Not to mention that Apu has a Squishee machine. ;-)

And when will the freakin' PC debate end! It's just a way for them right-wingers to distract people from the real debate of how we talk about people, how we view people, blahblah...argh.

Right Wingers? Political Correctness is the unfortunate side effect of a liberal education.

... and the debate won't end until people stop taking up other people's battle flags.

Do you think that Vejay is really hurt by what some second-rate sports journalist writes? I doubt it. I think the Indo/Pak grocery store owner would be pissed off by the fact that you don't know if he is Pakistani or Indian, and are lumping them into the same category!

Have you ever thought that owning a 7-Eleven is not an insult to them? Those people are amazingly successful. Apu drives a sportscar for Christ's sake.

Vijay is from Fiji.

The point of this post was not political correctness. In fact, I went out of my way to say that I don't like political correctness. However, to call it an effect of a liberal education is a fallacy. You'll find people of all political stripes using it with abandon, and both leftists and rightists are happy to slam it whenever it's politically advantageous. The key word in the term is political, not correctness.

Vijay is indeed from Fiji, but he is of Indian decent, just as my Indian classmates in gradeschool were Americans of Indian decent. The clerk at the convenience store probably wouldn't be offended if I didn't know if he was Paki or Indian any more than I'd be offended that he didn't know whether I was of Italian or German or whatever ancestry -- because we don't know each other.

My point was: Stereotypes are unproductive, often inaccurate and sometimes hurtful. It doesn't have to be race; calling all liberals "bleeding hearts" or all Republicans "money-grubbing assholes" is just as much a stereotype as saying all Mexicans sleep 20 to a room -- no matter who is being stereotyped it's not going to help. Roeper probably didn't even recognize that he was dropping a stereotype in his column, but I spotted it and called him on it. You're right, Vijay probably won't care that he was compared to some guy refilling a Slurpee (or Squishee) machine, but you never know.

Yes, convenience store owners make a decent living. So do drug dealers and landscapers, but I doubt blacks and hispanics appreciate it when someone assumes that's their job.

wait, aren't all republicans....
oh stop. just lightening things up in here.

thoughtful post, andrew.

When you start a post out with "I'm not a fan of PC, but..." you open the whole can of icky worms. You're right, both sides hack & wheeze over PC words, but it's still a debate that is stuck on people being too sensitive to words than of people debating how the words really reflect the world and the intent. Just as you took slight offense to Rich comparing Vijay to Apu, someone else might take the same offense to being called a male nurse.

Oh, and there's no way we would ever fit 20 to a room, unless it's a big room, of course.

Well said, Andrew. It inspired a thought that I fleshed out a little further on my blog, but here's the long and short of it:

Subconsciously, I'm prejudiced. I recognize that. There are situations where I feel my adrenal reaction kick in, and I consciously recognize it's because of racial (or, frankly, political) stereotypes. I pretty much hate that about myself. I try to diffuse it by consciously ignoring that biological reaction and allowing myself to deal with people as individuals and not as members of races or political groups because my greatest fear isn't offending that person, but rather missing the opportunity to get to know them.

Roni, stereotypes do not equal political correctness or vice-versa. When I ignore your statements about P.C., you're pretty much backing me up: we need to watch what we say, because it may be that what we're saying is offensive and subtly prejudicial.

"Male nurse" could be offensive because it assumes the stereotype of all nurses being female is true. Political correctness doesn't enter into it -- other than it's politically correct to avoid stereotypes and offensive terms.

Once upon a time -- the turn of the century or so -- the 20-to-a-room stereotype applied to Italians; stereotypes can be a moving target, and all the political correctness in the world can't stamp out what's hiding beneath the surface. It's window dressing, and it gets in the way of sovling the real problems of descrimination.

Stereotypes exist simply because its easier to make vast generalizations about groups of people than it is to take every person as an individual. And, I think it is everyone's responsibility to combat the stereotypes they perpetuate, and the stereotypes perpetuated by others. If we're combatting a stereotype for another group of people we need to be careful that we aren't assuming what they'll be offended by. I'm sure there is some Japanese kid in an engineering class who doesn't think the "all Asians are good at math and science" is a negative stereotype, but a Korean woman who is incredibly funny and bad at math will tell you it is.