PC/PI, people of color, 'white'.

[Mark Odegard]

John Baker:

>I first encountered "people of color" at Harvard Law School, c. 1982 or
>1983, where it was espoused by leaders of what we would now call the PC
>movement. (This was also when and where I first encountered the term
>"politically correct," at which point the term had a somewhat different
>meaning: "It's politically correct to follow the usage of the managing
>editor.")

My first experience with the term 'politically correct' was with its
antonym, 'politically incorrect'. This was 82 or 83 too, but in New York
City. I was about the only male there, sitting with a large group of
totally-out lesbians who were just verbally jamming, making jokes, and
'politically incorrect' was a joke then, already. It was termed 'pea-see' or
'pea-eye'. I had to ask what pea-eye meant.

This leads to my speculation that the satiric sense of politically
correct/incorrect originated with putative liberals, satirizing the leftover
old-left knee-jerk liberals of the 60s, as well as the sillier
'inclusionism' of the 70s, where you could get called a bigoted 'odorist'
for not appreciating unwashed armpits, or be denounced as a 'sizeist' for
not being huggy-kissy accepting of morbid obesity.

This was the same time I heard "that's so white" "he's so white", etc, as an
intra-ethnic putdown. It meant 'un-hip', 'un-cool', "something only us more
socially klutzy WASPs would do".

'People of color', 'women of color' has always been at the edge, I think, a
little too presumptively inclusive for even those who do have dark skin.


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