I work in a college library, and in the course of cataloging (and
re-cataloging) older materials, I've seen this kind of name adjustment, and
it never addresses the underlying issue of what people think of the term in
question. The best example of this that I've seen is "handicapped". I've
cataloged materials put out by organizations for the "Feeble Minded". But
feeble minded became a negative description, so we switched to "retarded".
And before long, retarded was just as negative as feeble minded, so then we
went to "handicapped". And then "challenged" or "differently abled". In
the end, the word changes didn't accomplish anything outside of showing how
politically correct a person was because the people who looked down on the
feeble minded were going to look down on those people no matter what they
were called. We changed words without changing attitudes, and consequently,
we really didn't change anything of significance at all.
Brad
----- Original Message -----
From: "Volokh, Eugene" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Law & Religion issues for Law Academics" <religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 4:09 PM
Subject: RE: The Holiday That Dare Not Speak Its Name
What's more, I'm personally quite tired of being told how many words
and phrases I'm not supposed to use: handicapped, policeman, rule of
thumb, black, American Indian, and hundreds more.
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