'Georgia Congressman Calls Obamas 'Uppity'"

AP Story - 9/5/08

Is it a case of professed ignorance to conceal racism, or have the PC Police finally run up against their worst imaginable nightmare - success?

Representative Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) described the Obamas as a couple who ". . . thinks that they're uppity." Westmoreland was asked if that was really the word he meant to use, and confirmed that, yes, it was exactly what he meant.

Is Westmoreland to be believed when he claims to be unaware that "uppity" was commonly used as a derogatory term to describe blacks seeking equal treatment? Being a white man born in 1950 and raised in the south, Democrats are not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. The head of the Georgia Democrat Party demanded Westmoreland apologize, saying the congressman's comments were “more of the same, tired old politics that are dividing this country.”

What if Westmoreland was sincere though? What if, as he claims, he was thinking of the dictionary definition that identifies uppity as "someone who is haughty, snobbish or has inflated self-esteem"? What if the negative connotation of that particular word, from a racial rather than social perspective, truly never crossed his mind or had ever even passingly resided there?

Accepting for the sake of argument the premise that Rep. Westmoreland was innocent of harboring racially insensitive intent in his comments, the Political Correctness movement is faced with a terrible dilemma. If the intent of PC is to stamp out divisiveness and inequality, to build a world in which we can simply all just get along, aren't they obligated to applaud a mind that has moved beyond misapplied connotations of words to instead use words with their explicit denotations instead?

Not really. Removing all racist, sexist, and every other divisionist interpretation words might carry would destroy the power base of the PC Police. Such an outcome would be as unthinkable as removing every facet of black existence in America from the realm of a white oppressive agenda would be to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. A community devoid of victims is not in need of self proclaimed messiahs.

This is just the most recent in a long string of attacks against legitimate use of the English language. In 1999, David Howard, an aid in the administration of Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, was in a meeting with two city employee's. The city treasury was in a particularly dire condition at that time, and Howard expressed that he would need to be "niggardly" with his agency's budget. One of those in attendance at the meeting lacked a functional understanding of the English language, and as a result Howard was soon compelled to resign his position simply because the word niggardly is homophonously similar to nigger. Not that the two words have anything in common. Niggardly means miserly, and has no etymological connection to nigger at all. The two words sound alike though, and that is deemed more than sufficient for a public lynching.

Are the Obamas uppity? Perhaps. Does that make the one calling them that racist? Not necessarily. Racism is in the mind of the offender, not in the mind of the beholder who is desperate to find offense hiding beneath every rock and behind every tree. In the absence of proof otherwise, Westmoreland deserves to be taken at face value and on the strength of his assertions.

(Note: Some may be offended by the word "nigger" being used above. I most emphatically do not apologize for the appropriate and germane use of that word in a discussion regarding racial insensitivity and the harm specific words might have the capacity to inflict. No mature, intellectually honest author in any milieu would use the word "wee-wee place" to describe the penis in an article involving male genitalia. The same should be true for nigger or any other emotionally traumatic word. Applying a childish synonym or pretending to avoid the offensive word while using it endlessly, such as "the N-word", is intellectually dishonest and actually retards the stated goal of bringing respect and maturity to society as a whole. Those who are not satisfied with this explanation are welcome to go elsewhere, or take up their objections with someone who cares. Lokhi)