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Re: Princess?
I think Princess is a ridiculous name which would make its bearer's life difficult socially because people do make judgements, whether it's fair or not.
I really don't get the "racist" argument, though. Or were these kids using the term "racist" as a synonim for "bad" as some teens tend to these days?
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Interesting thought.I agree with most of what you said. However, I would like to say that these kids do not use "racist" as a synonym for "bad." Maybe some teens do, but none of which I know. That doesn't even make any sense. Racism is bad, but that's the only way they could be linked as synonyms.
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I used to work as a replacement teacher, which, when you're under 25, petite and there for only a few days is not the easiest of tasks. Some classes were quite mixed ethnically, with the majority of students being the children of immigrants. Their typical complaint to any reproach or punishment was: "But Miss, you can't do that! You're a racist!" It seems to happen to friends who sub as well. So I suppose these kids know that accusing someone of racism is supposed to be a good excuse (even though, if you want to give detention to a teen for lighting a lighter in class, it's unlikely that it's because of 'racism') and then it evolved into a synonim for "mean or bad". I thought maybe it was a habit that American kids might have too.Incidentally, I still don't get why on earth Princess could be in any way considered a racist name, is it because it's more common amongst African Americans?
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I get your point. I'm pretty sure none of the kids in my class have ever called a "sub" racist though. But of course, I could be wrong because I'm in the advanced classes and usually the "rif-raf" kids are in the normal (or slow) classes. I'm part of the "well-behaved" group of kids. Well-behaved meaning we don't steal people's cell phones. True story for one of my friends: his phone was in his bookbag and this other kid stole it and later when he realized he was going to get caught, he put it in the trashcan. Long story short, somehow the stealer got sent to jail from like November to Christmas. That's what you get, I say.Anyway, I agree. That girl meant to say Princess is majorly related to blacks. (I'm sorry, but I don't believe in the "politically correct" term. If it's African-American now, then I expect to be called Caucasian. It's only fair to me.)
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Well, I've also had classes like yours, where the kids were hard-working and generally absolutely adorable.
Personally I don't find the term black un-PC, I study ethnicity and tend to use the terms black and African-American somewhat interchageably for practical reasons, at the moment I don't have the time and energy to discuss the pros and cons of each of the terms, so I just won't go there.
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...I don't really care too much, but I think it's sort of wrong to name one group of people one thing and then not name another something too. It's like you have two kittens: a black one and a white one. You name the black one Midnight and the white one Whitie. Whatever happened to Blackie and Whitie?Well, that's it. I'm done with that bad example.
Thanks for the talk though. =)
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