by Maria C Collins

Created on: May 03, 2008   Last Updated: September 15, 2011

The intentions of the people, who initiated political correctness were not wrong or bad. Political correctness itself, has gone very wrong because stupid people have taken it to ludicrous degrees. Some old-fashioned terms were unnecessary, exclusive, hurtful and impolite; they needed to change. However there are some manifestations of political correctness, which defy common sense and are based on totally muddled and inaccurate thinking.

A local council in England banned the old nursery rhyme "Baa Baa black sheep" from all of its nursery schools on the grounds that it was racist. Had these stupid councilors bothered to find out the actual meaning of the rhyme, which is actually about the wool trade, they would have realised that black wool was much rarer than white wool and, in the days before good artificial dyes it was, therefore, far more highly prized because it was worth a great deal of money.

A butcher in a village, in England was forbidden by his local council from flying the English flag, the cross of St George, outside his shop on St George's day. The reason that the council gave was that it might offend black people since a nationalist political party has used the flag as a symbol for their race propaganda. The cross of St George is the symbol of England, why should it not be flown on the feast day of England's patron saint? If the butcher flown the cross of St Andrew or the cross of St Patrick or the Welsh flag outside his shop presumably that would have been perfectly in order. In any case, surely if the people of England take back their own flag it ceases to have any power as a politically racist symbol.

A Jamaican friend once told me that she found some of the verbal contortions that people get into when they use politically "correct" language most irritating because the politically correct terms for things were inaccurate. Here is the example that she gave; If a board is painted black and you can write on it with chalk, then it is properly described as a blackboard. She said calling this item a blackboard did not offend her in the slightest. She also was annoyed by people who called her black, since she said her skin was brown and that the proper term for Caucasian people was actually pink, not white. My friend also said that she felt that people, who used carefully chosen politically correct terms, when speaking to her were actually racist, since all they could see was the colour of her skin and not the individual personality within.

Plain old-fashioned good manners mean considering other people's feelings and sensibilities and not making anyone feel uncomfortable. So let's ditch political correctness and put in it's place modern thinking coupled with old-fashioned good manners and common sense.

Learn more about this author, Maria C Collins.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.