Equality & diversity or political correctness?

[JockSporran]

Today I had to go on an equality & diversity course through work. We were given a list of things you should and shouldn't say, and were warned that you had to call 'minority' people the right terms or it might be offensive. It wasn't just a case of avoiding obvious racist terms. It was things like avoiding even the use of 'Asian', 'an epileptic', 'the deaf', etc. This has done more harm than good, and now I feel nervous in the company of all coloured or disabled people in case I say the incorrect thing and end up in trouble. I sometimes think we are the last generation to enjoy freedom of thought.

[naomi24]

If you're feeling nervous, clearly even you don't have that now, Jock. Perhaps our parents' generation was the last to enjoy freedom of thought.

[heathfield]

I suppose these days I'd better call a spade a 'delving tool', just in case I'm overheard, and accused of being ethnically insulting!

[beso]

Delving! You disgusting insulter. Don't you realise that the word delving comes from a preconception that small people are only fit for working with a spade?

It is properly called a "soil redistribution implement". ;-)

[flobbergob]

Equality and Diversity is a mandatory training module in the NHS. All the usual can do can't do, can say, can't say. The highlight is: "Did you know that traffic lights were invented by a black man?"

[Octavius]

Excuse me jocksporran, but are you allowed to say �coloured� or �disabled�?
Some people might get offended.

I don�t know about you whisky-quaffing skirt-wearing ginger-haired barbarians, but us �normal people� are very politically correct and have a very high regard for equality and diversity. Especially when it knows its place, and stays firmly where we shove it under the carpet.

:o)

[Gromit]

Every job comes with jargon.

If you are in a job where you meet the public then you should aim to not offend them. There may be terms you have always used and think them inoffensive, but are offensive if on the receiving end.

Of the examples you have given, I can only see a problem with 'the deaf'. Deaf people is far more polite and preferable. Why someone who is Asian should not be called Asian, I don't know.

A lot of what is dismissed as Political Correctness in using the right terminology is actually teaching what is good manners to people whose job is to be polite.

[Octavius]

Quite right, The Royal National Institute for �the� Deaf (RNID) changed its name to The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) 16 years ago, and 6 years ago inlcuded "for deaf and hard of hearing people".

[jake-the-peg]

Do you think you have freedom of thought?

Would you think I should be able to refer to black people as "nigg***s" ?

Isn't it therefore just a matter of degree?

[flip_flop]

If you were in a room of deaf people and referred to them as "The Deaf", how would they know???

Reminds me of Paul Merton on HIGNFY a few years ago when Blunkett was championing ID Cards - Merton's response was something along the lines of 'can't we just tell him we've done it'.

[bednobs]

i partially agree with what you are saying (however at least you are still free to think what you like)
but, as a disabled person, i was called an invalid the other day, and it really gets my goat - do people not realise that invalid literally means "not valid"?
however, i realise this is a personal thing, and am quite able to say "please dont refer to me like that", just as an asian person who objected to being called asian could also say

[Octavius]

i think you are entitled to feel that, but not necessarily to assume that is what people mean when they say 'invalid'.

Most in context would take it to mean "incapacitated by illness or injury". It's all a matter of emphasis, but if it offends you as a term, then I guess just say it so that people know.

[Gromit]

The whole idea of these courses is not to be PC for the sake of it, but to educate to avoid someone unintensionally offending the likes of bednobs even if no offense was meant.

A lot of disability terms are still in common usage but ought to be eradicated. I remember hearing a local councillor say he was keen to help the cripples. Disabled people in the audience were not impressed.

[mallam]

Heathfield, you see what comes of not using the standard euphemism (in this case "an agricultural implement"). Even the OED-approved "call a spade a bloody shovel" would not have got you into so much trouble!

And flipflop, Blunkett was not congenitally blind. Even he could probably not make the same claim as the deathless Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest, where the divine Oscar has her say "I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different." But not content with that, in Dorian Gray he has Lord Henry say "The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one."

And all this before anyone even thought of thinking of it as an abbr of "ace of spades" in the discredited simile!

[flip_flop]

Eh?

[flip_flop]

mallam - I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, although suffuce to say you know how to kill a joke stone dead.

You must be a laugh a minute down the pub!

[mallam]

So what did you do to Paul Merton's joke, which he wd prob prefer to have left as a spur-of-the-minute thing himself? More fool me for taking you up on it.

You too cd have left it at the uncouth "Eh?" I got the message, you unpleasant little person.

[beso]

I know of people who feel insulted when referred to as disabled. They say it takes attention away from what they can do and essentially referes to an absence of something.

I think {function}-impaired is the currently accepted norm.

[123everton]

A spade and a shovel are 2 entirely different implements and perform 2 entirely different tasks with great aplomb, if you ask for a spade and are given a shovel then you are in for a very long day. ;-)
I have'nt had this course yet, it's a pity you did'nt post it sooner as I'd have given you a few terms I find offensive.
Like:-
Gualau (pronounced gwah-loo) Chinese=ghost (roughly) a proper translation is something like foreign demon.
Gentile, don't define me by creed define me as a man.
Kuffar, as above.
Every race has derogatory names for other peoples I object to them all.
But not the examples you've given which seem a little extreme.

[Gormless]

INvalid (as in disabled) and InVALid (as in not valid) are pronounced differently and can be regarded as separate words.

[Quinlad]

The PC argument again.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1IYx4Bc6_eE