Let's talk about being sensitive

When you're at college, heated discussions are absolutely inevitable.

When you're at a private liberal arts one that prides itself in its 'liberal' tag, heated discussions are only essential to intellectual development.

Over a slice of gluten-free millet bread with a liberal dollop of natural peanut-butter (my newly-found comfort food in this tree-hugging environment) and vegan chocolate cake (my friend's poison, NOT mine) at the college cafeteria one day, my friend and I had a discussion over the word 'retard'.

How this discussion began, neither of us recall but that's the nature of the universe - the bigger, the more intensified an incident, the fewer the details that are remembered, no matter how important they may be. But so it goes.

"I can not understand how there are so many people who have no issues with using retard as an insult to someone else," said my friend.

The other two girls at the table nodded in absolute agreement.

"It's absolutely disgusting to see such people. How can they even be OK with saying 'Oh don't be such a retard' to someone who's perfectly normal?"

I examined my peanut butter and relished the crunchy oiliness of the nuts while mulling over the various possibilities I had with regards to the discussion.

I'm not one for keeping quiet in discussions, especially if I have opinions about them that are pretty solidified. This time though, I felt like I wanted to try this whole 'being quiet' thing.

It didn't work. My friend looked directly at me, with an expression of decreasing patience. She was looking at me for a response almost as if my silence was unnatural.

In school in India, I used to feel thrilled at finding new lingo that would sort of set me apart from people. In Grade 8, I moved to a new school. In this new school of mine, I was one of the first to use the word, 'dude'. Everyone became a dude, even a girl. I used dude so much that it became a word that people associated to me when they imitated me. But then everyone else started using it too, so I felt like I needed to find a new word.
This was a cycle throughout my teenage years. I found a word, I used it too much, and then I dumped it. I found another word, I used it too....

At one point in time, 'retard' was on of those words. I used it all the time, every time. And then my friends started using it too, so obviously I gave it up soon enough.

A lot of the times, I used it out of affection. I'd tell my friends they were being retards when they complimented me, because even though I secretly loved it, I never wanted to appear like I did.
Sometimes I used it when they did stupid things. I even often used it for myself.


My physics classes used the word to describe a car slowing down so to me and my friends, retard was a noun to describe this idea of slow or slowing down. It wasn't ever about intentionally targeting and making fun of a small group of people who are actually disabled.

But my friends in this new liberal American environment of mine found the usage of the word preposterous. Period.

And I agree with them because a word that has such connotations should be used absolutely sparingly and for the right purposes.

But as I enter this realm of sensitivity, I'm getting sucked into the language of political correctness.
I don't dismiss this language or its importance but there's a dark side that I'm only too soon discovering that can push the speakers of this language into being just as intolerant as anyone who chooses to refrain from it.

Sitting at the table in the cafe, I understood and shared the views of those folk, even though I was once upon a time, too ignorant to understand the repercussions of certain lingo or certain actions. But that's exactly the point. I was ignorant. My age, my social circle, my cultural context - I had excuses.

And excuses can be constructive. For the other person to view the perpetrator of politically incorrect language solely from his/her lens is to forgo the various dimensions of this world.
I don't say that excuses must be used to allow a person to continue with actions that may be insensitive, but excuses allow for the understanding of why someone may be ignorant.

With all this uber liberal vibe beginning to get so frou-frou in the US, all I can say is that this entire language of political correctness is a two-way street. Don't condemn/judge a person for his or her ignorance to follow the same protocol that has been ingrained in you because of the society that you come from. In the same vein, don't expect other people to look only at your intentions and not at the actions or words that inevitably represent you when you make a comment or judgement.

Then again, I'm a relativist. It puts people off but....ish kabbible.

Here we go....

I've submitted. Again.

This time though, I vow to be more focused instead of just ramble about topics of little consequence to anyone but myself. This time it's not going to be a substitute for writing a journal.

This time, I intend it to be something much greater, something so big and micro at the same time that it gives me enough freedom yet a lot of focus.

And the whole concept of this thing called 'blogging' represents the heart of this blog.

So, here we go...