Poor Harry, he must have been too busy representing his constituents in Congress to stay current on the latest politically correct intellectual terminology for identifiable speech patterns among African Americans. Harry Reid should have couched his political observation about Barack Obama by referencing Ebonics. Given the decades long consistent track record of the National Republican Party and Conservative commentators demanding that public debate must ALWAYS employ current politically correct language, Reid should have known better than to say "Negroid". I mean, politically correct language has long been a central Conservative cause, right?
It is simply Reid's bad luck that he was quoted a few months too soon to at least be able to cite U.S. Census forms as supportive documentation for use of the term "Negroid". Even though the Right wing has been loudly leading the attack on the Census Bureau for inclusion of the term "Negro" for weeks now (though I haven't actually fact checked that assertion, it's the only logical assumption to make, right?) no one can expect Reid, as a Boomer Democrat, to be as current in his mastery of politically correct language as are cutting edge conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
Oh oh. Wait a minute, I may have to make a correction. On closer reading of my source material, I am not at all certain that Ebonics is the latest politically correct terminology after all. It's a little unclear:
"The term Ebonics (a blend of ebony and phonics) gained recognition in 1996 as a result of the Oakland School Board’s use of the term in its proposal to use African American English in teaching Standard English in the Oakland Schools. The term was coined by Robert Williams in 1973, but it wasn’t until the Ebonics controversy that Ebonics became widely used. Most linguists prefer the term African American English as it aligns the variety with regional, national, and sociocultural varieties of English such as British English, Southern English, Cajun English, and so forth."
My source here is a discussion by the Center for Applied Linguistics of "Dialects", contained under the sub-heading; "African American English".
http://www.cal.org/topics/dialects/aae.htmlHere is a little more from them:
"African American EnglishAfrican American English (AAE) is a dialect of American English used by many African Americans in certain settings and circumstances. Like other dialects of English, AAE is a regular, systematic language variety that contrasts with other dialects in terms of its grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary.
Terms for African American English
The terms used by scholars to refer to the unique language variety of many African Americans reflects the changing terms used to refer to African Americans themselves across the decades. Early studies of AAE in the 1960s used the terms Negro speech, Negro English, or Negro American dialect. Starting around 1970 and continuing throughout the decade, the preferred term was Black English or Black English Vernacular (BEV). In the mid-1980s African-American became the preferred term for black Americans, and by 1991 linguists were using the term African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Today African American English (AAE) is the generally accepted term, although AAVE is still used too."
Who could possibly have thunk it? It seems there is a vast body of scholarly work discussing how Black Americans often speak in ways that set them apart from other identifiable groups of Americans. CAL has actually amassed a bibliography of more than 650 print references related to African American English (or whatever you want to call it). You can check it out at their web site.
This semantic terminology thingee obviously is a perfect subject for endless media coverage, public debate, and even political acrimonious exchanges. It is so much more polite a topic for social discourse than examining whether some Whites are more comfortable accepting Blacks in leadership positions who come closest to looking and sounding like most Whites. Thank heavens for civility, political correctness, and conservative integrity.
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