Racism–and the Rose by Any Other Name OTH
This a revision of three old pieces on the same subject: Thucydides observed, in his famous depiction of the civil war on Corfu, that political partisans change the meanings of words. Dictionaries have become instruments of ideological oppression. The movement began long before the end of the millennium. “We very clearly had made a mistake,” said the marketing director of Merriam-Webster, explaining her company’s decision to pull an on-line thesaurus that included “faggot” and “fruit” as synonymns for “homosexual.” While many homophiles freely use expressions like “faggot” and “fruity,” and “butch,” they reserve the right to dictate polite usage...
