Originally posted October 20, 2004
Give me a break!
I hear now the board that’s used in a classroom can’t be called a black board or a white board. From what I understand, it’s derogatory to blacks or to whites if you use that kind of descriptive words – it’s either chalk board or marker board.
I guess it’s a good thing that there’s not anyone that might be traumatized by the use of the words chalk or marker.
I don’t know what you would call the boards then.
And I guess we’re supposed to call flip charts something other than that because flip is a word that is offensive to Filipinos.
Granted, it’s not right to use a word in a derogatory manner like that when using it to refer to an ethnic group.
However, when did black become a derogatory term for blacks and white become a derogatory term for whites?
What am I supposed to call a back flip or flipping a burger (or the finger)?
Sometimes some peoples’ ideas of what is politically correct are just so retarded! 1
Oh! sorry!
I meant, so MR!
What’s MR?
I understand it’s the politically correct term for mentally retarded.
I guess it’s politically okay to use an abbreviation in this case because they, the MR, can’t spell.
Give me a break!
Our society is carrying politically correctness to ridiculous extremes. Yes, we need to be sensitive to what is hurtful to others.
However, sometimes the folks that think these things up need a reality check.
- Around the 1960s, “retard” and “retarded” began to be commonly used in place of “moron”, “idiot”, “cretin,” and “imbecile,” – terms that were perceived to be offensive. Since then, the terms “handicapped” (United States) and “disabled” (United Kingdom) have replaced “retard” and “retarded.” The term “mental retardation,” written in many of the United States’ laws and documents, with the approval of Rosa’s Law, will be phased out with “intellectual disability” replacing it. – Wikipedia (accessed June 15, 2019)
Publication history:
- October 20, 2004 – original publication on North Farnham Freeholder
- February 26, 2011 – Recovered from my abandoned North Farnham Freeholder blog at the Internet Archive WayBackMachine and saved to original publication date on Exit78
- June 15, 2019 – Updated and republished
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Are you serious? Boards cannot be called black or white? I find it insane.
Rummuser recently posted…The Beards Are Ruling – 2.
Ha! I originally wrote this almost 15 years ago after reading some ranting online about it. However, it’s apparently still an issue for some. One individual posted in a forum that, when he was in an air force school, blackboard was one of the prohibited words because some people might find it offensive.
Politically correctness has been taken to such ridiculous extremes by neurotic ultra-liberals — an example being a person being ‘vertically challenged’ rather than short.
Mike recently posted…The Week That Was – June 14th, 1969