Monday, August 5, 2013

Seattle: 'Brown Bag' Ban

What's going on in Seattle can't be called political correctness run amok. It's crazier than that.

It's total insanity.

From FOX News:

Government workers in the city of Seattle have been advised that the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" are potentially offensive and may no longer be used in official documents and discussions.

KOMO-TV reports that the city's Office of Civil Rights instructed city workers in a recent internal memo to avoid using the words because some may find them offensive.

"Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo obtained by the station. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'"

In an interview with Seattle's KIRO Radio, Bronstein said the term "brown bag" has been used historically as a way to judge skin color.

"For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home," Bronstein said.

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According to the memo, city employees should use the terms "lunch-and-learn" or "sack lunch" instead of "brown bag."

What?

A brown bag was used to determine if a person's skin color was light enough to be admitted to an event or party in a private home?

I've never heard of that. How long ago did this allegedly "historical" practice occur? It certainly hasn't happened for generations in any official capacity.

Now it's racially offensive to use the term "brown bag"?

Good grief. Ridiculous.

Banning the word "citizen" is offensive to me.

I'm an American citizen. I'm not a Canadian citizen or a Mexican citizen or a Russian citizen or a Chinese citizen, etc.

I would be ticked off if the acknowledgement of my status as an American citizen was considered too offensive to say.




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