racist euphemism of the day

[Amy West]

On 2/5/13 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Mon, 4 Feb 2013 21:33:52 -0500
> From:    Victor Steinbok<aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: racist euphemism of the day
>
> or so it appears: "ethnically-challenged families"
>
> http://goo.gl/56fje
>> >Kids aren't going to charter schools if they're "A" students. They go
>> >to charter schools because they're failing students and, by and large,
>> >the charter schools have a higher percentage of poor families,
>> >ethnically challenged families…
> Of course, it can't be racist because this tea-party/AFP activist wants
> to help the poor ethnically-challenged families.
>
> VS-)
Oh, back in Sept? during voting for a state primary we had a ruckus here
in Worcester and the newspaper recorded a rather ridiculous use of the
term "disenfranchised" by a tea partier. Various people showed up at the
polling station near a public housing complex and used various coercive
tactics such as asking voters for ID, photographing voters, objecting to
ESL voters have someone help them fill out the ballot, etc. Supposedly
one of the tea partiers made a statement about all these
"disenfrachised" people voting, meaning minority/non-European American
or welfare by "disenfranchised". This caused some of us to quip "I do
not think that word means what you think it means" when we spotted this use.

I, personally, am in a very ethnically-challenged family: we are of
overwhelmingly Germanic roots with only a smidge of "Celtic" British
Isles. We need a helluvalot more variation.

---Amy West

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