I was livid. Editors tore into my column and replaced my Native Americans with American Indians and turned a Brazilian into a Hispanic. Journalistic style be damned, I prefer Native American to American Indian. The latter lends credence to the ill-informed imperialism that bullied its way across the American continents. I went with Latino because I wanted to avoid identifying a Brazilian acquaintance by naming his nationality. “Latino” reveals his ancestry while avoiding a Hispanic moniker that fails to give proper due to the non-Spanish speakers of the Latin American world.
A person incapable of sight once yelled at me, “Visually impaired? My vision is more than impaired, I’m f***ing blind.” Despite efforts to use a phrase with the sensitivity stamp of approval, I raised the ire of a woman wary of a procession of names used to describe her condition.
Ponder the labels given to descendants of African slaves. Yesterday’s standard usage became today’s insult. I begrudgingly sympathize with the innocent idiot who described a member of an academic panel a “perfectly normal Negro.” This perfectly pissed-off black man wanted his hands to practice passive resistance around the young woman’s windpipe. In her defense, the earnest young nincompoop had spent the days prior sitting in Ethnic Studies and watching “Eyes on the Prize.” She heard the best and brightest of the 1960s civil rights movement say “Negro.” She figured that black people like being called Negroes.
We cannot continue trying to educate the blissfully ignorant and not expect some baffling collateral damage. Keep them unenlightened. Let my people go…shopping for shoes.
Clearly an editing mistake, a newspaper told readers that their legislators promised to put the state’s cash-strapped budget “back in the African-American.” Despite the fun when newspapers mindlessly replace one word with another, I resist the move to call blacks “African American.” The people in question deserve the final say and the few black people I asked prefer to forgo polysyllabic formality for the simple and precise.
Many blacks feel far more American than African. Many whites have no idea what “Caucasian” means and refuse to be called European Americans for fear their women will stop shaving their armpits. Describing those with lighter complexions as European Americans also disavows a racist tradition of discriminating against Europeans with more pigmentation than, say, the average Norwegian. Many of European ancestry share links to organized crime because their names end with a vowel. Benjamin Franklin ironically described Germans as swarthy and inferior people. The Irish faced the genocidal rancor of seemingly similar Britons. No wonder the Irish drink so much-and developed such a fine sense of humor. Let’s not forget a millennia of persecution doled out to people satisfied with the Old Testament and not needing a new one.
I dislike being described as white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant for the convenience of generalizations. Forsaking any hint of pilgrim flowing through my veins, I demand to be described as a Teutonic Roman Catholic with a smidgen of Vandal.
Or just call me white or American or Craig.
How wonderful it would be if we never needed to specify our differences. It is bound to happen shortly after I become spontaneously wealthy. In the meantime, try to be nice without lying too much and you’ll do fine. And keep your eyes on the prize.