Yaller Dogs And Fishhook Tails


I was watching one of my bedtime documentaries around ten o’clock last night when I came across something fascinating. It was called “The Search For The first Dog,” a National Geographic presentation. There is a type of wild dog that runs the woods in North and South Carolina called a “Yaller Dog,” which of course means “Yellow.” They are a very light tan to yellow color on the back and sides with cream colored undersides – elegantly long and lean in the body and legs. Their ears are fairly large and “prick” style, and their tail is called a “fishhook tail.” Obviously it curls stiffly over their back. They have been there as long as white people have, and were thought to be native to the area. They undoubtedly came across the land bridge with their favorite groups of Native Americans, however, for their genetic links go to Asia and the Middle East.

The earliest dogs are thought to have “bred themselves” so to speak from a small type of wolf that was native to Asia and the Middle East, while following the human hunters. These dogs are neither as large nor as fierce as a wolf, so they fit well into the camp follower lifestyle. That would have been around 14,000 Before Present. The oldest dog of that type lives in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, also thought to have followed humans there. The National Geographic video stated that these dogs in New Guinea are thought to be the beginning of all modern dogs. The New Guinea group are called “Singing Dogs” for their light, high pitched howl which they do rather than barking. The sound when they all vocalize together is very much like singing, actually, and is beautiful. They live wild in New Guinea and are sometimes befriended, fed and petted by the people or raised outright from pups in the villages. They like human scraps, but they also are quite capable of hunting small game for themselves. Like wolves, all of these dogs run in packs.

Three other groups with ancient blood lines are in Australia, Israel and India. In India they are called Pariah Dogs, and are more short-legged with variable color patterns including black. One I saw even had flopped ears like a Fox Terrier, but most have prick ears and the “fishhook” tail. They have lived for thousands of years on the trash heaps of Indian villages, especially with a cultural group called the Santhal and the dogs are called after that name, “Santhal dogs.” That tribal group are known to have taken care of them and bred them, but they are scavengers on the garbage heaps more than pets. I expect they probably formed the function of killing and eating rodents for the village as the early domesticated cats did in the Middle East, and to raise an alarm for intruders.

None of the ethnic groups except those in Israel were mentioned to have fully domesticated these earliest dogs or used them for hunting. In Israel the Bedouin use them to herd and protect their sheep flocks. They aren’t very large, but they are feisty enough to chase off wolves. There was one fighting scene in the documentary, and the two dogs, while having very little bulk at all, were so energetic and fierce in their charges that the other dog was beaten back.

The Australian dog, of course, is the Dingo, and is thought to have been brought across the water by Asian groups several thousand years later than the 14,000BP date, and long after the Aboriginal people themselves migrated there. I was watching a documentary on the Aboriginal people and the article said that while they sometimes pet the dingoes, they don’t feed them. The Dingoes live on the slower small marsupial mammals which are native to Australia. Like all of these ancient dog types, they are being interbred with domestic dogs to a degree that has caused a number of scientists to attempt to keep some of them genetically pure. The article said that the modern day dingo is about 70% interbred with modern breeds. The Australian group that brought the Dingoes couldn’t have been the oldest inhabitants, because it is thought that dogs developed much later than that.

I have included this snippet from Wikipedia about the Aboriginal people there because they are fascinating to look at and are very old. They are quite dark like modern Africans, but their facial bones look very different. That’s because they are 70,000 years old. Wow!! I think if we want to know what some of the first Homo Sapiens looked like we should study them. There are some other people of the same type in the Asian regions near Australia, also. The racial group they belong to is called Australoid. There is a great photograph in Wikipedia of three Australoid men from Bathhurst Island, dated 1939. They are broadly and strongly built both in body and facial structure. They don’t closely resemble any other group, except some others in widely separated locations that also go back many tens of thousands of years. I am thinking of the Ainu of Japan and Russia, who date back to that time period, and some pictures I saw of a group in India with the very dark skin and broad face and features. The Ainu, however, are white and are said to be “hairy” like Caucasoid people, but they are classed as a race of their own. Ainu is a race, in other words. They are not Mongoloid, or related to the Chinese and Japanese, though they live nearby. The Wikipedia article said that they have intermarried a goodly amount with Japanese Mongoloid people, however, and are losing some of their cultural and physical characteristics. As for the original Australians, see the Wikipedia article below.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australians

Indigenous Australians
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indigenous Australians are members of groups that existed in Australia and surrounding islands prior to European colonisation. The phrase is therefore somewhat broad in scope, including such ethnically diverse groups as Tiwi people, Noongar people, and Torres Strait Islanders, and does not generally imply a close relationship or common origin of all included groups.

The relationship between modern Indigenous Australians and Australia's earliest inhabitants remains a matter of scholarly debate. The earliest definite human remains found to date in Australia are those of Mungo Man, which have been dated at about 40,000 years old, but comparison of the mitochondrial DNA with that of ancient and modern Aborigines indicates that Mungo Man is unrelated to any modern Indigenous Australians.[2] The time of arrival of humans in Australia is also a matter of debate among researchers, with estimates dating back as far as 125,000 years ago.[3]

Recent findings indicate that Indigenous Australians are probably descendants of the first modern humans to migrate out of Africa to Asia, roughly 70,000 years ago,[4] arriving in Australia around 50,000 years ago.[5][6] The Torres Strait Islanders are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea. The term "Aboriginal" is traditionally applied to only the indigenous inhabitants of mainland Australia and Tasmania, along with some of the adjacent islands, i.e., the "first peoples". Indigenous Australians is an inclusive term used when referring to both Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders.

Strictly speaking, Aborigine is the noun and Aboriginal the adjectival form; however, the latter is often also employed as a noun. Use of either Aborigine(s) or Aboriginal(s) to refer to individuals has acquired negative connotations in some sectors of the community, and it is generally regarded as insensitive and even offensive.[15][16] The more acceptable and correct expression is Aboriginal Australians or Aboriginal people. The term Indigenous Australians, which also includes Torres Strait Islander peoples, has found increasing acceptance, particularly since the 1980s.[17]

RACE AND DEMOCRATS — 2015

Without making many in depth examinations of these articles, I have included them because each is full of valuable information relating to which Democratic candidates will stand firmly behind the social justice and social equity issues against the increasing growth of the millionaires’ wealth and the loss of income within the Middle Class. Likewise, the number of young black men who are being incarcerated, abused or killed at the hands of the police and the courts has become an inescapable issue since a case of police brutality and general overkill in Ferguson, MO hit the news. Like clockwork another case of very similar circumstances emerged in the national news almost every week for the next ten months or so. There haven’t been many more in the last few months, thank goodness, and it may, just MAY represent a change in what the various city PDs are doing internally. Nobody wants to feel as though they have been pushed into a retreat, but I believe the rapidity and seriousness of the Black Lives Matter group and others such as the old original NAACP from the 60‘s in their alertness and Internet connectedness have made a noticeable difference. Several police departments have spoken about improving community relations, hiring and training differences, and so on which encourages me. That little bit of voluntary progress has to continue, however, with a federal attention to the way police select, train, monitor and discipline their police officers from now on. They haven’t done well enough on their own.

Racial hatred is an evil thing always, but it is as common as grains of sand. What has been really frightening to me was the extent to which some officers have been going in their use of force for flimsy reasons, and the appearance that night in Ferguson in their tanks, full body shields, automatic weapons, etc. They looked like Nazi SS officers. Murder is still murder whether racial hatred was the cause or not. Police do specifically need close psychological testing, IQ testing, at least some college coursework, and a background check before they are hired, and then MANDATORY sensitivity training, as it was called in the 70s, after they become officers. A recent news article was about a new psychological training they have developed which reduces the level of racial/cultural hatred that an officer has. Hatred can, at least to some degree, trained out of an individual. Of course, to me, there is no substitute for mixing socially with people of a different race so that we become used to their differences and respectful of them. However, no matter how an officer feels toward a man who is walking down the middle of a street, they shouldn’t shoot him for doing something which is a very small misdemeanor at worst. That is not “law and order,” at all, but mayhem.

Police have been given “the benefit of the doubt” by the white John Doe citizens walking down the street and by the local courts and city governments as well. That is especially bad. An officer should be prosecuted for those killings. I think they will be more often now, and especially if Black Lives Matter keep on their backs about the matter. I do want to see our good Democratic presidential hopefuls jumping on the bandwagon and pushing justice forward in every case. Likewise, in the Congress they need to make laws mandating change and officer responsibility for the things that they do. No more shoot first and then fudge it with a lie – “I feared for my life!”




WHY RACE IS STILL IMPORTANT AS AN ISSUE:
BECAUSE IT AIN’T GOING AWAY ANY TIME SOON


http://abcnews.go.com/US/cliven-bundy-controversial/story?id=23468481

Who Is Cliven Bundy and Why Is He So Controversial?
April 25, 2014
By LIZ FIELDS

In a matter of 20 days, Cliven Bundy went from being a little-known Nevada cattle rancher to being labeled a conservative folk hero, and then a "racist" who "wondered" if black people were "better off as slaves, picking cotton."

Bundy, a 67-year-old patriarch of a large Mormon family with over 50 grandchildren, first came into the spotlight when the federal government started impounding his 900 head of cattle in early April, following a 20-year battle over cattle-grazing on federal land.

The government claims Bundy owes $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees and penalties for continuing to let his cattle roam free on land near Bunkerville, 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, even after the government established the area as a protected habitat for the endangered desert tortoise in 1993 and slashed Bundy's cattle allotment.

Nevada Cattle Rancher Wins 'Range War' With Feds

The situation escalated in the week of April 5 as hundreds of supporters from around the country rallied on Bundy’s property to protest the federal cattle round-up. The dispute reignited debate over Bureau of Land Management practices, especially in Nevada where federal agencies control 85 percent of the land.

The confrontation turned ominous as armed militia gathered on his cattle and melon farm, aiming semi-automatic weapons at armed BLM officials from a bridge overpass. Some protesters were tasered by authorities and others arrested and later released, including one of Bundy’s 14 adult children.

On April 12, the BLM ended the stand-off, returned Bundy’s confiscated cattle and retreated from the land citing safety concerns. But self-styled civilian militia stayed behind to “protect” Bundy’s property and family, while Bundy toured the media circuit to promote his conservative views, flanked at times by armed bodyguards.

Civilian Militia Remains at Bundy Ranch After Standoff Ends

Bundy rode a horse while carrying the American flag, and made public speeches in which he repeatedly said he does not recognize the U.S. government, prompting Sen. Harry Reid's, D-Nev. to label Bundy supporters as “domestic terrorists.”

He was initially cheered, however, by Republican politicians including Sen. Rand Paul and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller. Paul and Heller later backed away from their support after Bundy's remarks on race were made public.

Bundy became even more controversial, however, and some of his support wilted when he was quoted in the New York Times making racist comments.

"They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton," Bundy said to reporters according to the New York Times. "And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom,"

Paul and Heller both distanced themselves from the rancher after his comments.

Other supporters, however, remain on his ranch, refusing to budge until the Bundy family tells them to go home.



GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY -- HOW MANY DEMOCRATS ARE RACIST?


http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-more-racist-than-white-democrats/

Are White Republicans More Racist Than White Democrats?
Race 3:15 PM Apr 30, 2014
By Nate Silver and Allison McCann

The comments made by Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling this month demonstrate that the U.S. is far from a colorblind society. And the reaction to their comments has drawn further attention to the fraught relationship between racism and partisan politics. When racist statements by high-profile figures are made public, some news commentators become preoccupied with trying to discern the speaker’s political affiliation.

We were curious about the long-term trends in racial attitudes as expressed by Americans in polls. Are Republicans more likely to give arguably racist responses in surveys than Democrats? Have the patterns changed since President Obama took office in 2009?

Like The New York Times’ Amanda Cox, we looked at a variety of questions on racial attitudes in the General Social Survey, which has been conducted periodically since 1972. The difference is that we looked at the numbers for white Democrats and white Republicans specifically, based on the way Americans identified themselves in the survey.1 Our focus was only on racial attitudes as expressed by white Americans toward black Americans (of course, racism can also exist between and among other racial groups).

Two warnings about this data. First, survey responses are an imperfect means of evaluating racism. Social desirability bias may discourage Americans from expressing their true feelings. Furthermore, the sample of Democrats and Republicans in the survey is not constant from year to year. If the partisan gap in racial attitudes toward blacks has widened slightly in the past few years, it may be because white racists have become more likely to identify themselves as Republican, and not because those Americans who already identified themselves as Republican have become any more racist.

We looked at eight questions from the General Social Survey. First, how many white Americans say they wouldn’t consider voting for a black presidential candidate? In the 2010 edition of the survey, the most recent version to ask this question, 6 percent of white Republicans and 3 percent of white Democrats said they would not. However, it’s possible that these responses have something to do with Obama himself. In 2008, when Obama was a candidate rather than a president, the numbers were about equal among Republicans and Democrats. And at earlier times, white Democrats were more likely than white Republicans to say they wouldn’t vote for a black president. In 1988, for instance, when Jesse Jackson was running for the Democratic nomination, 23 percent of white Democrats said they wouldn’t vote for a black president, compared to 19 percent of white Republicans.2

We can also look at whites’ willingness to express negative feelings about blacks. From 1990 to 2008, white Republicans were just slightly more likely than white Democrats to say they considered blacks to be more “unintelligent” than “intelligent.” However, the numbers have fallen over time, and the small partisan gap erased itself in the past two surveys, 2010 and 2012, under Obama’s presidency.

Another question asked respondents whether they regard blacks as more “lazy” or “hard-working.” White Republicans are slightly more likely than white Democrats to characterize blacks as “lazy,” and the numbers haven’t changed much over time.

A related question asked respondents whether they think blacks lack the motivation to pull themselves out of poverty. The numbers on this one are high: In the 2012 survey, 57 percent of white Republicans and 41 percent of white Democrats agreed with the statement. This is also one question where the partisan gap has increased since Obama took office.

What about more personal attitudes toward interactions with African-Americans? A longstanding question on the survey has asked whites whether they’d object to a close relative marrying a black person. The percentage of white people saying so has fallen drastically over time, to 20 percent of white Democrats and 27 percent of white Republicans as of 2012. In 1990, by contrast, 65 percent of white Democrats and 71 percent of white Republicans said they’d object to an interracial marriage of a close relative.

Another question asked respondents whether they’d object to living in a half-black neighborhood. As with the marriage question, the number of white Americans saying they would object has fallen quite a bit since the 1990s. There generally hasn’t been much of a partisan gap on this question.

Since 1996, the survey has also asked respondents whether they feel “close” to blacks. Closeness is obviously a subjective quality, and failing to feel close to those in another racial group doesn’t necessarily imply racism. However, a survey question like this one may also be able to pick up on implicit racial attitudes that respondents would feel less comfortable asserting in questions about things like interracial marriage.

This question, in contrast to many of the others, has shown little change over time. It has also shown little partisan gap, although the number of white Republicans saying they don’t feel close to blacks has increased some since Obama took office.

A final question asked Americans whether they think society spends too much money trying to improve the conditions of blacks. This is the most overtly political of the questions that we’ll study. It also shows the largest partisan gap of any of the questions, and one that has increased since Obama took office.

In 2012, 32 percent of white Republicans said they thought society was spending too much money trying to improve blacks’ conditions, compared to just 9 percent of white Democrats. However, it’s important to note that some of the partisan gap may reflect attitudes toward government spending, rather than toward African-Americans specifically. For example, in 2012, 16 percent of white Republicans, but just 1 percent of white Democrats, said they thought the U.S. was spending too much money on trying to improve the education system.

Obviously, measuring racism is challenging — through surveys or by other means. If you take the question about voting for a black president as the best indicator of racism, then only about 5 percent of white Americans admit to racism toward blacks. If you regard the question about whether blacks lack motivation as indicative of racial antipathy, then about half of them do.

We combined the responses from the eight questions into one index of negative racial attitudes. We accomplished this by averaging the number of white Americans who provided the arguably racist response to each survey item, extrapolating the value for years in which the General Social Survey didn’t ask a particular question based on the long-term trend in responses to it.

As of 2012, this index stood at 27 percent for white Republicans and 19 percent for white Democrats. So there’s a partisan gap, although not as large of one as some political commentators might assert. There are white racists in both parties. By most questions, they represent a minority of white voters in both parties. They probably represent a slightly larger minority of white Republicans than white Democrats.

Fortunately, the expression of racism by whites toward blacks has decreased over time, and for Americans in both parties — at least, according to this survey. In 1990, the index of negative racial attitudes stood at 40 percent for white Democrats and 41 percent for white Republicans.

There hasn’t been much of an overall increase or decrease in the index since Obama took office. On average, between the 2004 and 2006 editions of the surveys — the last two before Obama was either a president or a candidate — the index of negative racial attitudes stood at 22 percent for white Democrats and 26 percent for white Republicans. Those values are within the margin of error for those in the 2010 and 2012 surveys.

If there’s a discouraging trend, it’s not so much that negative racial attitudes toward blacks have increased in these polls, but that they’ve failed to decrease under Obama, as they did so clearly for most of the past three decades.


Footnotes

1.Our figures only include those who identified themselves as Democrats or Republicans, and not independents who said they lean toward one of the parties. ^
2.The General Social Survey did not ask this question at any point between 1998 and 2006, which accounts for the unusual smoothness of the lines in the chart during that period. ^


Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.   @natesilver538


Allison McCann is a visual journalist for FiveThirtyEight.   @atmccann





http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/upshot/where-are-the-national-democrats-on-ferguson.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Where Are the National Democrats on Ferguson?
The Upshot
Quiet On Criminal Justice
Josh Barro
August 21, 2014

Photograph -- A protest in Ferguson, Mo., this week. No national Democratic politician has given voice to the anger there. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images

There is something very strange about the national political reaction to the protests in Ferguson, Mo., (and nationally) over Michael Brown’s shooting. The protesters are angry, and they’re not aimlessly angry. They have a specific set of policy grievances about policing and criminal justice that are shared by a large slice of the electorate, particularly the Democratic primary electorate.

Yet no national Democratic politician, nobody of the sort who is likely to mount a presidential run anytime soon, has risen to give voice to the anger we’re seeing in Ferguson. Nobody seems eager to make police abuses or racial injustice a key issue in a national campaign, even though an awful lot of Democratic voters could be activated on those issues.

Why not? African-Americans are a hugely important Democratic Party constituency. Gallup data suggests 22 percent of self-identified Democrats are black. Exit polls showed black voters made up one-third of North Carolina primary voters in 2008 and a majority in South Carolina. If there were an incident of similar salience to a group that made up such a large share of the Republican base, you can bet a number of Republican politicians would be lining up to associate themselves with the protesters.

There are answers to the “why not?” question, but I don’t think they make the quiet on this issue sustainable.

You can start with the fact that blacks and whites tend to view the situation in Ferguson very differently. According to a poll conducted this month by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of black respondents say the shooting “raises important issues about race,” but just 37 percent of whites do. Whites are much more likely than blacks to have confidence in the police investigation. A New York Times/CBS poll on Ferguson released Thursday finds a similar divide.

Democrats win elections by building coalitions of white and nonwhite voters, and for decades, Democrats have used “tough on crime” stances as a way to build support with whites. The Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, spent 16 years as his state’s attorney general as a strong proponent of capital punishment.

Democrats have bad memories of the Willie Horton ad and other Republican campaign messages that used “law and order” issues to consolidate white voters. So faced with a policy issue that places a crowd of angry black people on one side and the police on the other, it’s not surprising that Democratic politicians would be wary of siding with the crowd.

Democrats also haven’t had to fear that not taking up this issue will cost them black votes. “Up until the last few months, there really hasn’t been any serious competition for the black vote on a policy level,” said Jeff Smith, a white Democrat who represented a racially mixed St. Louis district in the Missouri State Senate from 2006 to 2009. Even with Senator Rand Paul taking up the issues of over-incarceration and the drug war, Republicans remain too far from the median black voter on a swath of issues from economics to voter ID to make a serious general election play.

So there is a good general election logic for Democrats to give short shrift to the issues raised in Ferguson. But if the Tea Party has taught us anything, it’s that a base can force its party to take stances that won’t be popular in a general election. Black voters, and other Democratic voters who care about issues of policing and racial justice, don’t have to flex their political muscle by being willing to leave the party. If these issues are of importance to much of the electorate — and this month’s protests suggest they are — then a politician should be able to build a credible Democratic primary campaign by focusing on them.

Indeed, that’s roughly what Bill de Blasio did to win last year’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York. The fact that Democrats had lost the last five mayors’ races in part because of perceived weakness on policing issues did not stop Mr. de Blasio from winning the primary or the general elections easily while saying the New York Police Department’s policing tactics had gone too far. Mr. de Blasio was able to see that the sharp decline in violent crime in New York had changed the politics of policing, and made a softer touch more politically palatable.

The nationwide slump in violent crime should mean that trend isn’t limited to New York. The declining threat of crime and the cost of imprisoning so many people has created space for politicians, especially Republicans, to endorse policies aimed at reducing incarceration.

The decline of crime should change the calculus with black voters, too: Reduced crime makes aggressive policing look less justifiable and more gratuitous. Combine the favorable crime trend with the declining share of the Democratic primary electorate that consists of white voters, and there should be room for a candidate who takes Mr. de Blasio’s message on racial inequities in policing national.

Back in June, Matt Yglesias of Vox wrote that Democrats are “more unified than ever,” and policy unity is what forestalls a serious primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. On the issue set he discussed, he’s right. Democrats broadly agree on issues like taxes and spending, the safety net and bank regulation.

Mr. Yglesias’s article didn’t discuss policing and criminal justice issues, and didn’t describe the Democratic coalition as divided over questions like whether the police have too much power and whether we imprison too many people. That lack of division may be only because no ambitious candidate has emerged to push the party leftward on criminal justice — yet.





http://www.kwtx.com/centraltexasvotes/home/headlines/Democrat-Bernie-Sanders-Vows-To-Fight-Racism-321412991.html

Democrat Bernie Sanders Vows To Fight Racism
By: Associated Press
August 16, 2015

LOS ANGELES (August 11, 2015) Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders vowed that he would fight harder than any other presidential candidate to end institutional racism in front of a packed Los Angeles arena two days after Black Lives Matter protesters derailed one of his rallies.

The wildly enthusiastic and overwhelmingly positive rally avoided the Vermont senator's previous problem in Seattle.

The rally began taking on the issue head-on as Symone Sanders, Bernie Sanders' newly hired national press secretary who is not related to the candidate, introduced him and talked at length about racial justice.

Symone Sanders is a black criminal justice advocate and a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter movement, and said Sanders was the candidate to fight for its values.

The response both to Symone and Bernie Sanders was a deafening roar from the packed arena, whose usual capacity is about 16,000 people.





http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/hillary-clinton-racial-justice-black-lives-matter-article-1.2298347

Hillary Clinton gives support for racial justice by saying ‘black lives matter’
BY Dan Friedman
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, July 20, 2015, 8:27 PM

Photograph -- Hillary Clinton is among the Democrats to be criticized for saying 'all lives matter.' But she changed her tune Monday.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

Photograph -- Former Gov. Martin O'Malley (R) had to apologize when he told demonstrators: 'Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter.'
Charlie Leight/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton said Monday that "black lives matter," in a nod to activists pressing Democrats to adopt tough rhetoric on racial justice.

The former secretary of state was responding to a reporter's question during a Facebook chat. He asked what she would have told progressive activists at Netroots Nation, a progressive conference that Clinton declined to attend.

"Black lives matter. Everyone in this country should stand firmly behind that," Clinton wrote. "We need to acknowledge some hard truths about race and justice in this country, and one of those hard truths is that racial inequality is not merely a symptom of economic inequality. Black people across America still experience racism every day."

Clinton called for body cameras on all police officers, prison reform, universal early childhood education and expansion of voting rights as steps for countering the effects of racism.

Clinton is among the Democrats who have taken flak in recent weeks for saying "all lives matter" — a response that some activists say is inadequate.

Former Maryland governor and presidential candidate Martin O'Malley drew boos recently for telling demonstrators: "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter."

O'Malley later apologized.

Clinton used the Facebook chat to rip Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after he was quoted saying that "the gender card isn't alone enough" for her to become President.

"Wow," Clinton wrote. "If that's what he said, Mitch McConnell really doesn't get it. There is a gender card being played in this campaign. It's played every time Republicans vote against giving women equal pay, deny families access to affordable child care or family leave, refuse to let women make decisions about their health or have access to free contraception."

dfriedman@nydailynews.com





http://election.democraticunderground.com/128035137

(rest at link)
https://berniesanders.com/issues/racial-justice/

Racial Justice
Mon Aug 10, 2015

We must pursue policies that transform this country into a nation that affirms the value of its people of color. That starts with addressing the four central types of violence waged against black and brown Americans: physical, political, legal and economic.

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
PERPETRATED BY THE STATE
Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Samuel DuBose. We know their names. Each of them died unarmed at the hands of police officers or in police custody. The chants are growing louder. People are angry and they have a right to be angry. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that this violence only affects those whose names have appeared on TV or in the newspaper. African Americans are twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.

PERPETRATED BY EXTREMISTS
We are far from eradicating racism in this country. In June, nine of our fellow Americans were murdered while praying in a historic church because of the color of their skin. This violence fills us with outrage, disgust, and a deep, deep sadness. Today in America, if you are black, you can be killed for getting a pack of Skittles during a basketball game. These hateful acts of violence amount to acts of terror. They are perpetrated by extremists who want to intimidate and terrorize black and brown people in this country.

ADDRESSING PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
It is an outrage that in these early years of the 21st century we are seeing intolerable acts of violence being perpetuated by police, and racist terrorism by white supremacists.

A growing number of communities do not trust the police and law enforcement officers have become disconnected from the communities they are sworn to protect. Violence and brutality of any kind, particularly at the hands of the police sworn to protect and serve our communities, is unacceptable and must not be tolerated. We need a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter, and racism cannot be accepted in a civilized country.

We must demilitarize our police forces so they don’t look and act like invading armies.

We must invest in community policing. Only when we get officers into the communities, working within neighborhoods before trouble arises, do we develop the relationships necessary to make our communities safer together. Among other things, that means increasing civilian oversight of police departments.

We need police forces that reflect the diversity of our communities.

At the federal level we need to establish a new model police training program that reorients the way we do law enforcement in this country. With input from a broad segment of the community including activists and leaders from organizations like Black Lives Matter we will reinvent how we police America.

We need to federally fund and require body cameras for law enforcement officers to make it easier to hold them accountable.

Our Justice Department must aggressively investigate and prosecute police officers who break the law and hold them accountable for their actions.

We need to require police departments and states to provide public reports on all police shootings and deaths that take place while in police custody.

We need new rules on the allowable use of force. Police officers need to be trained to de-escalate confrontations and to humanely interact with people who have mental illnesses.

States and localities that make progress in this area should get more federal justice grant money. Those that do not should get their funding slashed.

We need to make sure the federal resources are there to crack down on the illegal activities of hate groups.

POLITICAL VIOLENCE
DISENFRANCHISEMENT

In the shameful days of open segregation, “literacy” laws were used to suppress minority voting. Today, through other laws and actions — such as requiring voters to show photo ID, discriminatory drawing of Congressional districts, not allowing early registration or voting, and purging voter rolls — states are taking steps which have a similar effect.

The patterns are unmistakable. An MIT paper found that African Americans waited twice as long to vote as whites. Wait times of as long as six or seven hours have been reported in some minority precincts, especially in “swing” states like Ohio and Florida. Thirteen percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions.

This should offend the conscience of every American.

The fight for minority voting rights is a fight for justice. It is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself.

We must work vigilantly to ensure that every American, regardless of skin color or national origin, is able to vote freely and easily.




http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/upshot/where-are-the-national-democrats-on-ferguson.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Where Are the National Democrats on Ferguson?
The Upshot
Quiet On Criminal Justice
Josh Barro
August 21, 2014

Photograph -- A protest in Ferguson, Mo., this week. No national Democratic politician has given voice to the anger there. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images

There is something very strange about the national political reaction to the protests in Ferguson, Mo., (and nationally) over Michael Brown’s shooting. The protesters are angry, and they’re not aimlessly angry. They have a specific set of policy grievances about policing and criminal justice that are shared by a large slice of the electorate, particularly the Democratic primary electorate.

Yet no national Democratic politician, nobody of the sort who is likely to mount a presidential run anytime soon, has risen to give voice to the anger we’re seeing in Ferguson. Nobody seems eager to make police abuses or racial injustice a key issue in a national campaign, even though an awful lot of Democratic voters could be activated on those issues.

Why not? African-Americans are a hugely important Democratic Party constituency. Gallup data suggests 22 percent of self-identified Democrats are black. Exit polls showed black voters made up one-third of North Carolina primary voters in 2008 and a majority in South Carolina. If there were an incident of similar salience to a group that made up such a large share of the Republican base, you can bet a number of Republican politicians would be lining up to associate themselves with the protesters.

There are answers to the “why not?” question, but I don’t think they make the quiet on this issue sustainable.

You can start with the fact that blacks and whites tend to view the situation in Ferguson very differently. According to a poll conducted this month by the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of black respondents say the shooting “raises important issues about race,” but just 37 percent of whites do. Whites are much more likely than blacks to have confidence in the police investigation. A New York Times/CBS poll on Ferguson released Thursday finds a similar divide.

Democrats win elections by building coalitions of white and nonwhite voters, and for decades, Democrats have used “tough on crime” stances as a way to build support with whites. The Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, spent 16 years as his state’s attorney general as a strong proponent of capital punishment.

Democrats have bad memories of the Willie Horton ad and other Republican campaign messages that used “law and order” issues to consolidate white voters. So faced with a policy issue that places a crowd of angry black people on one side and the police on the other, it’s not surprising that Democratic politicians would be wary of siding with the crowd.


Democrats also haven’t had to fear that not taking up this issue will cost them black votes. “Up until the last few months, there really hasn’t been any serious competition for the black vote on a policy level,” said Jeff Smith, a white Democrat who represented a racially mixed St. Louis district in the Missouri State Senate from 2006 to 2009. Even with Senator Rand Paul taking up the issues of over-incarceration and the drug war, Republicans remain too far from the median black voter on a swath of issues from economics to voter ID to make a serious general election play.

So there is a good general election logic for Democrats to give short shrift to the issues raised in Ferguson. But if the Tea Party has taught us anything, it’s that a base can force its party to take stances that won’t be popular in a general election. Black voters, and other Democratic voters who care about issues of policing and racial justice, don’t have to flex their political muscle by being willing to leave the party. If these issues are of importance to much of the electorate — and this month’s protests suggest they are — then a politician should be able to build a credible Democratic primary campaign by focusing on them.

Indeed, that’s roughly what Bill de Blasio did to win last year’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York. The fact that Democrats had lost the last five mayors’ races in part because of perceived weakness on policing issues did not stop Mr. de Blasio from winning the primary or the general elections easily while saying the New York Police Department’s policing tactics had gone too far. Mr. de Blasio was able to see that the sharp decline in violent crime in New York had changed the politics of policing, and made a softer touch more politically palatable.

The nationwide slump in violent crime should mean that trend isn’t limited to New York. The declining threat of crime and the cost of imprisoning so many people has created space for politicians, especially Republicans, to endorse policies aimed at reducing incarceration.

The decline of crime should change the calculus with black voters, too: Reduced crime makes aggressive policing look less justifiable and more gratuitous. Combine the favorable crime trend with the declining share of the Democratic primary electorate that consists of white voters, and there should be room for a candidate who takes Mr. de Blasio’s message on racial inequities in policing national.

Back in June, Matt Yglesias of Vox wrote that Democrats are “more unified than ever,” and policy unity is what forestalls a serious primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. On the issue set he discussed, he’s right. Democrats broadly agree on issues like taxes and spending, the safety net and bank regulation.

Mr. Yglesias’s article didn’t discuss policing and criminal justice issues, and didn’t describe the Democratic coalition as divided over questions like whether the police have too much power and whether we imprison too many people. That lack of division may be only because no ambitious candidate has emerged to push the party leftward on criminal justice — yet.

Origins of a Right Wing Term of Scorn “Politically Correct”
Comments by Lucy Warner, August 7, 2015


I first heard of the term “Politically Correct” in the 1990s when it became widely popular. It was being used mainly by right wing pundits, though the ever entertaining Bill Maher also uses it. He makes a practice of being politically “incorrect,” and I love to listen to him. He is essentially liberal, though his political party choice is independent. He has no political affiliation, but does slam Republicans more often than liberals.

When my sister picked up the phrase, I told her that it was biased and was being used to counteract liberals who were speaking of racial, sexual, gender and economic issues and advocacy. She said that wasn’t true and continued using it. I forgive her because the term is very descriptive, clever, and pungent and as a result is hard to resist as an arguing point. I personally do not say it because it usually is used to criticize what I would call simply “polite” or “liberal”. Probably because the word “liberal” has come under such a fierce attack by “conservatives,” good and politically conscious Democrats are now using “progressive” which has a specific meaning according to www.bing.com, “Economic progressivism (not to be confused with the more general Idea of Progress in relation to economic growth) is a political philosophy incorporating the socioeconomic principles of social democrats and political progressives. These views are often rooted in the concept of social justice, and have the goal of improving the human condition through government-based economic central planning.”

Political correctness is used by the Rightists to make fun of those who fight for equality and justice for all – in other words what I was taught from my childhood as being the unquestioned ideal of America. The American “melting pot” was considered to be a good idea in those days. Different cultures can learn from one another and become better as a result. Of course right alongside that meaning, many people were using the N word freely and criticizing “welfare queens” in very heated discussions. I firmly believe that we need to hang onto the old basic politeness and liberalism even if we don’t get a belly laugh with our comments at cocktail parties, so that the hate speech industry will no longer be able to keep the very real class warfare within our society ablaze. The original definition of the term had a strictly political meaning, in the Russian Soviet days, “following the party line.” Unfortunately we are in a new era of rightwing politics across most of the world now. Good old Wikipedia has an excellent exploration of the term “politically correct”, which I am presenting below. It’s very educational. After that is another Wikipedia article called “People-first Language.” Though it takes a conscious effort to speak that way, especially at first, it produces a calmer and gentler result with most people, or at any rate is supposed to do that. The “Criticism” section in People-first below is very interesting, especially the comments from advocates for the blind, deaf and autistic. “You can’t win for losin’,” apparently.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

Political correctness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct, commonly abbreviated to PC) is a pejorative[1][2][3][4][5] term used to criticize language, actions, or policies seen as being excessively calculated to not offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society. The term had only scattered usage prior to the 1990s, usually as an ironic self-description, but entered mainstream usage in the United States when conservative author Dinesh D'Souza used it to condemn what he saw as left-wing efforts to advance multiculturalism through language, affirmative action, opposition to hate speech, and changes to the content of school and university curriculums.[6] The term came to be commonly used in the United Kingdom around the same period, especially in periodicals such as the Daily Mail, a conservative tabloid that became known for the trope "political correctness gone mad."

Scholars on the political left have said that conservatives and right-wing libertarians such as D'Souza pushed the term in order to divert attention from more substantive matters of discrimination and as part of a broader culture war against liberalism.[7][8] They have also said that conservatives have their own forms of political correctness, which is generally ignored.[9][10][11]

History of the term[edit]

The term politically correct did not occur much in the language and culture of the U.S. until the latter part of the 20th century, and its earlier occurrences were in contexts that did not communicate the social disapproval inherent to the contemporary terms political correctness and politically correct. In the 18th century, the term "Politically Correct" appeared in U.S. law, in a political-lawsuit judged and decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1793.[12][13] The first recorded use of the term in the typical modern sense is stated in William Safire's Safire's Political Dictionary to be by Toni Cade in the 1970 anthology The Black Woman, where she wrote "A man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinist too".[14]

Early-to-mid 20th century[edit]

In the early-to-mid 20th century, contemporary uses of the phrase "Politically Correct" were associated with the dogmatic application of Stalinist doctrine, debated between formal Communists (members of the Communist Party) and Socialists. The phrase was a colloquialism referring to the Communist party line, which provided for "correct" positions on many matters of politics. According to American educator Herbert Kohl, writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s,


The term "politically correct" was used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in egalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.

—"Uncommon Differences", The Lion and the Unicorn Journal[1]

1970s[edit]

The French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote: "a political thought can be politically correct ("politiquement correcte") only if it is scientifically painstaking" in the Quinzaine littéraire.[15] In the 1970s, the New Left began using the term political correctness shortly after.[2] For example, in the essay The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970), Toni Cade Bambara said that "a man cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist, too." In the event, the New Left then applied the term as self-critical satire, about which Debra Shultz said that "throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and progressives... used their term politically correct ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts".[2][3][16] As such, PC is a popular usage in the comic book Merton of the Movement, by Bobby London, which then was followed by the term ideologically sound, in the comic strips of Bart Dickon.[2][17] In her essay "Toward a feminist Revolution" (1992) Ellen Willis said: "In the early eighties, when feminists used the term political correctness, it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement's efforts to define a "feminist sexuality"".[4]

Stuart Hall suggests one way in which the original use of the term may have developed into the modern one:


According to one version, political correctness actually began as an in-joke on the left: radical students on American campuses acting out an ironic replay of the Bad Old Days BS (Before the Sixties) when every revolutionary groupuscule had a party line about everything. They would address some glaring examples of sexist or racist behaviour by their fellow students in imitation of the tone of voice of the Red Guards or Cultural Revolution Commissar: 'Not very "politically correct", Comrade!'[18]

1990s[edit]

In 1990, the term was adopted by the right, with its media use as a pejorative phrase becoming widespread in 1991.[5] It became a key term encapsulating conservative concerns about the left in academia in particular, and in culture and political debate more broadly. Two articles on the topic in late 1990 in Forbes and Newsweek both used the term "thought police" in their headlines, exemplifying the tone of the new usage, but it was Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (1991) which "captured the press's imagination".[5] "Political correctness" here was a label for a range of policies in academia around supporting multiculturalism through affirmative action, sanctions against anti-minority hate speech, and revising curricula (sometimes referred to as "canon busting").[5][19] These trends were at least in part a response to the rise of identity politics, with movements such as feminism, gay rights movements and ethnic minority movements. That response received funding from conservative foundations and think tanks such as the John M. Olin Foundation, which funded D'Souza's book.[20]

In the event, the previously obscure term became common-currency in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against progressive teaching methods and curriculum changes in the secondary schools and universities (public and private) of the U.S.[21] Hence, in 1991, at a commencement ceremony for a graduating class of the University of Michigan, the then U.S. President George H.W. Bush spoke out against: "... a movement [that would] declare certain topics 'off-limits', certain expressions 'off-limits', even certain gestures 'off-limits'..."[22]

Herbert Kohl (1992) pointed out that a number of neoconservatives who promoted the use of the term "politically correct" in the early 1990s were actually former Communist Party members, and, as a result, familiar with the original use of the phrase. He argued that in doing so, they intended "to insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian, orthodox and Communist-influenced, when they oppose the right of people to be racist, sexist, and homophobic."[1]

Mainstream usages of the term politically correct, and its derivatives – "political correctness" and "PC" – began in the 1990s, when right-wing politicians adopted the phrase as a pejorative descriptor of their ideologic enemies – especially in context of the Culture Wars about language and the content of public-school curricula. Generally, any policy, behavior, and speech code that the speaker or the writer regards as the imposition of a liberal orthodoxy about people and things, can be described and criticized as "politically correct".[citation needed] Jan Narveson has written that "that phrase was born to live between scare-quotes: it suggests that the operative considerations in the area so called are merely political, steamrolling the genuine reasons of principle for which we ought to be acting..."[23]

Liberal commentators have argued that the conservatives and reactionaries who used the term did so in effort to divert political discussion away from the substantive matters of resolving societal discrimination – such as racial, social class, gender, and legal inequality – against people whom the right-wing do not consider part of the social mainstream.[7]

In the course of the 1990s, the term was increasingly commonly used in the United Kingdom, with the expression "political correctness gone mad" becoming a catchphrase, usually associated with the politically conservative Daily Mail tabloid.[24] In 2001 Will Hutton wrote:


Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid–1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism.... What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism – by levelling the charge of "political correctness" against its exponents – they could discredit the whole political project.

—"Words Really are Important, Mr Blunkett", The Observer[8]

Similarly Polly Toynbee, writing in 2001, said "the phrase is an empty, right-wing smear, designed only to elevate its user",[25] and, in 2010 "...the phrase "political correctness" was born as a coded cover for all who still want to say Paki, spastic, or queer..."[26][27]

History of the phenomenon[edit]

Main articles: Gender-neutral language and People-first language

Whilst the label "politically correct" has its particular origins and history, it only partially overlaps with the history of the phenomenon to which the label is now applied. While the use of "politically correct" in the modern sense is a label dating to the early 1990s, the phenomenon so labelled developed from the 1960s onwards. This phenomenon was driven by a combination of the linguistic turn in academia and the rise of identity politics both inside and outside it. These led to attempts to change social reality by changing language, with attempts at making language more culturally inclusive and gender-neutral. This meant introducing new terms that sought to leave behind discriminatory baggage attached to older ones, and conversely to try to make older ones taboo, sometimes through labelling them "hate speech". These attempts (associated with the political left) led to a backlash from the right, partly against the attempts to change language, and partly against the underlying identity politics itself.

In the American Speech journal article "Cultural Sensitivity and Political Correctness: The Linguistic Problem of Naming" (1996), Edna Andrews said that the usage of culturally inclusive and gender-neutral language is based upon the concept that "language represents thought, and may even control thought".[28] Andrews' proposition is conceptually derived from the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis, which proposes that the grammatical categories of a language shape the ideas, thoughts, and actions of the speaker. Moreover, Andrews said that politically moderate conceptions of the language–thought relationship suffice to support the "reasonable deduction ... [of] cultural change via linguistic change" reported in the Sex Roles journal article "Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language" (2000), by Janet B. Parks and Mary Ann Robinson.

Moreover, other cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics works, such as the articles "Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction between Language and Memory" (1974) in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, and "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice" (1981) in the journal Science indicated that a person's word-choice has significant framing effects upon the perceptions, memories, and attitudes of the speaker and of the listener.[29][30]

Practical application[edit]

In a practical sense, political correctness involves choosing language which the user believes will not offend people of different races, genders, physical abilities, ethnic group, sexual orientation, religious belief, and ideological worldview, among other things. The speaker attempts to use language perceived to be non-pejorative.

Opponents of such language apply the terms politically correct, political correctness, and PC as pejorative objections to what they see as over-sensitivity at the expense of common sense and practicality. Conversely, opponents of political correctness then employed the term politically incorrect to show that they choose to ignore the constraints of politically correct speech. Examples include the television talk-show program Politically Incorrect (1993–2002) and the culturally conservative book series of The Politically Incorrect Guide to a given subject, such as the U.S. Constitution, capitalism, and the Bible.[31]

Exclusions[edit]

Exclusion of certain groups[edit]

In the Civitas think tank pamphlet, The Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain (2006), the British politician Anthony Browne said that "the most overt racism, sexism and homophobia in Britain is now among the weakest groups, in ethnic minority communities, because their views are rarely challenged, as challenging them equates to oppressing them."[32][33] Inayat Bunglawala, media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the opinions of Anthony Browne were misleading and ludicrous about the societal realities of the peoples who are contemporary Britain.[32]

Right-wing political correctness[edit]

"Political correctness" is a label normally used for left-wing terms and actions, but not for equivalent attempts to mould language and behaviour on the right. However the term "right-wing political correctness" is sometimes applied by commentators drawing parallels; one author used the term "conservative correctness", arguing in 1995 (in relation to higher education) that "critics of political correctness show a curious blindness when it comes to examples of conservative correctness. Most often, the case is entirely ignored or censorship of the Left is justified as a positive virtue. ... A balanced perspective was lost, and everyone missed the fact that people on all sides were sometimes censored."[9]

One example is the Dixie Chicks political controversy, where a U.S. country music group criticized U.S. President George W. Bush for launching a pre-emptive war against Iraq in 2003;[34] the remarks were labelled "treasonous" by some rightwing commentators (including Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly).[10] The newspaper columnist Don Williams said that such criticism is the price for speaking freely about one's disapproval of the Iraq War, and that "the ugliest form of political correctness occurs whenever there's a war on. Then you'd better watch what you say".[10]

Paul Krugman in 2012 wrote that “the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which – unlike the liberal version – has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order”.[11]

Examples of politically correct right-wing language included the U.S. Congress voting to rename its cafeteria's French fries “Freedom fries”.[35] In 2004, then Australian Labor leader Mark Latham described conservative calls for “civility” in politics as “The New Political Correctness”.[36]

Identity politics[edit]

The post-structuralist philosopher Julia Kristeva was one of the early proponents of promoting feminism and multiculturalism through analysis of language, arguing (in the word of the New York Times, 2001) "that it was not enough simply to dissect the structure of language in order to find its hidden meaning. Language should also be viewed through the prisms of history and of individual psychic and sexual experiences. ... this approach in turn enabled specific social groups to trace the source of their oppression to the very language they used." However in 2001 Kristeva said that these views had been simplified and caricatured by many in the United States, and that (in the words of the Times) "political assertion of sexual, ethnic and religious identities eventually erodes democracy."[37]

Some radical right-wing groups argue that the true purpose of "political correctness" and multiculturalism is to undermine Judeo-Christian western values, referred to as "Cultural Marxism" by theory proponents. This usage originates from a 1992 essay in a Lyndon LaRouche movement journal. See Frankfurt School conspiracy theory.

Examples include Patrick Buchanan, writing in the book The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Culture and Civilization (2001) that "Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a régime to punish dissent, and to stigmatize social heresy, as the Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance."[38] Similarly, University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate connect political correctness to philosopher Herbert Marcuse. They claim that liberal ideas of free speech are repressive, arguing that such "Marcusean logic" is the base of speech codes, which are seen by some as censorship, in US universities. Kors and Silvergate later established the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which campaigns against PC speech codes.[39]

Other[edit]

A conservative criticism of higher education in the United States is that the political views of the faculty are much more liberal than the general population, and that this situation contributes to an atmosphere of political correctness.[40]

False accusations[edit]

See also: Loony left

In the United States, left forces of "political correctness" have been blamed for actions largely carried out by right-wing groups, with Time citing campaigns against violence on network television as contributing to a "mainstream culture [which] has become cautious, sanitized, scared of its own shadow" because of "the watchful eye of the p.c. police", even though protests and advertiser boycotts targeting TV shows are generally organized by right-wing religious groups campaigning against violence, sex, and depictions of homosexuality on television.[41]

In the United Kingdom, some newspapers reported that a school had altered the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep" to read "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep".[42] But it is also reported that a better description is that the Parents and Children Together (PACT) nursery had the children "turn the song into an action rhyme.... They sing happy, sad, bouncing, hopping, pink, blue, black and white sheep etc."[43] That nursery rhyme story was circulated and later extended to suggest that like language bans applied to the terms "black coffee" and "blackboard".[44] The Private Eye magazine reported that similar stories, had been published in the British press since The Sun first ran them in 1986.[45] See also Baa Baa White Sheep.

Science[edit]

See also: Politicization of science

Among scientists, the correctness of procedure, result, and consequent scientific data derives from the factual truth of the matter, and from the soundness of the reasoning by which it can be deduced from observations, first principles, and quantifiable results. When the publication, teaching, and public funding of science is decided by peer committees, academic standards, and either an elected or an appointed board, the conservative allegation can arise that the acceptability of a scientific work was assessed politically. As such, in What is Political Correctness (1999), the physicist Jonathan I. Katz applies the term PC as censure, characterized by emotional discourse rather than by rational discourse.[46]

Conservative and reactionary groups who oppose certain generally accepted scientific views about evolution, second-hand tobacco smoke, AIDS, global warming, and other politically contentious scientific matters, said that PC liberal orthodoxy of academia is the reason why their perspectives of those matters fail to receive a fair public hearing; thus, in Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm (1999), Prof. Edward J. Steele said:


We now stand on the threshold of what could be an exciting new era of genetic research.... However, the 'politically correct' thought agendas of the neo–Darwinists of the 1990s are ideologically opposed to the idea of 'Lamarckian Feedback', just as the Church was opposed to the idea of evolution based on natural selection in the 1850s![47]

In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (2005), Tom Bethell said that mainstream science is dominated by politically correct thinking. He argues that many scientists are motivated more by passionate emotion than by dispassionate reason.[48]

In the book The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America (1995), opponents of the racially determined I.Q. theory proposed in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) argued against the proposition that genetic determinism explains the IQ score differences between black people and white people, and gave the socio-economic inequality in the US as the reason. Supporters of the book said that criticism of their perspective (IQ differences based on genetics) is unfair, because it is based upon the political correctness derived from a liberal worldview.[49]

Satirical use[edit]

Political correctness is often satirized, for example in the Politically Correct Manifesto (1992), by Saul Jerushalmy and Rens Zbignieuw X,[50] and Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1994), by James Finn Garner, presenting fairy tales re-written from an exaggerated politically correct perspective. In 1994, the comedy film PCU took a look at political correctness on a college campus.

Other examples include the television program Politically Incorrect, George Carlin’s "Euphemisms" routine, and The Politically Correct Scrapbook.[51] The popularity of the South Park cartoon program led to the creation of the term South Park Republican by Andrew Sullivan, and later the book South Park Conservatives by Brian C. Anderson.[52]

Replying to the "Freedom Fries" matter, wits suggested that the Fama-French model used in corporate finance be renamed the "Fama-Freedom" model.[53]

British comedian Stewart Lee satirised the oft-used phrase "it's political correctness gone mad". Lee criticised people for overusing this expression without understanding the concept of political correctness (including many people's confusion of it with Health and Safety laws). He, in particular, criticised Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn for his overzealous use of the phrase.[54]

Use as a pejorative[edit]

In modern usage, the terms PC, politically correct, and political correctness are generally pejorative descriptors, whereas the term politically incorrect is used by opponents of PC as an implicitly positive self-description.[55][56]

See also[edit]


Portal icon Language portal
Portal icon Politics portal

Anti-racism in mathematics teaching
Christmas controversy
Frankfurt School Conspiracy Theory
Gutmensch (German expression for "do-gooder")
Kotobagari (Japanese political correctness)
Logocracy
Newspeak
Pensée unique
People-first language
Politics and the English Language (1946 essay by George Orwell)
Red-baiting
Reverse discrimination
Sprachregelung
Wedge issue
Xenocentrism

References[edit]

1.^ Jump up to: a b c "Project MUSE - Uncommon Differences: On Political Correctness, Core Curriculum and Democracy in Education". jhu.edu.
2.^ Jump up to: a b c d Ruth Perry, (1992), "A Short History of the Term 'Politically Correct'", in Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding, by Patricia Aufderheide, 1992
3.^ Jump up to: a b Schultz, Debra L. (1993). "To Reclaim a Legacy of Diversity: Analyzing the 'Political Correctness' Debates in Higher Education" (PDF). New York: National Council for Research on Women.
4.^ Jump up to: a b Ellen Willis, "Toward a Feminist Revolution", in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992) Wesleyan University Press, ISBN 0-8195-5250-X, p. 19.
5.^ Jump up to: a b c d Whitney, D. Charles and Wartella, Ellen (1992). "Media Coverage of the "Political Correctness" Debate". Journal of Communication 42 (2). doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1992.tb00780.x.
6.Jump up ^ D'Souza, Dinesh (1992). Illiberal Education: Political Correctness and the College Experience. John m Ashbrook Center for Public. ISBN 978-1-878802-08-8.
7.^ Jump up to: a b Messer–Davidow 1993, 1994; Schultz 1993; Lauter 1995; Scatamburlo 1998; and Glassner 1999.
8.^ Jump up to: a b Will Hutton, “Words really are important, Mr Blunkett” The Observer, Sunday 16 December 2001 – Accessed February 6, 2007.
9.^ Jump up to: a b "Conservative Correctness" chapter, in Wilson, John. 1995. The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on High Education. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. p. 57
10.^ Jump up to: a b c "Don Williams Insights – Dixie Chicks Were Right". Retrieved November 9, 2007.
11.^ Jump up to: a b Krugman, Paul (26 May 2012). "The New Political Correctness". New York Times. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
12.Jump up ^ In the 18th century, usage of the term "Politically Correct" occurs in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), wherein the term meant "in line with prevailing political thought or policy". In that legal case, the term correct was applied literally, with no reference to socially offensive language; thus the comments of Associate Justice James Wilson, of the U.S. Supreme Court: "The states, rather than the People, for whose sakes the States exist, are frequently the objects which attract and arrest our principal attention... Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? 'The United States', instead of the 'People of the United States', is the toast given. This is not politically correct." Chisholm v State of GA, 2 US 419 (1793) Findlaw.com – Accessed 6 February 2007.
13.Jump up ^ Flower, Newmas (2006). The Journals of Arnold Bennett. READ BOOKS,. ISBN 978-1-4067-1047-2."Politically correct". Phrases.org.uk. Retrieved 2011-05-28.
14.Jump up ^ William Safire, Safire's Political Dictionary, 2008 rvd. edn.,, p.556, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195343344, 9780195343342, google books
15.Jump up ^ Foucault, Michel (March 1968). "Foucault répond à Sartre". La Quinzaine littéraire (46). Retrieved 15 January 2015.
16.Jump up ^ Schultz citing Perry (1992) p.16
17.Jump up ^ Joel Bleifuss (February 2007). "A Politically Correct Lexicon". In These Times.
18.Jump up ^ Hall, Stuart (1994). "Some 'Politically Incorrect' Pathways Through PC" (PDf). S. Dunant (ed.) The War of the Words: The Political Correctness Debate. pp. 164–184.
19.Jump up ^ In The New York Times newspaper article "The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct", the reporter Richard Bernstein said that:

The term "politically correct", with its suggestion of Stalinist orthodoxy, is spoken more with irony and disapproval than with reverence. But, across the country the term "P.C.", as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at the universities.

—The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct, NYT (28 October 1990) Bernstein, Richard (28 October 1990). "IDEAS & TRENDS; The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct – The New York Times". Retrieved 22 May 2010.
Bernstein also reported about a meeting of the Western Humanities Conference in Berkeley, California, on the subject of "Political Correctness" and Cultural Studies that examined "what effect the pressure to conform to currently fashionable ideas is having on scholarship". Western Humanities Conference
20.Jump up ^ Wilson, John. 1995. The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on High Education. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. p26
21.Jump up ^ D'Souza 1991; Berman 1992; Schultz 1993; Messer Davidow 1993, 1994; Scatamburlo 1998




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language

People-first language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

People-first language is a type of linguistic prescription in English, aiming to avoid perceived and subconscious dehumanization when discussing people with disabilities, as such forming an aspect of disability etiquette. People-first language can also be applied to any group that is defined by a condition rather than as a people; for example, people who live on the street rather than homeless or people who ride bicycles rather than bicyclists.

The basic idea is to impose a sentence structure that names the person first and the condition second, for example "people with disabilities" rather than "disabled people" or "disabled", in order to emphasize that "they are people first". Because English syntax normally places adjectives before nouns, it becomes necessary to insert relative clauses, replacing, e.g., "asthmatic person" with "a person who has asthma." Furthermore, the use of to be is deprecated in favor of using to have.

The speaker is thus expected to internalize the idea of a disability as a secondary attribute, not a characteristic of a person's identity. Critics of this rationale point out that separating the "person" from the "trait" implies that the trait is inherently bad or "less than", and thus dehumanizes people with disabilities.

The term people-first language first appears in 1988 as recommended by advocacy groups in the United States.[1] The usage has been widely adopted by speech-language pathologists and researchers, with 'person who stutters' (PWS) replacing 'stutterer'.[2]

Rationale[edit]

Main articles: Linguistic prescriptivism and Language and thought

The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is the basis for ideologically motivated linguistic prescriptivism. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis states that language use significantly shapes perceptions of the world and forms ideological preconceptions.

In the case of people-first language, preconceptions judged to be negative allegedly arise from placing the name of the condition before the term "person" or "people". Proponents of people-first language argue that this places an undue focus on the condition which distracts from the humanity of the members of the community of people with the condition.

Usage guidelines[edit]

Many organizations publish disability etiquette guides that prescribe people-first language[3][4] The For Dummies guide to etiquette (2007) also prescribes people-first language.[5]

Adherence to the rules of people-first language has become a requirement in at least one academic journal.[6]

Criticism[edit]

Critics have objected that people-first language is awkward, repetitive and makes for tiresome writing and reading. C. Edwin Vaughan, a sociologist and longtime activist for the blind, argues that since "in common usage positive pronouns usually precede nouns", "the awkwardness of the preferred language focuses on the disability in a new and potentially negative way". Thus, according to Vaughan, it only serves to "focus on disability in an ungainly new way" and "calls attention to a person as having some type of 'marred identity'" in terms of Erving Goffman's theory of identity.[7]

The National Federation of the Blind adopted a resolution in 1993 condemning politically correct language. The resolution dismissed the notion that "the word 'person' must invariably precede the word 'blind' to emphasize the fact that a blind person is first and foremost a person" as "totally unacceptable and pernicious" and resulting in the exact opposite of its purported aim, since "it is overly defensive, implies shame instead of true equality, and portrays the blind as touchy and belligerent".[8]

In Deaf culture, person-first language has long been rejected. Instead, Deaf culture uses Deaf-first language since being culturally deaf is a source of positive identity and pride.[9] Correct terms to use for this group would be "Deaf person" or "hard of hearing person".[10] The phrase "hearing impaired" is not acceptable to most Deaf or hard of hearing people because it emphasizes what they cannot do.[11]

Most autism activists reject person-first language, on the grounds that saying "person with autism" suggests that autism can be separated from the person.[12]

Advocates of the social model of disability also reject person-first language, defining themselves as "disabled people" and "disability" as the discrimination they face as a result of their impairments.[13]