Wetback?
Cripple?
Chink?
Honky?
Bulldagger?
n-word?
f*ggot?
Sand n-word?
Towel Head?
It's truly remarkable that in this day and age some people are actually offended by the efforts of others not to offend. Yet, for many folks, being urged to avoid the use of the epithets described above is a shocking example of "PC run amok" and an intrusive affront to their right of "free speech." This sentiment falls in line with one of the most bizarre absurdities of current anti-PC sentiment I've heard of late -- the assertion that people afraid to use the N-word are actually more racist than those who actually say that word.
That, in a nutshell seems to me to be at the core of the disdain some feel about political correctness. It deprives them of the option to freely call people names; to deride them and make fun of them in either an overt or round-about fashion. For some reason they seem to feel better when instead of saying "Good morning; have a nice day" on what might be a particularly bad morning for them, they are free to push civility aside and say "Get the f*ck out of my way."
Is this the direction in which humanity is headed as we push aside common decency to slog down a brazen path leading to a place of legitimized hate speech and demonized civility? Rather than evolving in a direction of greater enlightenment, the human species seems to be de-evolving into tribes of angry, inconsiderate, emotionally-controlled savages, desperate to show each other just how tactlessly hard-core we can be.
Harsh Words Matter
British poetess Pearl Strachan Hurd once observed that "words have more power than atom bombs." And indeed, any number of studies has indicated that from a meta-physical standpoint, harsh words -- described as "verbal abuse" -- do in fact matter. According to research by Martin Teicher, a neuro-pharmacist and Director of Developmental Biopsychiatry at McLean Hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts, verbal abuse, particularly during childhood, can have a viscerally negative effect, impacting both the structure and function of the brain. Teicher asserts that parental verbal abuse, for example, can result in outcomes similar to "those associated (with) persons who witness domestic violence or non-familial sexual abuse."
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