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Sure is strange how words change..for years some referred to black people as N _____, and that was truly offensive. Most people wanted to refrain from truly offending people, so they used the term "colored". Well, that continued for some years.
Then came the civil rights campaign and slogans such as, "black is beautiful", and soon they were insisting upon being called black. So nearly everyone figured, "fine..we will change from "colored" to "black", good enough !
Then suddenly, Jesse Jackson comes along and starts to insist the term "African American" be used. Why?
Now it appears, the labellers have taken full circle, and are insisting on the term, "people of color"..
So, I have quit playing semantic 'musical chairs', and normally use the term black.. THat term doesn't seem to offend the best and brightest among them..such as Walter Williams, Thomas sowell, Justice Thomas or Dr Carson,
So I figure I'm standing on firm ground, being respectful but refusing to play the "word of the month" game..
Changing terms doesn't change the circumstances...
I recall a time when some youngsters were called "dummy" which was rather unkind. So some folks, trying to be nice, started to call them "slow"..
Well, most people soon realized "slow' was a replacement word for dummy, so the new term completely lost it's clout !
So, in an effort to ameliorate the terms, some people began to designate such unfortunate children as "retarded". Well, I think we all know how that degraded into the insult, "retard !".
we get the terms such as "vertically challenged", and we know trhat means short... and "metabolic
struggle" usually means... fat..
I'm sure you guys know some other such terms that have migrated from their intended use. ...But folks can play word games all they want..understanding comes from men's minds and hearts..rearranging letters of the alphabet, won't make any real difference.