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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (352)	1/3/1998 1:13:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4711

OT At least I think this is OT. I find your post sinister.

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (352)	1/3/1998 2:24:00 PM
From: Jack Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4711

Zeev: With a left handed mother, wife, and son, I would be the last person to invoke the origins of the word sinister. Indeed, if my Latin memory serves me, it is identical (in nominative singular) to the word in English. Apparently the current use arose from apprehension that a leftie could shake your right hand in the usual way, yet be hiding a weapon in his dominant left hand. Maybe this is apocryphal, but it gives a reason, which makes some people comfortable. I'll look it up one day, I hope. Jack

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (352)	1/3/1998 2:57:00 PM
From: Jack Clarke	Respond to of 4711

Zeev, I forgot to ask you why you think the word "negro" should be banned? The fact that is politically incorrect does not seem to be a good reason. Lord knows the PC police have given us a number of verbal abominations like "Ms." and "chairperson" or worse "chair." I'm surprised they don't make us say "Gerpersons" for the inhabitants of Germany. A friend of mine is the Chief of Surgery at a major University. His last letter to me contained the title "Chair" after his name. Funny, he used to be a person; now he's a chair. Anyway, back to use of "negro". As far as I am concerned, the way a particular racial, religious, or ethnic group is referred to should be determined by what that group feels most comfortable with. As a child (admittedly in the segregated South), members of that race were called "colored", which to me sounded softer than "negro", which was the official designation, on documents, etc. (Remember what NAACP stands for.) No decent people used the dreaded N-word, which was heard only from racist lower class whites, and of course, half jokingly by the "colored" themselves. Maybe it was peculiar to the South, but Jews were not referred to as "a Jew" either; it was always "Jewish", which again sounded softer and less blunt to our ear. I don't have an explanation, but I am just reporting how it was in those days. Later in the "radical" 60s, encouraged by groups such as the Panthers, black Americans got the press and everyone else to call them "black". The fact that most of them are not at all black, anymore than I am "white" was not important. Fine, if that's what they want to be called, that is their choice. Lately, it is African-American, which I do not particularly like, because we are all something-American. I prefer that those of us fortunate to live in this country consider ourselves Americans (period). Jack