COLUMN: "Playing Poker on a Tightrope"

From Paul LaMonica's "A Room With A View," Fall '92 My roommate chooses to play blackjack since he is dealing first. After dealing, he announces," It's time to take this Jew boy's and this guinea's money." My friend and I laugh and reply," Don't worry because the chink is going to get cleaned out tonight." The three of us play cards on many occasions and not onjce do we worry about what Penn's PC Thought Police might do if they overheard us joking about each other's ethnic background. To us the idea of having to walk a tightrope when speaking about other groups is absurd. I undersrtand that many words used to describe certain groups can be very offensive, especially when the person who is using the words intends to harm the group with them. However, telling people what to say and how to say it is not an answer to racism, discrimination and bigotry. As a newspaper editor in high school, I was confronted by people who objected to the usage of certain words and terms. One article that was printed spoke of a group of students known as the "guidos." The Board of Education, composed of four Italian-Americans, wrote a letter to me and the other editors of the newspaper. In this letter, the Board expressed its collective opinion that we should be damned to Hell for offending the members of the Italian community. These people failed to notice two key things. First of all, we were not offending anyone, let alone Italians. The article merely referred to a high school clique, not an ethnic group. Second of all, four out of the five editors of the newspaper were Italian-American, myself included. Would we print something that we found to be personally offensive without voicing our own opinions as a response? I think not. Examples of narrowmindedness such as this undermine the PC movement and turn people like myself away from it. I'm not sure if these people truly believe that they can change the way people think by "correcting" what others say or if they just want to control others by putting their words in our mouths. I, for one, don't like other people telling me what the new word of the day for a certain group is. Furthermore, I don't want to be chastised for mistakenly using yesterday's word to describe that group. My mother, a child of the 1950's, still uses the word "colored". In a multicultural community such as this, she would be crucified for uttering such an anachronism. However, my mother has many friends of all different races and creeds. She does not hold any bigoted or racist views, so what's the big deal? In this day and age, it seems to me that too much importance is placed on what people say about other groups instead of how they act towards other groups. Why do PC advocates waste their time attempting to conjure up some ideal lexicon of non-offensive terms to describe people? Forcing people to be politically correct won't prevent further racial and ethnic violence. To do that, you'd have to bring all types of people together and show them that we all belong to one race, the human race. I don't profess to have a sure-fire way to solve this problem but a start would be to stop telling ourselves that there are thousands of different races instead of just one common group. However, it seems that the PCers will be content to just look for cute new ways to categorize people into different groups. Let's stop putting so much emphasis on what people say or how they say it? Wouldn't it be better to strive towards living in a world in which people can harmlessly joke around with each other as my friends and I do in our card games? One more thought.... If a white man goes out and kills a black man merely because of the color of his skin but calls him a PC approved word for blacks before he puuls the trigger, does that make the murder politically correct? Will the victim's family be consoled by the fact that this bigot used the right terminology to describe the man he killed? Of course not! Actions speak louder than words! Paul LaMonica is a sophomore Psychology major from North Babylon, New York. "A Room With A View" will appear alternate Tuesdays.

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