by Marc Chamot

Created on: January 18, 2008

Culture Shock: Sensitivity, Thin Skinned and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS "PC", Latin Americans Wondering; if America Has Taken the FUN Out of IT?

Culture Shock and Political Correctness 101:
Being a world traveler and having lived abroad for a third of my life and being formerly married to a Latina from Peru, I decided to write about our Political Correctness and theirs in comparison.

Now, my bulk of experience and knowledge would be Latin America, since I have no Asian knowledge or experience I would be very limited in writing about their PC attitudes. But I suppose that it would be similar compared to any third world countries on this earth.

When I was growing up and going to school mainly in America since I arrived here around 1968, with little to no English skills, I slowly transformed myself and became very americanized.

My father put me through English only classes and forced me to learn the English language through HIS school of hard knocks. My political correctness experience was as American as apple pie, while growing up we would call a heavyset person "FATSO", skinny person "Slim" or just skinny and we would get away with it.

Someone with red hair we would call them Red or carrot top, and Blondie, for someone with blond hair. Those with long hair we would call them hippie, shorthaired people "jocks", small and short people "shrimp or midget" tall people "Lurch" from the Adams Family.

If you were foreign like I was, being Swiss from Switzerland I would be called "Swiss Miss" and "Swiss Cheese" Mexicans or mainly Latinos they'd call them "Burros and Burritos" Even calling someone a "retard" has become offensive in America.

Somehow we all developed some kind of nicknames by the way we looked and where we came from, and also by the way we talked and so forth. Mostly it was done in fun, affection, and love and in jest. Back in the fifties to the early eighties this was the norm but somehow along the way all of this changed in America.

Whether people became offended, thin skinned or these terms changed from affection to insults, I truly don't know why? What we do know is that we have become a PC society where we now fear what we say and whom we offend.

We have become a FAUX-PAS society and it's never been more prevalent among the races in America mainly PC term "African American."

For example back in earlier times in America, African Americans were called Negroes and that developed into a racist word, then went to "Colored" and that was the wrong word to use also. And now

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