SaveFerris wrote:
liveandrew wrote:
Social ret*d, here and reporting for duty! I guess a good example of my retardiness would be when, years back, I was talking to a new work colleague. He said he was from Dudley and I replied, "Ah, the Black Country!". I couldn't understand why he looked angry and refused to talk to me anymore. It was only when I went home at the end of the day that I realised that he was black and probably thought I was being racist when really I was being a total Aspie and just showing off my knowledge. Of course, I was so embarrassed that I never apologised or even spoke about it again. I felt like a real dick and it still bothers me 20 years later.
Dude thats f'ing ridiculous , that is not being socialy ret*d ( although I hate that word ) , you did nothing wrong , the problem is with your black work colleague not you. 'The Black Country' has no racist conotations , I believe it refers to the amount of coal there. It's PC gone f*****g mad , it sounds like that guy would of got angry if you asked for a black marker pen , a black bag or a black coffee ( although I think black bag and black coffee are not PC nowadays , although I use these terms ) . Talking about PC gone mad someone in the house of commons got a letter of reprimand for using the term 'lets get down to the nitty gritty' not knowing it's 18th century meaning , how many people here are going to google that coz they don't know the original meaning.
If you were black and had face an unending stream of racial abuse your whole life (this is an assumption on my part, based on his age he would have had to deal with a lot of it in the UK in the 70s) and then someone said "Ah, you come from the black country" with a big smile on their face, I wouldn't be too shocked that they'd take it the wrong way. I know that if I'd thought of its other connotation I wouldn't have used it.
I agree that Political Correctness can be taken to stupid levels (I can't call my coffee black anymore? and then there was the "manhole" issue), but on the whole, I think it's been a force for good. I remember being a kid and thinking it was alright to call my friend Sambo. Really, that's what we all called him and even worse, he didn't seem to mind. This is what normalisation of racism is, when even the victims think that it's okay. Sure, as children, we had no real understanding of the term but this sort of language was in everyday use back then. The same for people who were gay. I didn't know anyone who was gay until I was in my late teens in the mid-80s, the reason being that before that point the vast majority were too scared to come out. Sure, we could get into the whole causation/correlation argument but I'm sure that the start of the PC "movement" in the early 80s allowed people who would have been persecuted to feel safer. Really PC is just another way of saying "be decent to each other".
Seriously though, I can't call my coffee black? What do I call it then?
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Diagnosed: Asperger's Syndrome (ICD-10)
Self-Diagnosed: Aphantasia
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 152 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 46 of 200
Listener of all things noisy, viewer of all things bloody, writer of all things sh*t.