18.4.08

"It is hardly suprising that the growth of Political Correctness in the late 20th and early 21st century eventually led to extremes, largely due to the rigid adherence to the letter of the concept, often resulting in absurd situations such as the case of the Down's Syndrome boy who was accused of racism for pushing an Asian girl.

Things eventually came to a head in the year 2011, when, during a period of seven months, a series of suits and counter-suits were filed in law courts seeking to ban and criminalise the usage of certain words and phrases on the grounds of racism. Besides white Christmas, dark night, blackboard, whiteboard, and brownie, the suits also objected to songs such as "Brown girl in the ring", and societies such as SPIC MACAY.

These groups, often consisting of not more than a few individuals, incredibly managed to get their cases given a public hearing. It was at this point that the general public realised the depths to which the situation had sunk, leading to the formation of the so-called "commonsense protecting" group SPITS (Society for Preventing Idiotic Tampering of Society)."

- Dr. James Willington-Scotts* (The Battle For Language)


* Read an excerpt of Dr. Willington-Scotts' seminal work on the history of offensive language here.

1 comment:

km said...

Ironical, considering that people with Down's were (formerly) said to have "mongoloid idiocy".

//I wish i was a doctor in the 18th or 19th century. What candor!