Not long ago I fell into conversation with a man who was, as I was, waiting for his car which was in the process of maintenance, and he made a remark (I believe our topic was insurance - not just automotive but all kinds) which he prefaced with the disclaimer, "This may be politically incorrect...." It really had nothing to do with political correctness or incorrectness. He simply meant that he was about to make a statement that he thought most people might not agree with. It was a fascinating example of how a term enters the currency of our language and changes according to its use, in this case entirely losing its original bite.
As I recall, the term first entered the language as a bit of a put-down for people who were concerned with the insensitivities of others for oppressions of race, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental ability or any other possible object of exploitation, including the earth upon which we live. The implication was that although there was no arguing that the oppression and exploitation were wrong in themselves, the particular issues of language which were the target of those called politically correct were trivial or extreme. I will admit - and this really is politically incorrect - that I have had some sympathy with this point of view.
I am a major fan of Miss Manners. I think she is not only witty and literate, but has a grasp of the exigencies of contemporary manners unrivalled by her competitors. I deeply regret that her column appears only once a week in the Naples Daily News. She was once asked what she thought of political correctness and her answer was that she was all for it. One of the things she has always argued is that people should be referred to in the way that they themselves prefer. Well, yes, but her answer did not, it seemed to me, take certain things into account. For example, how do we know for certain how people want to be referred to? If the terms keep changing, who changes them; who has the right to change them; and what is the point of the change? If I use an outmoded term should I be considered as having offered a gratuitous insult? She did not even suggest, as she usually does in her reply, that the excellent intentions of the speaker might be taken into account.
When I was a girl the polite term for those Americans whose ancestors were brought from Africa was colored people. After the civil rights era and the rise of the idea that black is beautiful the term that well-meaning people who believed in equality and the end of oppression on the basis of skin color was black. It was no more descriptive than white is for those who were so described, but it was short and worked fairly well. There was a very beautiful woman back then who was a member of the Sharon, MA, church to which I belonged, and a mutual friend who was herself in an interracial marriage asked me if I knew that she was black. I laughed and said that I had thought that she was actually a light coffee cream color, but in fact I thought that the transition to black probably made sense, as colored had taken on a bit of a tincture of the patronizing. Nevertheless, I was pleased when the NAACP refused to change their name in recognition that the older term had not been meant to hurt. When the term African-American began to be used, someone actually surveyed the members of the group to discover what they themselves preferred. At the time the overwhelming majority wanted to continue to use the term black. I don't know what a survey would say these days, as African-American has become more current, but I wondered at the time and still wonder who can rightfully be constituted as the spokesperson to decide what terms are acceptable and what are not? Nowadays we use "people of color" which, one assumes, includes black people, Asians, perhaps American Indians, and some Hispanics/Latinos/Latinas - all three of those terms used together in an attempt at including all and annoying none - but certainly not all, as the range of skin shade of people of Spanish, Portuguese, or French-speaking background runs the gamut. We are usually well-intentioned and oftentimes find ourselves scrambling to make sure that we're up on the latest words in order to offend as little as possible.
Nothing has been more plagued with changing terminology than the various physical and mental disabilities from which people suffer. It has gone from such blunt and simple words as lame or crippled or deaf to handicapped, disabled, impaired, challenged - I'm not even sure what else. There almost seems to be an attempt to deny that those whose bodies or minds are not strong and whole would not, in fact, prefer that they were. "Differently abled" became current, as if it were really quite okay to be blind or confined to a wheelchair. They may be, and often are, wonderful, talented people, but they would be the first to admit that given their choice they would wish to be able to see or to walk. Lately I've also heard "temporarily abled" for those who have no such disabilities - yet. That is often true enough and turns on its head, perhaps, some of our thinking about the issues, but the reality is unchanged. Changing the words does not change bigotry or disability.
The issue is one of respect. As our president Roger discovered when he used one of those electric carts at General Assembly a couple of years ago, the disabled are simply passed over as if they did not exist. About ten years or so ago, in an effort, I suppose, to change that and to acknowledge the differences among us, worship leaders began saying that people could stand to sing hymns as they were "willing and able". The intention was, as always, excellent, but it struck me as being almost unbearably patronizing. Who am I to give permission for people to stay seated if they wish to, or even more so if they must. I may think, as I do, that in freeing up the diaphragm standing makes singing easier and better, and it may be, as it is, part of our culture of worship to stand, but I have neither the right nor the desire to give or withhold permission for people to stand or sit. One of my friends who is confined to a wheelchair said that it made her feel conspicuous and set apart from the congregation. We need to be sensitive in our sensitivity.
Tomorrow is - I think it's called - Indigenous Peoples Day in California as a response to the tragic consequences of Columbus' discovery of the Americas. For those people already here the consequences were indeed tragic, but to ignore or deny the consequences for which, if we have any honesty at all, we must be grateful seems to me to be carrying political correctness to the extremes that the inventors of the term were deriding. I would not exist at all had my ancestors not come from their various homelands to this country. I can even lay claim to a tiny droplet of Mohawk blood to add to the mix. This country itself with its many failings and evils nevertheless promulgates a vision of freedom and equality that is still a beacon to the world. I think it's fine to celebrate indigenous peoples, but I also celebrate Columbus.
I also think in this regard of the terms we use. Although those people who met Columbus had been here for thousands of years, they, too, ultimately came from elsewhere, and I think more than one elsewhere. The ones who met the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and the English on the east coast clearly looked much less Asian than those on the Pacific. Human beings are indigenous to Africa - all human beings. That is where we first evolved, and spread from there all over the world. Those who believe, and I suppose there are some that we sprang up separately In different places have not considered that being mutually reproductive requires that we belong to a single species. Race is a fiction. The human race is all there is. The term Native American has the same problem. Either all of us born here are or none of us are. I asked a man I met in Oklahoma whether he preferred Native American or Indian, and he said that if we weren't going to call him by the name of his tribe, Indian was fine with him. Who decides what is offensive and what is not? How often are we kept from making connections with one another because we fear to offend? I must admit I have seldom been more pleased than when the Seminole tribe made common cause with Florida State when they were told that they could not play in national conferences unless they changed their name. They are still the Seminoles and they are still playing.
An issue that just recently arose for me was that of those people who are transgendered who do not identify as either male or female, and how they feel when we talk about our brothers and sisters, and they are neither. I do not want to exclude them, and yet I cannot find the clinical sounding term sibling even beginning to take the emotional place for me that speaking of brothers and sisters does. I could, of course, not speak of human siblinghood at all, but it is too meaningful a concept for me to let it go so easily. Perhaps it will come. There is no word in our language, nor even any phrase, that takes the place of the word brotherhood. There is no gender-neutral term to take its place and it is one of the most beautiful of ideals, and yet I can no longer use it. Perhaps brothers and sisters will one day go the same way, but not yet.
Unitarian Universalists find this issue particularly compelling because of our commitment to respect for all people of good will whatever their particularities. We struggle with more or less success to include, accept, affirm, and never to offend. However, there was one place where I came down unwaffling on the side of the politically incorrect. The first hymn that we sang today is an example of it. When this latest hymnal was being compiled we all received a copy of an essay written by a member, a good friend of mine, on the issue of the use of the metaphors of dark and light as being a racist slur. I wrote him a letter, to which, by the way, he has never responded, but perhaps he got too many of them. Had he ever, I asked him, gone into a dark room looking for something, turned on the light and noticed how much easier it was to find the object of his search? Had he never noticed, I enquired, that when the clouds were darkest rain would frequently ensue? The fact that I personally love the dark and the rain does not lesson the power of the metaphor. What they did to that hymn and certain others was, I said, an offense against the holy spirit. So I still believe.
There are many light bulb jokes, some funny, some not, but there is one that do truly love. How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, and that's not funny! I have been a feminist all my life, although I'm not sure that's the correct term any more. I'm not certain what a womanist is, though I have sometimes heard that recently, and there was another distinction I heard the other day that unluckily has passed from my memory. In spite of that, I have been continually distressed by the unremitting earnestness of those feminists who find so many things not funny, who seem almost to be looking for causes of offense. It may even, these days, be offensive to call myself a feminist.
It is not an easy issue. Miss Manners is right that we should call people what they wish to be called. Of course we want to be respectful to others and sensitive to their point of view. Nevertheless, I think the constantly changing terminology and the constant being called to account for language more than for attitudes is itself both a symptom and a cause of our continuing divisions. The words change because the old one gets a stigma, but without an essential change at the core of whatever issue it is, the stigma then passes to the next word and the next, and instead of being able to deal with the real issues, we find ourselves saying nothing or looking over our shoulders to discover whom we are offending by whatever we are willing to say. When we cannot confront issues directly; when we cannot even talk about what the real issues are for fear of offending someone, there can be no change.
And things must change. Class issues that are also somehow color issues continue. I saw two young black men the other day standing by the road with a policeman searching their car for, I assume, drugs or weapons. Had I been stopped for an infraction I would simply have been given a ticket and allowed to continue on my way. Our Indian reservations are centers of poverty, ignorance, alcoholism and disease, and we do little about it. Ordinary human rights are denied to our homosexual citizens, and more restrictions are planned. There is systemic injustice that we are, I believe, distracted from dealing with through these trivialities of names and words. We give immense power to the anonymous arbiters of language, and assume that when one of them speaks they are speaking for a whole group without evidence that this is so. Stereotyping continues and we have no real awareness that that is what we are doing.
We are called to justice and compassion, to bind up the broken, to release the captives, to build a land where all our towns and cities and our citizens are healthy and whole in spirit and body. We cannot do it when we allow ourselves to be silenced, however well-intentioned the silencing is. One of my colleagues said, "We do not promise not to offend one another. We must promise not to be easily offended." That, I think, sums up what I am trying to say. We must have enough respect and caring for one another to stay in the struggle whatever our sensitivities or concern for others' sensibilities. We must be able to forgive and be forgiven, to hear goodwill when it is offered, however clumsily, and to bridge the divisions that still find among us.