Political Correctness Gone MadFreddy Woo writes: "I once worked on an animation to help highlight the issues homeless people face in winter. The client was happy with the work, then a note came back that the ethnic mix of the characters were wrong. These were cartoon characters. They weren't meant to be ethnically anything, but we were forced to make one of them brown, at the cost of about 10k to the charity. This is how your donations are spent. Wisely as you can see."
How has PC affected you? (Please add your own tales - not five-year-old news stories cut-and-pasted from other websites)
(, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 10:20)
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Bit cloudySteve, a former work colleague, was a district councillor in his home town. Some years before, I think when the council was Labour controlled, the management had a bit of crisis of confidence on how to refer in official parlance to people who weren't 'white British'. Steve, like me, couldn't really get past why there was a problem with terms such as 'people', but there you go...
They first insisted that all the particular divisions were referred to by their 'correct' ethnic designations, thus invoking the use of several dozen possible terms and almost requiring every official to swot up on identification. Rather like silhouettes for spotting enemy aircraft, really.
This all got too hard, so they opted for referring to everyone as either 'white' or 'black', meaning the owner of a local Chinese restaurant was now officially 'black'. This was plainly odd, not to say counter-productive by its own offensiveness, so then they went for 'ethnic'. This was the term to be used for any reference to any hint of ethnicity beyond 'white British'.
It all backfired when long-in-the-tooth councillors and council staff started to herald the arrival of inclement weather with the phrase "It's all looking a bit ethnic out there..."
(, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 0:59, 1 reply)
'Ethnic'is especially stupid because everybody has an ethnic origin.
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Bob Todd whee, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 8:43,
closed)
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