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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My girlfriend's mixed race... and that's what I'd call her. She doesn't call herself that: she calls herself "coloured". That's been non-PC for longer than I've known her so I can't bring myself to say it.
She calls herself "coloured" because she's from South Africa and that's what she's called there. She's not black. She's not white. She's coloured, and she's happy with that. I just can't bring myself to say it.
Her whole family's coloured and that's what they call themselves. (Except one uncle who was quite pale and managed [during apartheid] to get himself reclassified white by having his nose measured and other crazy stuff.) Even though they all say it and have no problem with it, I wince every time I hear it and... I just can't bring myself to say it.
So thanks, PC folks! Even though I'm sufficiently broad-minded to overcome my inbred Somerset roots and fall completely in love with someone a different colour to myself, I just can't bring myself to call her what she calls herself.
Dammit.
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teedyay, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 14:53,
5 replies)
You can NEVER overcome your somerset rootsyou just learn to push them to the back of your brain
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Joe Scaramanga with a G-double-O-D vibration, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 15:31,
closed)
I totally agree with you...... because for me if you're not "coloured" then you're white, which kind of puts everyone in one group or the other for no reason. It's interesting that they have a different way of thinking about it though.
(, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 18:01, closed)
South AfricaThat surprised me a bit when I went to SA. I heard about 'coloured' people there. I just assumed it would be a few people who had one black parent and one white. I was wrong. There really are a lot of people who are known as, including by themselves, as coloured. Their ancestors were blacks, whites and Malays (brought over as cheap labour).
In the bad old days of apartheid they weren't as free as whites but not as repressed as blacks. They still had to live in their own district though, and still do today as far as I could tell.
(, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 20:42, closed)
@Kendo: yeah, she's mostly Malaysian, she thinks. Probably a bit of other things too - she's not too sure.
That kind of freaks me out too - not knowing your roots. This is how my family's travelled in the 500 years before my generation (no really):
maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=from:+Creech+St+Michael+to:+North+Curry&sll=51.136278,-3.46756&sspn=0.433431,0.911865&ie=UTF8&ll=51.310013,-2.208252&spn=3.454448,7.294922&z=7&om=1
... which also answers your question, Weetobix. :-)
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teedyay, Tue 27 Nov 2007, 0:53,
closed)
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