Do leftists think that they own the English language?
asks
Benny Huang with regards to the gay "language police".
The way they lord over it like their personal fiefdom tells me that they do. They introduce new words, ban old ones, and assign new definitions hitherto unknown. What begins as a suggestion soon becomes an imperative—use the words they want you to use, the way they want you to use them, or pay the price.
Keeping up with the latest jargon can be difficult. Every once in a while, some well-meaning person will use a word that was innocuous just a short time ago only to discover that it’s now inflammatory. If that person doesn’t understand why the old word is now verboten it’s okay to ask, though it isn’t okay to evaluate the reason and decide for himself whether it’s valid. Edicts of the language police are final.
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If a time traveler arrived in our age from 1960, he would hardly be able to speak without being pilloried. “Negro” is now a derogatory term, though black is still acceptable, if not optimal. Apparently, the United Negro College Fund has not gotten the message. “Negro” is nothing more than the Spanish word for black. So it’s okay to say black, just not in a foreign language. What do these people have against Español?
“Colored people” is equally unacceptable, though not “people of color” which is all the rage in academia. For the life of me, I can’t explain why one is okay but the other will get you fired. Maybe we should ask the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “People of color” means anyone who isn’t white, which is a strange definition because, last time I checked, white is a color. What are we supposed to call those who don’t fall into this category? People of no color?
No, we call them white. White is an acceptable word, though yellow is not. Don’t ask me why. Yellow people are called Asians even if they’re several generations removed from Asia but white people are called white. We don’t call them Europeans, unless they’re actually from Europe. Red is also unacceptable. We call those people Native Americans. It doesn’t matter if you have roots in this country dating back to the seventeenth century, if you aren’t red you can’t claim to be a Native American.
Get it? Black and white are okay, but red and yellow are racial epithets. I get dizzy trying to keep up.
Who knows what changes the future will bring? In all likelihood, the words we use today will be obsolete in a generation. New words will replace old words and we Gen-Xer’s and Gen-Yer’s will be the clueless old farts who inadvertently say offensive things.
One thing is for sure—when these changes occur, they will all be initiated by those on the political left. It’s their language, we just speak it. English is putty in their hands, to be molded as they please. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just so gay.
