I Am Done With Political Correctness (That Shit Is Gay)

Yeah, I said that!

Do you remember when white people couldn't figure out whether to refer to us as black people or African Americans or coloreds (we never liked that one?...or negroes?...my bad), or black Americans, only to have some really defiant blacks who would say, "can you just call me an American?", even though you were trying to simply draw a distinction between the brown skinned, bigger nosed Americans....no, not Mexican Americans, the one's with the fuller lips? What do we want to be called today?  The more I think about those days, I hope that all of the sensitive white folks who tried so hard to deliver the correct description were quietly saying to themselves, "these nigga's are crazy".

This won't be another article defending the N word.  I personally hate the notion of defending any word.  Words are my life. To even consider excluding even one of them from allowed use is like historical genocide to me.  Every word that exists has a reason for being.  Words can be offensive, but offense is not always in the heart of the deliverer nor in the control of them as well, and even the best of intentions WILL offend someone on earth.

Every word has a context in which it is used, and I simply trust that the user of words has selected accordingly. Like when you say shit, you didn't mean shucks.  Enough said.

Uh huh, I said that too.

Political Correctness disagree's with me wholeheartedly.  PC says that I have got to be ultra sensitive to the entire world of people that I might offend and choose my words according to their potential for offense. Some might argue that the line between intent an offense is as indistinguishable as the concept of Good and Evil.  The power of that reasoning is what convinces me that Political Correctness is the most evil thing around.  What could be more demonic than something that further widens the gap of knowledge that we have about one another.  Thanks to Political Correctness, we are afraid to even ask the question.  I could never grow an afro, so sometimes even I want to touch one. Oh yeah. I'm black and I know the proper way to touch a 'fro.  'Fro is short for Afro. We blacks like to create slang for lots of shizzniyee (see; shit).  If whites could be taught the proper way to touch a 'fro, don't you think race relations could improve?

 PC will have none of that.  It wishes I would delete that entire last paragraph. I will not.

In fact, I'm doubling down. I have a great example of how this impacted me recently.  I received an interesting Facebook video of 6 guys who stand in a line and putt 6 different balls into the same hole. Undoubtedly these guys taped forever and missed a lot.  By the time they actually made one, they jumped around in such amazement that I started to type these words:

 "cool...except for jumping around like little girls".

You know how FB is.  90% of the things you type get deleted and reworded, or not sent at all.  I am the father of 5 girls, no boys, so I can only imagine what the response would have been if I would have sent that chauvinistic post.  By the time I had hit send, I also hit backspace until the post simply read:

"Cool"

  Fortunately, one of my less Politically Correct brothers posted what I was actually thinking when I first saw them running so wildly.

"Gay"

I know.  PC long since decided that we can't use that word anymore just like coloreds or negroes. Gay guys, especially on television, might choose to behave in an effeminate manner that they proudly describe as gay, but when the golf guys act gay after an impossible trick, it becomes offensive. I did not phrase that as a question because I am a black man. I won't dare declare hypocrisy because my race is indirectly responsible for this madness. PC might have actually been created as a cowardly response to the race issue in America, and all other disenfranchised groups followed the model  that blacks have proudly embraced around race.  The model is, just don't talk about it so that you don't offend the wrong person.  By not offending, we have confused ourselves into believing that we are more progressive as a society when in fact we are only more confused about one another.

Why are blacks the only articulate ones?

My name is Gary Dwight Brewer, and I grew up in a family that did not let my middle name, and a natural affinity towards school, go un-attacked. All families can run the dozens, as they call it. Black families, mine especially, are beyond skilled in the area.  To be a black man that sounded white, and named Dwight, was challenging for sure.  I had to choose early to either conform to the critics, or embrace who I was with tenacity.  In some ways I did both simply because I could. Over time, talking black had not become the intensely negative stigma that it was when I was growing up.  In some weird turn of events, talking black became cool enough to be mainstream.  Even if you are not black, you certainly understand the words that exude from black culture.  You might even check people when they dis you.

Did it ever offend me that whites only used the word, articulate, when referring to blacks who speak well?  It used to, but now articulate blacks are the poster children for the word articulate.  It is simply never used much in referring to white people because articulation is an assumed skill among them.  In turn, being white comes along with this notion of automatically being smart.  Is it true?  Smart is relative, but whites don't strike me as the most widely uneducated people in America.  Is that a lot of words to say yes?.....YES!

White people are pretty smart. They can't dance a lick, but every white person who can dance is about as upset right now as every white person who ain't particularly smart (do they read blogs?). The real burden of stereotypes is squarely on the back of that small, but significant group that stereotypes don't apply to.  They are the pioneers of social change, but they are also the most prevalent voice in the anti-stereotype crusade. Pioneers have their own stereotypes.  Some are called Uncle Tom while others might get the more direct, nigger lover, label. Both carry a social burden that is tiresome, but necessary.

I am writing today to ease your burden. Stereotypes are okay once again and Political Correctness must die instead for us to truly merge as a nation.  A scared white boy who is trying to psyche himself into getting out on the dance floor for the first time, so he doesn't die a lonely old man who no girls will date, needs to be confident enough to approach whatever black people in the room can help him.  Yes, he might find the 30% who also can not dance, but he needs to know that non-dancing blacks exist just like he needs to find a wife. PC has forced some white men to ask other whites for dancing advice in fear of offending the wrong black person.  As a result, we have whites doing dances like the water sprinkler and really bad renditions of the running man (which was a bad dance to begin with). That doesn't make blacks responsible for white divorces, but there's blood on our hands.

Why are we so afraid of stereotypes.  I don't get upset by being the articulate black man. It beats the hell out of the stereotype they had in mind as they walked up to me. Nerds in school hated being called nerds until one day their nerdism earned them a really good job.  Now you hear older nerds calling themselves nerds all the time.  Do their poor, envious peers still call them nerds?  Well of course they do, but the pain and the stigma of a stereotype is often in the hands of those who bear the label.  Everyone feels typecast when someone assumes things about you, especially based upon race. But would you prefer they shut up and leave with their assumptions intact, or open their mouth and gain an opportunity to have another perspective? Being the exception to the rule doesn't change the rule, so get over being the exception.

That being said, I do feel badly for black people who can't dance and white people who aren't terribly smart, but I believe this is not a problem that honest dialogue can't fix. That golf trick video was cool....and then it became gay really quickly. While my use of the word 'gay' could be proliferating homophobia, as it clearly did when we were homophobic kids, not asking homosexuals what still offends them could be proliferating homophobia in the form of homo ignoramus.  Is the word gay now one of those things like blacks can say nigga but no one else can?  Gays can say gay, but its offensive for anyone not gay to say gay even if you meant gay in a different way?  That's gay for sure, and the last I checked, some real gays are not as offended by the word as non-gays think they are, just as every black isn't actually offended by all of the things people think we should be offended by. We do like chicken, and my oldest daughter wonders if the fact that we don't have chicken delivery is actually a black conspiracy.  Sometimes I wonder if the modern social divide is being driven by people assuming offense for others and not real people offended themselves.  In fact, even this 'ban the word gay" crusade seems to be nothing more than a way for heteros to pretend that they are more sensitive to the plight of gays than they truly are, so they pretend to be offended at the word just in case someone gay is watching.

The whole institution is built under the umbrella of PC and I am striving to tear that facade down. I do so with a sincere prayer request from everyone who wastes a moment reading anything that I write.  Political Correctness lives despite very few who support it, and it will not be attacked without retribution. I stand fearlessly in the face of Political Correctness and say, enough is enough.  America used to be called a melting pot, but cold group relations of all kinds, aided by political correctness have frozen this stew into a stagnant jelly.  A heated debate beats silent refrain any day of the week. If we can't talk, we can't grow.

Time to bring the heat.