My 5 year old daughter has a fascination with the Spanish language, every time she hears a Spanish word or a person speaking the language she points out (usually in a loud voice) “They are talking Spanish”. The other day we were at the store and she heard some people speaking Spanish and did just this and my wife and my immediate response was to tell her not to point that out so loudly as it can be offensive. This is the same child who a few days prior while we were in a restaurant said loudly “That dark brown girl has a beautiful necklace, mom” we also responded not to talk about the color of a persons skin.
Both of these incidents along with others made me start to think about what kind of society we live in where using descriptive terms to point something out good or bad is taboo. The black waitress had dark brown skin, this isn’t a bad thing nor a racist thing it is just a fact that gives us a way to describe the person who she was talking about, and the people speaking Spanish were speaking Spanish and it has nothing to do with something evil or wrong but in our society this is deemed as on the verge of being racist and bigoted to even point it out. It seems as though we are more afraid of being a seen racist/bigot than we are at being rude to others directly. I have no solutions to this or do I know if it is necessarily a problem per say but it is the world that we live in and at some point we need to decide what if anything should be done about this.
Both of these incidents along with others made me start to think about what kind of society we live in where using descriptive terms to point something out good or bad is taboo. The black waitress had dark brown skin, this isn’t a bad thing nor a racist thing it is just a fact that gives us a way to describe the person who she was talking about, and the people speaking Spanish were speaking Spanish and it has nothing to do with something evil or wrong but in our society this is deemed as on the verge of being racist and bigoted to even point it out. It seems as though we are more afraid of being a seen racist/bigot than we are at being rude to others directly. I have no solutions to this or do I know if it is necessarily a problem per say but it is the world that we live in and at some point we need to decide what if anything should be done about this.
1 comment:
I agree with being able to be descriptive. It is no different than saying that person with the short brown curly hair. There are too many people claiming that you have to be PC. I feel that if you describe a person, without being cruel, that is being PC.
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