I like the idea I once heard that we change our names to "pink
people" and "brown people." It would be more accurate, and look a how
it discharges so much of the emotional baggage "black" and "white" have!
Nancy
pink person from Rich'mun
-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.
--Daniel Boone
On Jan 20, 2007, at 11:34 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> I guess I don't understand Tom's question. In what sense is
> the term "white folks" politically incorrect? Just off hand,
> it seems to be pretty much descriptive of me and people who
> look more or less like me, and it does not seem to be
> especially offensive.
>
> Is it the second word, "folks," that is politically incorrect?
> In this day and age of populist politics, in which all major
> political idealogies that have any serious constituency are
> populist, what's wrong with the term "folk?" I could
> understand an objection to the term if there was an
> intellectually consistent conservative movement still around,
> but that does not seem to be the case in Virginia, or really,
> anywhere else. Everyone these days is committed to the notion
> that the people at large are capable of rational
> self-government, and hence are entitled to full participation
> in public life. I don't hear anyone in public life suggesting
> seriously, for example, that democracies require some
> regulation, because the mass of the "folk" are susceptible to
> the malicious influence of demagogues. Madison's notion of
> filtration is pretty much dead, and has been for a long time.
> Viewed from any historical perspective, there is no
> conservative party or ideology operative in the United States
> today. "Folk" quite adequately connotes the populist
> democracy to which everyone today that is politically active
> is commited.
>
> Maybe its the first part of the term, "white" that is
> politically incorrect? Perhaps so, but the better descriptor
> would be "pink," and that one got used up decrying communism.
> And the alternatives, for example "Caucasian," are worse,
> because they really are racial descriptors while "white"
> simply describes (rather poorly) skin color. At any rate, I
> am not especially offended when someone describes me as
> "white," and I find it hard to imagine the term generating any
> real substantive outrage.
>
> If there was a double standard in operation here, Tom might
> have an argument. But I don't see it.
>
> All best,
> Kevin
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Department of History
> James Madison University
>
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