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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Genderless Grammar
Message-ID: <290@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Aug-83 15:05:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.290
Posted: Wed Aug 17 15:05:04 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Aug-83 19:01:31 EDT
References: <1976@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: D.C.I.E.M, Toronto, Canada
Lines: 17

When I was growing up, "Negro" was a polite term for Blacks, and "Black"
was offensive. I think this changed because of a general consciousness-
raising campaign "Black is beautiful", which helped Blacks to be proud
of being themselves. I understand that earlier "Nigger" was a polite
form of "nigra", which is presumably the same word as "Negro", but I am
not sure of this. The point is that the words each in turn came to have
insulting connotations because the group concerned was thought of as
inferior. The same thing happened to a series of "polite" "non-pejorative"
words for the institution sometimes called a "lunatic asylum".

Social attitudes affect our feelings towards words, and our uses of
words reflect our social attitudes. But I don't think the language
is strong enough to have profound effects on the attitudes we express
with it. Perhaps we should try for precision of expression rather
than worrying about changing what we now use any ol' way.

Martin Taylor