Politically Correct

I really am that person. Anything non-PC kinda bothers me, in some cases annoys me. It surprises me after all this time. Many of my friends really enjoy telling racist jokes without meaning anything, just amused at the corniness, and it depends on my mood whether these bother me or not. It's really the phrases used without the joke that truly annoy me (or if the joke is lame;) ).

One of my friends used a phrase the other day that generally would slip past without much thought, except for the fact that it was reiterated many a time and annoyed me. It wasn't even a slur or anything, I'm just that much into political correctness. He was talking about his friends showing up at a party and he kept saying "guy and his baby's mama". The guy of course got a name, the girl would maybe have a name after that description, maybe not. "His baby's mama" I realize is meant to be used as a more in-depth phrase than girlfriend, but not wife.

Unfortunately, here's the deal. The individual should come first, and this phrase is one of the worst I've seen for that. I took a class in college for future teachers, so they could all be politically correct, and we were actually graded on if we put the individual first. This was especially important for people with diabilities. So it was not correct to say "the blind boy" but rather "the boy who is blind", even better if you said "Bob, the boy who is blind". So if we apply that logic to my annoying phrase "Bob, and his baby's mama Barbara" we very much fail this woman as an individual, especially as half the time no Barbara is attached. Bob is good, we see him an individual immediately. Next comes his baby, next comes the girl - not defined as herself but in relation to his baby, next maybe comes her name. Sigh.

At the time, my correspondent was very close to pissing me off, not due to this phrase but other matters so I ignored my particular annoyance with this phrase in lieu of the general annoyance of the person but it stuck with me and I revisited it. Therefore I'm not sure how much of this particularly annoying phrase is just focused annoyance from my conversation.

I know all this, but I'm unsure why it bothers me so. I asked a friend about it and his first question was if my friend was black or not. He isn't of course, but my friend went on the explain that it was a very loaded phrase, especially for black culture.

Anyway, if you have any comments, feel free to drop me a line. Or alternately, you can ignore this as a semi-rant. :) Either is good.