Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Political correctness

So I try to keep up on these things, but sometimes I'm surprised.  Like when I wrote this column I used the term "Native American" at first, but then my smartypants son told me that term is now politically incorrect.

Moments like these help me to understand why my parents, who are in their 80s, will occasionally still say words like "deformed."  I'm guessing that one isn't very politically correct, is it?  But this is how they refer to their poodle's back leg.  Their poodle, they say, was supposed to be a show dog, except he has a "deformed" back leg.  So now he's only 3/4s of a show dog.

I love that 3/4s of a show dog lives in my parents' house.

6 comments:

Joseph S. Ramirez said...

Out of curiosity, did your son offer a viable alternative to the use of the term 'Native American'?

James said...

The back leg is not the only thing "deformed" about that dog. Here's a list 4 other deformities:

His sense of entitlement
His ideas on how to play fetch
His window-down coughing antics on trips
Most of all, his breed.

Louise Plummer said...

Are we back to American Indian?

Donna Tagliaferri said...

I had the same experience with "oriental. Is there some kind of holding spot where we can automatically know when a politically correct word has been corrected?

Donna Tagliaferri said...

And yeah...what is the correct term now?

Philsy C said...

I was going to make a comment about Jacques, but Jimmy beat me to it. Well said, Uncle.