeshole,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you?<\/p>\n

But calling the police \u00e2\u20ac\u0153police officers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153policemen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d makes good sense to me. For one thing, it is already an established usage, just an older one. So you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to feel like you just graduated, properly chastened, from a Communist self-criticism camp. And for another, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153police officer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has a nice ring of appropriate dignity. The fact that it is gender-inclusive is icing on the cake.<\/p>\n

I also like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fire fighters\u00e2\u20ac\u009d better than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153firemen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (I think \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fire fighter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is British.) Anyway, I remember how, as a little kid, I heard someone refer to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153firemen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and thought they meant arsonists! So I appreciate the extra clarity.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not as used to this one yet, but I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind letting go of the familiar \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mail man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in favor of the British \u00e2\u20ac\u0153letter carrier.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Again, it sounds classier!<\/p>\n

By contrast, I remember once hearing a Politically Correct speaker referring to the college janitor as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gardener.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I cringed. The speaker felt he was showing respect to the guy who does the clean-up and repairs by using a euphemism to cover the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shame\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of what he really<\/em> did. As if the guy were a member of the lowly Hindu Shudra caste, rendered ritually unclean by his menial labor. Hey! What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wrong with being a janitor? Nothing I can think of. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard, honest, needful work. The speaker was committing the not uncommon Liberal sin of showing contempt for the very people they pretend to favor.<\/p>\n

Another one that riles me is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Native Americans.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I was born in America. That makes me a native American. The American Indians were born here, too, and they are equally native with me. Like mine, their ancestors traveled here from another continent. Mine came from Europe, theirs from Asia, across the Bering Strait. If you want to get more authentic than that, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about buffaloes.<\/p>\n

Yes, but these folks are not from India, so why call them \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Indians\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? Good question. Columbus mistakenly thought he had reached India when he had gotten only as far as the Western Hemisphere. But they are Asian in origin. I say, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s close enough, especially since any<\/em>thing you called the whole bunch of them would be incorrect anyway. They exist in many and varied tribal identities.<\/p>\n

It would be best if eventually we called non-Europeans by labels as specific as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Italian Americans\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153German Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d namely \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ute Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ashanti Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Japanese Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Apache Americans,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d etc. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m waiting for.<\/p>\n

So says Zarathustra.\"south<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Personally, I do not much care for the prospect of changing the way I refer to things or people when word comes down from the home office of Political Correctness that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for a vocabulary change. I once tried … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com\/zblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}