I'd say the season's greetings stuff is more about realising that the rest of the world may not believe that tale businesses want the most customers and will get that by going to find something that in no way insults people Governments go the seasons greeting route because they realise that they represent everyone not just those who believe in a particular story
Although I understand the argument that the government represents everyone and not just Christians, you have the counter argument that when people come to this country they MUST know that we are historically a Christian country and that as a Christian country we celebrate our religious holidays, if this offends them in any way, the question that should be asked is why did you move to this country then? Surely you would not go to somewhere like Saudi Arabia where due to the religious beliefs it is illegal to drink alcohol, and then get offended when you are unable to drink it. Surely political correctness has gone mad when the religion of a country, in which the majority of the country’s laws are derived, is subverted and suppressed so it does not offend someone who’s choice it was to come to this country? And when it comes to choosing to come to this country I know some people say they have had no choice in coming here however I can not see how that is the case, for one thing most people who have immigrated here have more than likely had to pass through multiple other countries to get here, and the other main thing is that there is very few things stopping them leaving and travelling to another country
The bah bah black sheep one is true, my ex's mum runs a nursery, they're not allowed to sing it, it can be any colour, but not black. Because it's racist, somehow. That's what "political correctness gone mad!" is, people making things out to be racist and trying to change it so it's no longer racist. Bah bah black sheep is not a racist song, it doesn't need to be changed, but someone has decided that it is racist because it's about a black sheep, IMO, this is racism. "Oh we better not sing that because it might upset the black people" People need to realise that black people and white people (and all other races, religions, sexuality, gender, hell even social circles such as geeks, jocks, what job you "choose", etc.) are different from each other. As much as the PC crowd would like to believe otherwise, while we are all human, we're not all the same. People need to realise this instead of sticking their fingers in their ears going "lalala, no we are all the same, stop drawing attention to our differences", because that's like a gay guy coming out to his parents and them going "no don't be silly, you're not gay", ignoring differences and not accepting them is just as bad as making fun of people for them.
Making an Anti-Racism Police Association gives the impression that being racist is a choice for the police, people can be racist if they want but certainly not people such as police or military the power that the government gives over them means they must be of the highest standard. Also to claim that white people understand that discrimination as well as black/minorities people even though they have never been seriously discriminated against is really staggeringly incorrect. What about the fact that people have no choice in being born here. I am not a chistian at all and disagree entirely with state institution of religion. Our culture is made up of the people who live now we should embrace our diverse culture and cultures that bind us together such as our countryside and democratic system rather than highly inclusive concepts such as religion. People's skin colour does not make people different though, it is really their mind and upbringing however skin colour is just a difference in the % of melalin. Additionally there is a very institutional racism in calling bad or different things "black" so why not let kids grow up not thinking that to be black means you are an unusual or peculiar sheep/person. Skin colour makes abs $
now i do agree with aspects of this such as embracing the diverse culture that this country has to offer, of which i used to love when i lived in Manchester, which included being invited to a muslim wedding, and joining in for Chinese new year celebrations with my Chinese friends. But shouldn't the other cultures also embrace the Christian culture which this country has been built on which includes celerbrating Christmas as Christmas and not just a seasonal celebration? how would some of the other cultures like it if we called Chinese new year a seasonal celbration, or Eid-ul-Fitr (the "Festival of the Breaking of the Fast") a seasonal celebration, it would not go down well at all with quite a lot of people i fully beleive that EVERYONE should be able to celebrate their religion and think that political correctness has gone mad when it is deemed nessesary that you can not wish someone a happy Christmas because it could offend them, even thou everyone i have ever met and talked too who is not Christian understands that Christmas is part of the culture of this country as to the fact people have no choice in being born here, yes i agree that to a certain point, however once old enough they are FREE to leave since we do not tend to force people to stay
Racial differences don't just stop at skin colour, hell, many Chinese (including researchers in this field) are brought up believing they don't share the common ancestor the rest of human kind does (although this has been proven to be wrong). And it does make people different, just like how I'm different to someone with blonde hair, it's a more noticeable difference but it's not really any more "important" in the grand scheme of things. People who tip toe around racial differences should be tiptoeing around other differences such as build and hair colour. If you're going to be going around changing things so a certain race doesn't get upset, then they should be campaigning for people to stop jokes about blonde bimbos. Allow me to quote some blackadder: “There appears to be a large orange hedge moving towards us/That’s not a hedge, counsel - that’s the Scots.” Why is that more acceptable than making a black joke? Or a joke about any race/sex/sexuality? It's the same thing, something you're born with and not a choice, but it's ok, because the Scots are white. IMO, people are truly accepting of something when they make an innocent joke about it such as the one above. While the massive political correctness we have about racism still exists, it's not really acceptable to make those kinds of jokes, therefore, it's not politically correct to be accepting of racial differences to the point where you can make a pun about it. Phrases like "the black sheep of the family" and a "dark horse" have absolutely nothing to do with black people whatsoever, so why is baa baa black sheep now a racist song? Where in the song does it mention that this black sheep is deemed to be peculiar or unusual.
It's not true. Carrying on from what I said earlier, "my ex's mum" carries exactly the same weight as "my mate dave". Read this, this and any of these which aren't from a tabloid. If your ex's mum was told that, I highly doubt that it came from any kind of government/council guidelines/policy. Feel free to link to something that proves me wrong though. With the whole "Chistmas can't be Christmas in case it offends people" thing, I do concede that it is 'PC gone stupid', especially with 'season's greetings' cards which clearly do exist. However, I don't think that 'offend' is the correct sentiment - it should be something more like 'alienate'. When I went into Oxford on boxing day, most of the people taking advantage of the sales were South Asian, so Christmas clearly does have different effects on different groups of people. However, even if 'offend' were the correct word, as Rum&Coke says, Muslim or Hindu children don't have any choice in being born here, so saying they should 'just deal with it or go home' is insensitive and unhelpful, and therefore not politically correct. I find Christmas repulsive despite having extremely Christian, 'God fearing' parents, and nobody would patronisingly ask me "why did you move to this country then?" The MET and racism thing is unresolved. The last major report (MacPherson 2003) on the MET concluded that it was institutionally racist, and there's been nothing to contradict that since. Ghaffur settling out of court was disappointing, but doesn't prove anything either way. Rumours said he didn't think it was worth the lawyers' fees, implying that he didn't think he'd win, but at the same time, £300k is a lot of money to give someone to shut them up, so maybe the MET were worried too. As I said, it's unresolved and inconclusive. As for restricting NBPA membership to non-white people, I don't see it as any different to stopping non-blind people having guide dogs. Given the whole premise of the association, it's fair enough.
This is called culture, not skin colour. Just because a majority of white people believe we were created by god does not mean that white people believe it because we are white It is considered highly impolite because the white race treated all black people very much as property for a century. After we accepted they were not property we segregated them from society ensuring a high poverty rate which meant their jobs were almost indistinguishable from slavery. After that we integrated however simply decided to only hire white applicants for jobs thereby instituting the same segregation ensuring the same results. Then people got sued for not hiring black people and white people had to hire them if they were the most qualified candidate, which based on all the previous stuff was a remarkable achievement keeping in mind society to this point however didnt really mean a lot since even in a perfect society "the perfect candidate" could be either white or black. And this is just the official system of society, not considering the fact that all of this previous **** has resulted highly unsurprisingly in black people being more likely to live in poverty and commit crime. So no I don't think insulting Scottish people who have had little discrimination against them is comparable in our attempt to fix our broken societal norms by silly things such as trying to explain to society that insulting people for their skin colour is wrong nor even sillier concepts such as creating an association within a traditionally highly racist institution such as the police for them to highlight impropriety in the force without having to deal with the race that did this to them is wrong. "Baa baa black sheep" is not inherently racist however when you explain to white children who don't understand the world and are very likely to know few black people that being coloured "black" is very unusual and alien (as it is for sheep), then they can interpret that very incorrectly.
No, it's not, there are many physical and mental differences between races that isn't down simply to culture. White men can't jump, for the most part, this is true. Women can't drive, even my mum admits this is true. The problem really is people don't see the invisible "most" in front of those statements You missed the "researchers in the field" part, these are highly trained scientists who have been studying this very subject for many, many years. This isn't something that they think, it is their scientific opinion based on evidence they have seen (and even I can see this "proof" that it's not true isn't completely damning to the theory anyway from what I've heard about it). No, one is alive from the slave era, it's time people (both black and white) moved on from that, and if we're not going to move on from that, then we should really be equal and remember the **** we did to other races too, it's not just black people white people have discriminated upon in the past, but they seem to be the main focus of our attention when it comes to anti-racism. Did I say that an organisation to combat actual, real racism is bad? No, I did not, we need these things to combat real racism. "Political correctness" does not combat real racism.
It's a little pretentious to presume that white people cannot possibly comprehend what it must be like to be denied something based on colour. Just because persecution of whites doesn't happen, certainly not very often, in predominantly white countries, does not mean we don't understand that it's WRONG. As a blind trial, I'd like to know how an African government would deal with a "white police association", after all white people would be in the minority.. Creating a divisive association that gives preferential treatment to a member of ANY race above a member of ANY other, is wrong, no matter how you try to dress it up.
Its a very easy mistake to make, but racially evolved differences and skin colour are not the same thing. These differences are evolved because we didn't travel many miles to interact for a large part of our evolution, however just because the physical differences between someone being from a race e.g. a proportion of people from China have a genetic disposition to becoming drunk easier than most of the rest of the world. This however has absolutely nothing to do with how we should treat each other as a people in every day conversation really. It is very very easy for you and many White people to state "well we moved on from the slave era" because you have directly take advantage or privilege from the fact you are white. Its not your fault or anything, but we directly advantage from what our ancestors collectively partook with governmental acceptance in until only 30 years ago, in writing anyway. Just as we have no say in being born white, neither do black people so why is it acceptable that they should be born into poverty by a larger % than a white person because of what our ancestors did? Also, with people still alive from the time when you could legitimately turn down job applicants from jobs based on race how can you possibly think that our society are "past the slave era"? I hate to break this to you but we were not born equal because of the actions of our ancestors, if we wish to be a moral society we should work on changing hat for out future generations. A simple statistical minority is not the same as an institutionally discriminated minority. Our society has up 30 years ago accepted treating minorities entirely differently and this going on for hundreds of years created the society we have today, extremely unequal in terms of the society you are likely to be born into if you are "white" and if you are "black". For instance there is no point in a "blonde police force association" because we did not spend a large amount of the past actively enslaving blonde people. Additionally if all white people could imagine the world as the discriminatory system it is then the inequality we currently have would vanish overnight. Do you believe you have been advantaged by being white? If not then you really cannot see any instance in your life where you would have been treated differently you are extremely likely to not be able to seriously objectively understand what it would be like to be denied something based on colour. Divisive association that give treatment to any race would only be wrong if society was equal or at least not taken huge advantage of the black race for hundreds of years however we did therefore the only way to fairly address this is fix our broken society.
I seriously thought exactly like you guys till a couple of years ago when I first had these arguments placed to me. I don't expect you to change your opinion overnight but I would urge you to watch that video I posted earlier and actually read what I'm posting and consider it carefully. Just be open to the concept that the world was a horrifyingly prejudice place in the majority till about 30years ago and consider the effect on a race that undergoes hundreds of years of this prejudice, balance the fact that being born into a body is entirely random however if you could know whether that random person would be black or white you could give a statistically reasonable description of the circumstances that person would be in and whether it would be more or less privileged to be born White or Black
None of us are stupid and realise this, and haven't denied it. But the topic is asking what is wrong with political correctness. We've answered that question: it doesn't help in any way, and could be seen as making things worse. You've been moving onto an entirely (although directly related) topic. There's real racism, and political racism, just like how there are real people, and politicians. Political racism is seeing racism that wasn't there to begin with, and political correctness is fixing that problem that wasn't there to begin with.
A large part of "Political Correctness" is to aid in becoming a less prejudice society, I entirely accept that some parts of it seem silly to us now however it'll likely be looked back upon as entirely unacceptable; making "Christmas" as a national holiday is a quite strongly insulting to the large percentage of the people in Britain who believe in no such Christian holiday and even more insulting is the idea that Christmas somehow deserves some kind of national holiday, elevating it to a point above all other philosophical beliefs. So yes "Seasons Greetings" looks a bit weird to me but I mean can you or anyone else explain why you care so much about keeping this as they are? Why does baa baa blacksheep, if your story is in fact true, becoming some other random colour really matter in any way at all?
Why is a black person in America an African-American while a black person in England is English and not African-English?
White people were enslaved long before black people were, and are still actively being enslaved. No race deserves special treatment or sympathy because they just might happen to be somewhere along the lines related to a slave a century and a half ago. But for some reason beyond the realms of sanity, we end up with political correctness; where all white people have been labelled inherently racist. It is much easier to see yourself as being discriminated against for your colour or religion that it is to think past that and wonder whether the reason you were denied that job was because you weren't fully qualified or there was someone else better than you, or the reason you were refused service at a truck-stop was because you were conducting yourself badly. It's persecution complex, seeing racism when it isn't there. Well we're not going to be able to fix our society if we keep dividing it are we? There comes a point when you have to forget the past and work on developing better relationships now. All these associations are doing is establishing that blacks are different to whites, that Chinese are different to Asians, that Christians are Different to Muslims, and that they all need their own special little club to represent them. In the end, nobody will trust each other, and we can't have a functional system without some degree of trust.
I always assumed this was an insulting term that was the product of a massively racist country like America ham fistedly attempting to not be racist. I have no idea how it caught on, but then again its not like black people call each other African Americans very often. The dream is that they'll just be "American" or "British" but just now America is so far away from being a colour blind society not only because of its appalling past but refusal to attempt to fix that part of society e.g. "Well people in the ghetto should just get jobs and work hard durrrr"
Yup because we don't give a crap about what colour you are. If you want to live here in blighty, you entered accepting our rules and you are British. If you wish not to integrate with society and keep your culture, fine. Just don't ram it down my throat, or cause any problems.
