Political Correctness?

Originally written Sept. 22, 2005

Do you ever get tired of trying to pigeonhole people or things with too many adjectives that perfectly describe that particular article or thing? I am referring to the idea of Political Correctness. Frankly, I think we’re a nation that tries to be right all the time and sometimes it’s okay to call things as you see them. Obviously, I would never suggest being derogatory for the sake of being mean, but shouldn’t the line be slightly different? I want to call people “short” not “vertically height challenged.” In the same sense I call people “fat” when their ass doesn’t fit a standard size seat, not “overweight.” All right, that last one is a little mean, but you can’t deny that you don’t do the same thing.
At the heart of political correctness are race, and its description thereof. Such as African American, Caucasian, Latin American, Eskimo, Asian American, et al. Now, when I was taking standardized tests I always felt weird bubbling in ‘Caucasian’. I do not really know why except for that fact that, yeah I’m white, but I also get a good tan in the summers, and I took five years of Spanish in high school so, I don’t know. Call me crazy, but so long as the terms ‘Black’, ‘White’ ‘Latino’, ‘Asian’ and ‘Sled-dog Racer’ are not used in a derogatory manner people should not be offended. In terms of color I think there is an obvious scapegoat that has, until now, been overlooked because a shrewd marketing front. That pure evil of which I speak is none other than Crayola and their diabolical 64 box of crayons.
Things were so much easier in elementary school before boxes of color were larger than twelve. Think about it. You used to ask for: black, grey, red, blue, green, orange, purple, yellow, etc. But now, you have to stoop to their level and can no longer just find ‘red’. You have to be way more specific such as, ‘blood red’ or ‘plague of the Egyptians from the bible red’. Another example would be ‘green’ and now it has to be ‘forest green’ or ‘midnight in the Garden of Eden green’. What happens when it’s winter in New Hampshire and the trees are covered with snow and you can’t see any green? Or you’ve never seen blood before?
Maybe I am overly concerned with these semantics because I’m an English major and some words say different things to me and love to get tangled up in them. Or maybe I just sometimes get fed up with people dancing around things because they are worried about offending a little old lady in Nebraska. Or quite possibly I just want call things as I see them sometimes while not being nasty about it. Any way you shake it political correctness has become way too correct. We are America, we love getting things wrong, so we should take some of this right and put it towards other places that aren’t quite correct yet.