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BGonline.org Forums
A Few Responses on Offensive Language, Stick and Stones, and Political Correctness
Posted By: Nack Ballard In Response To: A Few Responses on Offensive Language, Stick and Stones, and Political Correctness (joe freedman)
Date: Monday, 22 November 2010, at 7:14 a.m.
I would respectfully disagree with Nack.
I appreciate the respect, but I'm not sure with what you are disagreeing. In this post, I was basically reporting what happened (in an expanded answer to Tim's question). I am not taking sides.
That said, while I find racial insults (or any insults) distasteful, if I am to play Scrabble competitively, I'm not going to deprive myself of playing words that are "acceptable" (Scrabble terminology for legal), thereby giving my opponents a handicap. (Not that you suggested I should.)
The F&W-74 (Funk and Wagnall's Standard College Dictionary, 1974 edition) was the arbitrating dictionary for Scrabble prior to the printing of OSPD-1.
In F&W-74, Negro is a main entry, but it ends with, "Also negro" (lower case). Hence the word was acceptable, and hence it was included in OSPD-1 (a composite of five dictionaries). As I now recall, however (contrary to the misimplication on the previously mentioned site), NEGRO was excluded from OSPD-2. This was well before Judith Grad incident, but by 1990 the Civil Rights movement was already 20+ years past, and it was deemed high time to remove the word.
However, not all sources agree that "negro" (lower case) should be obsolete. For example, this site states:
Q: Should Negro be capitalized?
A: It is not a proper noun. It is a reference to skin color. Caucasian is capitalized because it refers to the Caucasus Mountains in Easter Russia.
Again, I'm not taking sides. :)
In case you're interested, some information on the derivation and etymology of the word Negro/negro and Black/black, etc. can be found here.
Cheers,
Nack
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