There was a time in our society that referring to a black man of any age by the term “boy” was a perfectly acceptable practice. It was used as a way to show that black men were not equal to white men. This is certainly not the only term or phrase that has been used in the past that referred to groups of people in a negative ways. Most of these types of terms are rarely used and typically only by individuals who have little regard for how their words affect other people. But there are a few things I commonly hear from people who I would not consider to be racist, or any other -ist of note.
One such phrase is “That’s so gay”. Just about every day I hear students casually referring to something or someone as gay. The problem is so many people don’t see anything wrong with using this phrase. A common response if ever questioned about it, is to say that they don’t mean gay like homosexual but like stupid or loserish. This is the problem.
The word gay may have once been used commonly to describe happy or joyous emotions like when used in old Christmas songs, but in the past 40 or so years it has become the term used to refer to people in the homosexual community.
So when people say “that’s so gay” to mean “that’s so stupid,” it is thus equating gay with being stupid or bad or whatever other negative meaning they attached to the word by using it in a negative way. I am sure many people reading this will say that this is crazy talk and just another example of the world being too PC and whining about every little thing people say. But what if we were to replace the word gay with something else.
Can you imagine people who were annoyed with something saying that’s so black, or that’s so Jewish, or that’s so teenager, or that’s so retarded. Oh wait, unfortunately I hear that last one way too often as well. But that’s another argument all together.
The point is, the things we say, whether or not we intend it, have an affect on how we view people and things in the world around us. Our language shows who or what we respect and who or what we do not. The reason you don’t usually hear black men referred to as “boy” anymore is because enough people stood up and said that it wasn’t okay to say it. So the next time you’re annoyed with someone or something, instead of saying that’s so gay, try just saying that’s stupid or something else that doesn’t refer to a group of people in a negative way. And if someone around you says it and you don’t like it, stand up and tell them you don’t like it.