Quote:
Originally Posted by RickC Sniper
There IS discrimination going on here, but I'm not referring to the disabled.
My friend's son a few years back tried to get into medical school....a very, very difficult thing these days. During the process, he learned he needed to score 10% higher on the exams or his slot would be given to a minority individual. Quotas do exist.
The family, in desperation, did a family history trace in an attempt to find just a small percentage of American Indian in their bloodline. If it had existed, the school would have accepted him. He was white and male, and discriminated against.
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@ Skybird. I am sorry your grandfather lost a leg in the war, bit I am afraid I must be the political correctness police and call you out on these:
The terms are "able bodied" and "disabled" You are bright enough to know that a disable individual can be a VERY healthy person.
Crippled athletes again......the term is disabled.
and...it is not "full-membered", or "normal" people. They are "able bodied" people. AB is the commonly used abbreviation.
<--------removes PC police hat.
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Two things.
First, my grandfather called himself a cripple (one leg, one lung, one eye), and referred to himself as "Huckepeter". Let a more capable translator than me explain what that term means, but I can tell you despite his fate he was a man of great humour and good heart.
Second, as former psychologist and when working for limited time in a psychiatry, I learned one thing: disabled people, mentally or physically, often do not want at all a special way of being dealt with: with special care, special foresight in wording, special respect - to them right this often appears as not dealing normally with them, but to sort them out by treating them "special". My grandfather also did not want that, he said "I'm a cripple, so why shouldn'T I called like that?" This political "sensitivity" about different words for the obvious thing is like psychology'S attempt to heal the hysteric by stopping to use the term"hysteria " in diagnostics (today it is called "histrionic", since that is less discrminative, they argue - but it means the same thing.)
I mean you can use most terms in a "normal" and in a "derogatory" way, it depends on the rest of your behaviour, your voice, the situation.
To me, somebody with two lost legs, is disabled, or a cripple, and I use both terms and do not think twice about it. And the PC crowd certainly can kiss me where the sun never shines.
BTW, what is currently the politically correct term to refer to Americans of African skin-colour, to put it this way (no offence meant)? Is it negro? Black? Coloured? Afro-American? It seems terms change with fashions, and get phased in and out. The only thing I am certain of is to not call somebody "******", for historic reasons the connotation with that one is obvious. But the other terms I mentioned - I see no problem with them at all. But some do. Well - who am I to need to understand everything...?
My master, mentor and trainer often referred to me as "der Freak", and often called me a "Raufbold" (ruffian). Was that an offence - or a compliment? He continued to train me. I call a cripple a cripple - and continue to deal with him and talk to him like to any other. So what? I once called a German gay not "Schwuler" (=gay), but homosexual. He took offence from that, and insisted to be called "schwul" (gay). Oh dear, heaven save me please!
I think the intellectually handicapped people that claim moral superiority in political issues these days are a much bigger problem than this issue of which terms and labels are acceptable, and which not. And if "cripple" is understood to be derogatory - then what to t hink of people who politically correctly call them "handicapped" or "disabled" or whatever - and still mean the other term, and deal with them accordingly, sorting them out - and by that preventing the normality that they insist should be installed?
Words. Ha!