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| Prince Philip: would you correct him if he was your grandad? | Prince Philip: would you correct him if he was your grandad? |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| You'd think it would be tricky having to wake up and face the dawning realisation that every word in your vernacular to describe ethnic minorities is now unutterably wrong. It must happen with alarming regularity, in these politically correct times, although it's not something that seems to hamper the Duke of Edinburgh, who told a Filipino nurse that her country must be "half empty", because so many Filipinos work for the NHS. In all fairness, a passing comment on the proliferation of Filipino nurses is nothing compared to him saying "so you managed not to get eaten then?" to a student in Papua New Guinea in 1998 or, indeed, his 1986 assertion that Chinese "slitty eyes" are catching. Clearly, old Phil peaked with his early material. | You'd think it would be tricky having to wake up and face the dawning realisation that every word in your vernacular to describe ethnic minorities is now unutterably wrong. It must happen with alarming regularity, in these politically correct times, although it's not something that seems to hamper the Duke of Edinburgh, who told a Filipino nurse that her country must be "half empty", because so many Filipinos work for the NHS. In all fairness, a passing comment on the proliferation of Filipino nurses is nothing compared to him saying "so you managed not to get eaten then?" to a student in Papua New Guinea in 1998 or, indeed, his 1986 assertion that Chinese "slitty eyes" are catching. Clearly, old Phil peaked with his early material. |
| In this internet age where manic privilege-checking and political incorrectness collide, it's hard to know how to deal with the bigoted elderly. Those who actively seek out linguistic slip-ups will correct you with such glee that it makes you doubt whether their commitment to "calling out" bigotry matches their commitment to pompous arseholerly. This kind of smugness is always given short shrift by the elderly. By the time many of them have reached their 80s or 90s, they have become so used to being told that it's "mixed race" and not "half-caste" that they simply tune it out anyway. | In this internet age where manic privilege-checking and political incorrectness collide, it's hard to know how to deal with the bigoted elderly. Those who actively seek out linguistic slip-ups will correct you with such glee that it makes you doubt whether their commitment to "calling out" bigotry matches their commitment to pompous arseholerly. This kind of smugness is always given short shrift by the elderly. By the time many of them have reached their 80s or 90s, they have become so used to being told that it's "mixed race" and not "half-caste" that they simply tune it out anyway. |
| A couple of years back, there was a brouhaha following a publisher's (entirely commendable) decision to update the Enid Blyton books, presumably to avoid fostering a new generation of colonialist numpties. But you can't update a person in the same way as you can a film or a work of literature, scrubbing out the "gippos" and the "darkies" nestling there in their lexicon, hooked firmly on to their history like a tic on a cat. Perhaps some kind of annual digest is needed, every January: "We're saying 'woman of colour' now, grandad, and it's LGBTQ – the 'Q' is for 'questioning'." Prince Philip can be first on the mailing list. | A couple of years back, there was a brouhaha following a publisher's (entirely commendable) decision to update the Enid Blyton books, presumably to avoid fostering a new generation of colonialist numpties. But you can't update a person in the same way as you can a film or a work of literature, scrubbing out the "gippos" and the "darkies" nestling there in their lexicon, hooked firmly on to their history like a tic on a cat. Perhaps some kind of annual digest is needed, every January: "We're saying 'woman of colour' now, grandad, and it's LGBTQ – the 'Q' is for 'questioning'." Prince Philip can be first on the mailing list. |
| Part of the problem lies in our beatific tolerance of our own grandparents. They say that your friends' parents will always appear kinder, but your grandparents are always nicer than other people's. Many of us will forcefully correct a parent who uses "Jewish" and "miserly" interchangeably, or a friend referring to the "Paki shop", but if it's granny, we stay silent. It's as though traits unacceptable in others, like a penchant for out-of-date ham, become loveable quirks. I am as guilty as anyone. My beloved late grandfather once used the term "junglywoller" – a relic from his childhood in British India. I let it slide, out of love, or politeness, or both. | Part of the problem lies in our beatific tolerance of our own grandparents. They say that your friends' parents will always appear kinder, but your grandparents are always nicer than other people's. Many of us will forcefully correct a parent who uses "Jewish" and "miserly" interchangeably, or a friend referring to the "Paki shop", but if it's granny, we stay silent. It's as though traits unacceptable in others, like a penchant for out-of-date ham, become loveable quirks. I am as guilty as anyone. My beloved late grandfather once used the term "junglywoller" – a relic from his childhood in British India. I let it slide, out of love, or politeness, or both. |
| There's also a kind of morbid entertainment in watching someone close to you say exactly what they think – "you'll never guess what nan's said now!" – and yet the bigotry of other people's grandparents is almost always distasteful, to the point where they become caricatures of armchaired reactionaries, a coffle of Alf Garnetts. "I'm glad they're on their way out" you'll think but not say, after watching a parade of grey-haired Tories trying to intellectually justify their dislike of gay people. I thought the same when my woodwork teacher regularly called us "ugly little Arabs". I sincerely wished him dead, though have since downgraded this to retirement (my little brother is at the same school). | There's also a kind of morbid entertainment in watching someone close to you say exactly what they think – "you'll never guess what nan's said now!" – and yet the bigotry of other people's grandparents is almost always distasteful, to the point where they become caricatures of armchaired reactionaries, a coffle of Alf Garnetts. "I'm glad they're on their way out" you'll think but not say, after watching a parade of grey-haired Tories trying to intellectually justify their dislike of gay people. I thought the same when my woodwork teacher regularly called us "ugly little Arabs". I sincerely wished him dead, though have since downgraded this to retirement (my little brother is at the same school). |
| To assume that death will sort the whole thing out is not only fatalistic, but presupposes that the next generation will somehow spontaneously become more progressive than its predecessors. Yet if we tolerate bigotry, this patently will not happen. But there are ways of confronting the issue without coming across as, well, a bit of a dick. Say a gentle "we don't say that any more, pops". A muted reaction works better than the self-righteous explosion they are sometimes hankering after. | |
| That's without counting the fact that with the older generation, you're sometimes left with the lingering feeling that, like Philip, they're actually quite enjoying the whole performance. Grandparents, the original trolls? It's not as daft as it sounds. | That's without counting the fact that with the older generation, you're sometimes left with the lingering feeling that, like Philip, they're actually quite enjoying the whole performance. Grandparents, the original trolls? It's not as daft as it sounds. |