Tony Montana wrote:

Irish gunner wrote:

If "mixed race" is dodgy, what's the PC way of describing it?

Dual Heritage.

[insert ethnicity here]-American

True.

But I was thinking of the UK.

is it even derogatory anyway?

"EFF OFF YA MIXED-RACED CUNT"

just doesn't sound like anything

I genuinely can't get my head around "mixed race" being politically incorrect, It's entirely descriptive.

And for the record, African-American is just stupid, nothing wrong with saying that someone is black.

But seriously, how would you describe someone of mixed race in the UK in a PC way?

A man or a woman would be my usual terminology. Sometimes boy, girl or child work as well.

Amen. What's really insulting is this tendency to identify people by their race or skin colour, like you're describing them to the police. I'll never understand it. For a long time I genuinely had no idea that people made such a big deal out of race in particular, because the only ones who did where I'm from were really old, uneducated people who couldn't really help being racist pricks.

Surely not being able to describe someone by their race or skin colour is more discriminatory? You'd say someone is tall, male, female and even bald or fat which have negative connotations, so why should skin colour or race be any different? Calling someone black, brown, white etc should be fine, otherwise you're putting more weight to the idea that the difference actually matters.

otfgoon wrote:

Surely not being able to describe someone by their race or skin colour is more discriminatory? You'd say someone is tall, male, female and even bald or fat which have negative connotations, so why should skin colour or race be any different? Calling someone black, brown, white etc should be fine, otherwise you're putting more weight to the idea that the difference actually matters.

It's not that race or skin colour is something to be ashamed of. It's just that they should be completely irrelevant. You don't show acceptance by highlighting differences - you're creating a distinction. I've never introduced anyone as "My black friend", or "My white homosexual relative", or "My jewish aquintance", or "My african-immigrant girlfriend". It's simply not how I would view them.

I guess everyone views these things differently and I don't think either approach is wrong in principle, but I personally don't believe distinction is a bad thing. I guess the only problem with my view is that, it can quite easily be turned into a bad thing and often is, even in newspapers... black man does this, asian guy does that etc. The chances of it only being used in pure circumstances, are nil.

otfgoon wrote:

Surely not being able to describe someone by their race or skin colour is more discriminatory? You'd say someone is tall, male, female and even bald or fat which have negative connotations, so why should skin colour or race be any different? Calling someone black, brown, white etc should be fine, otherwise you're putting more weight to the idea that the difference actually matters.

I think it just a lazy concept of "the other".
If you have a confrontation with someone and they are obviously superficially different to you visually, such as their skin/hair/no hair colour gender body shape/type and (less obviously) nationality and language ability, thus some insert a simple adjective so they don't have to think or be witty, it's much easier to target these than to actually point out why you think they're wrong or bad people.