At least they’re honest. They don’t care if they offend anyone. Political correctness has no place in their minds – beyond ridicule. They’re not African-American or black, they’re niggers. They’re not Caucasian or white, they’re crackers. Racists will talk about slant-eyes, towel-heads, white trash, blackanese, honkies, red necks, wops, guineas, polacks, red men, 8 balls, Africoons, porch monkeys, gator bait, spics, beefshacks, bird turds, blanketass, branch managers, brews, frogs, bubbas, camel jockeys, etc.
And I barely touched on terms from countries other than the US – and missed a lot of terms used in the US.
I would be inclined to think, based on what is shown in the main-stream media, that most of America is racist. Hopefully that just comes from the fact that most ‘news-worthy’ discussions and events are all bad.
I despise politically-correct terminology because it is a softening and beguiling of language. I despise using hyphenated American terms when discussing people. If you’re a citizen of the United States, you’re an American. You may be black, white, yellow, red, brown, chartreuse, or purple, but you’re an American. You may have Italian, Polish, Chinese, Kenyan, Egyptian, Scots, Brazilian, or Cherokee ancestors, but you’re an American. In America, you might even have all of the above.
The United States claims to be a ‘melting pot’ of other cultures, races, beliefs, and ideals that have stewed about and congealed into the culture we have today. But in today’s politically- and media-driven environment, we’re actually encouraged to maintain racist, elitist views of anyone who isn’t exactly like us. By using terms like ‘African-American’ or ‘Italian-American’, we are encouraged to keep thinking about someone’s ancestry (and maybe something bad that happened in their ancestry’s past) instead of their current status.
I do not consider myself racist. I have friends who are black, white, hispanic, italian, and asian. But I do not refer to my black friends as African-American because they’re not. They didn’t immigrate. Their parents didn’t immigrate. Their families have been in this country for a long time, and no longer have the right to call themselves ‘African’. I do not have a problem with first-generation citizens (ie naturalized, or the children of law-abiding, greencard-carrying immigrants) hyphenating their ethnicity – they can still legitimately claim that other culture. But by the time they’re having kids, those American citizens have no business continuing to refer to their family’s former national/ethnic ties when referring to themselves as [identity]-Americans.
Go ahead and celebrate your family’s heritage – I’m all for it. But continuing to call yourself a hyphenated American will only encourage people to not accept you as an American.
What we need in America is not ‘racial understanding’. We are a nation of immigrants – with very few exceptions, we all came here from other countries. Some of us have families who can trace their American-ness to the Mayflower, while others were naturalized last week. Some of America was brought here under force and against their will, but when given the option to leave, chose to stay. We don’t need understanding, we need to stop calling ourselves anything other than what we are.
We are Americans, plain and simple.