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Please Don’t Call Me ‘African-American’
I’m “black” — and it still sounds beautiful to me.
I did something this morning that I never do in text communication. I corrected someone’s spelling.
It wasn’t my best moment, but in my defense, when you’re wrong, you’re wrong. As I pondered whether it was really necessary to point out that there is no “O” in “lethargic,” I thought back to a 2013 Jetstar journey from Melbourne to Bangkok. Corrections was a recurring in-flight-entertainment theme, via the 2012 Barbra Streisand-Seth Rogen film The Guilt Trip and a 2011 episode of The Big Bang Theory.
Both comedy selections featured PC sons correcting mothers of a certain age who were given to using outdated terms to describe people belonging to certain minority groups. I can’t fault Leonard’s objections to Sheldon’s mom’s racism-with-a-smile (delivered as only the great Emmy-winning actress Laurie Metcalf can do it), but I’m not so sure that Barbra Streisand’s endearing Jewish mother Joyce in The Guilt Trip technically misspoke when she said “Oriental” instead of “Asian.”
I never got the memo that, as Rogen’s baffled character Andy pointed out to his mom, it’s no longer okay to use “Oriental.” One day it was perfectly acceptable, and the next everyone was saying “Asian.” I can’t recall anyone ever explaining to me why…
