[senior citizen]

Who thinks that possibly political correctness has gotten out of hand when a television celebrity has to go public, obviously shaken to her core, and BEG FORGIVENESS for something she apparently said awhile ago?

I've always been a firm believer in kindness to all and taught my children to be nice to everyone.......and they do have friends of all ethnic backgrounds and races.......as do their children. They are color blind.

However, public humiliation is now right up there with bullying in the schools.

Without going into detail, both hubby and I sat there with our mouths hanging open........thinking the same thing about reverse discrimination when the other side has called "others" names and nothing at all is said...........just listen to some of these rappers......

In doing genealogy, I learned that ALL groups have been called names, including the ethnic groups my husband and I come from.........

[justjim]

Paula Deen has made a "mess" of her apology. The last thing you want to do is get on the tube when you are emotional and distraught and make matters worse. To be honest, I don't follow her on her cooking program----never seen it. If she had consulted with a professional in crisis management, things might have turned out a bit different.

[jojoin]

post edited.....duplicate

[jojoin]

Agree (with original poster). I'd like to say more but it might not be politically correct.

[Golfingnut]

Our generation is, or at least was, for the most part, racist! It would have been easier for Paula to say, Like most of my friends and family, I was, but I am trying to be more accepting of all people. Trying to lie to in an attempt to alter the TRUTH about your own past is silly.

I was a bigot in the 50's and 60's, entered the Army in 1966 and started questioning my own beliefs. By the 80's I recognized how wrong I was and changed my views and began to voice my opinion about this terible social issue. I now will not tolerate bigotry from friends nor family.

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by jojoin

Agree (with original poster). I'd like to say more but it might not be politically correct.

Ayup. I "hear you".

[senior citizen]

or

Originally Posted by Golfingnut

Our generation is, or at least was, for the most part, racist! It would have been easier for Paula to say, Like most of my friends and family, I was, but I am trying to be more accepting of all people. Trying to lie to in an attempt to alter the TRUTH about your own past is silly.

I was a bigot in the 50's and 60's, entered the Army in 1966 and started questioning my own beliefs. By the 80's I recognized how wrong I was and changed my views and began to voice my opinion about this terible social issue. I now will not tolerate bigotry from friends nor family.

I can totally relate to your first paragraph.

However, not all families were racist back in the 1950's into say 1962, etc.
My parents were both factory workers (from the World War Two era) who worked along side folks from all races and ethnic backgrounds.....and called many their friends. I still remember helping my mom wrap Christmas presents for some........

I went to a public school and had friends of all races......in Newark, N.J.
This would be circa the 1950's to 1962.

Hubby, however, went to an all Polish Catholic School and didn't experience the type of diversity that I did.......even though we lived around the corner from each other in a predominately German neighborhood.

His family reacted quite strongly during the Newark riots of the '60s...

When I was planning my 1965 wedding, I so wanted to invite a fellow secretary who was the loveliest young mom from North Carolina, two young beautiful boys (pre schoolers) whom she'd share stories of each morning before work began...........but at the time, there was an "unspoken" thing......and I knew that I shouldn't invite her. I still regret it.

Many moons later, my daughter invited her Boston friends to her Vermont wedding, without nary a thought as to if she would offend any family member.......and the guests were lovely folks.

The younger generation today have made the entire world a smaller place.

However, that said..............I still say there is reverse discrimination when "stuff" is done to us......

[senior citizen]

P.S.
Again, a good decade or more ago, we were visiting in Cincinnati Ohio where our son had been recruited out of grad school into Proctor and Gamble Corporation.....
Knowing there had been recent riots, a week prior.......we gingerly made our way around, getting lost in the inner city, etc.........before we ultimately found our destination............it brought back memories of our youth and the riots in Newark, N.J............so there are two sides to every story.......there is good and not so good in all types of people. No one type of person should be elevated to a pedestal. I prefer to take each one individually.........when our daughter used to work in Boston teaching English, she was befriended by a nice young married Jamaican man and his wife.........they would walk with her from the "T" (train) through the "combat zone" which anyone knows who knows Boston.......and I felt that she was safer. They are the ones she invited her her wedding in Vermont.........with their beautiful baby. They are still friends. When we were just up there, our grand daughter had a beautiful friend from Haiti visiting the home..........nice little girl. Again, my kids are all color blind.

[billethkid]

In my opinion one cannot look at how they lived, in the time they lived, doing and believing what were the acceptable norm of the day.....then look back and measure and define yesterday by today's standards.

The standards of today (of our children) are very, VERY much different than those of their parents or grand parents. That in no way shape or form means what was allowed back then was wrong or incorrect.

And just because our standards have changed to something different does not neccesarily mean the change was indeed for the better.....it simply means it has changed.



btk

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by justjim

Paula Deen has made a "mess" of her apology. The last thing you want to do is get on the tube when you are emotional and distraught and make matters worse. To be honest, I don't follow her on her cooking program----never seen it. If she had consulted with a professional in crisis management, things might have turned out a bit different.

Yes, I did see several versions of her "apology". I thought it was pitiful.
She must have been desperate. I am such a stickler for freedom of speech. I know not to hurt people's feelings and always taught my own brood to be kind to everyone........however, she was a product of a different "south" than it is today........maybe she said more than I have heard about....but still.

A p.s. to my earlier post about the riots of the 60's in Newark, N.J. and then the riots in Cincinnati, Ohio........

Hubby, who had been brought up in a somewhat racist type background, totally changed his perspective when he was stationed in Fort Knox Kentucky in the 1960's.....he developed friendships he might not have had in his old neighborhood.....or Polish Catholic School........or hearing his uncles, etc. on the block.

He also was shocked to find out that NOT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD loved J.F.K.......surely not at Fort Knox Kentucky........whereas in our little isolated Catholic neighborhood......."Camelot" and all it stood for was definitely on a pedestal. He was a "drill sergeant in tanks.....and then went back summer after summer.....with Army Reserves.

But prior to him going into the Army, they were all "packing guns" for protection in Newark, enroute to work each day......."downtown".
I had an incident while parked outside waiting after work for him....a man with his hand in a brown paper bag came up to my open window as the car idled......to me it looked like a gun in the bag.......to me it seemed like an attempted robbery.......I pulled out of that parking space so fast....I never even looked to see if a car was coming.......kept driving around the corner until he came out of work. Those were different times.

I can understand Paula Deen's different times.

We all mature as we experience other facets of life and other areas ......

But, truthfully, I was never ever racist..........and that said, I still feel that Paula Deen's apology was too drastic. My best friend in first grade was a little black girl.......my daughter's best friend in first grade, ditto....and now our grand daughter's , etc........we have Indian and Asian friends whom we love dearly as well...........nuff said.

I still feel sorry for Paula Deen.............bad enough she had to take all the yummy calories and carbs out of her southern cooking (when she was diagnosed as diabetic)........(said tongue in cheek)........

[redwitch]

Being of a liberal bent, I do believe in political correctness. I do believe that someone should never be called a derogatory name because of their race, religion, sexual preference. If it will hurt someone and I know it, I will not use a word or phrase around that person. Period.

However, that is today. My parents were both born and raised as bigots. My father was a Southerner. My mother was German. By the time I was born in 1950 neither of them would dream of using the words they did of their youth. Dad learned that the color of a man's skin had nothing to do with his intellect or courage. My mother learned that a person's religion did not make that person better or worse. They both learned this in WWII. While my father would occasionally slip and use the N word, he made sure his kids never did. Both of my parents worked hard to teach my brother and me to judge a person by their words and actions, not anything else.

I lived all over the world as a child. More than once, my brother and I were the minority in class. I still remember living in the Congo and actually have kids come up and touch me just to make sure I wasn't a ghost -- some had never seen a white person before. There were two nations that I saw and heard bigotry used in everyday language and behavior in my travels (up to and including a lynching in the late 50s) -- England and the USA.

There is no excuse for bigotry and perpetualizing any thing by words or deeds that denigrates another because of their differences.

However, Ms. Deen made her derogatory comments many years ago, at a time when the use of those words was acceptable. She does not use them today (I can't comment on how she feels today, I'm not in her skin) and that is what should matter. If she still uses or thinks those words, then shame on her. If not, it was an act of the past and should be treated as such -- something that was accepted at the time and something that we, as a nation, and, hopefully, individually, regret today. She does not deserve the issue made of her admission that she did in fact use those words in the past. If she did in fact treat her restaurant employees as alleged, she does pretty much deserve all the negative publicity and the results thereof.

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by billethkid

In my opinion one cannot look at how they lived, in the time they lived, doing and believing what were the acceptable norm of the day.....then look back and measure and define yesterday by today's standards.

The standards of today (of our children) are very, VERY much different than those of their parents or grand parents. That in no way shape or form means what was allowed back then was wrong or incorrect.

And just because our standards have changed to something different does not neccesarily mean the change was indeed for the better.....it simply means it has changed.


btk

Again, in all fairness to Paula Deen (from the south), again I can see all sides of everyone's story.....and put it into perspective.

We were raised in a city close to New York City.........

At age nineteen, I still remember sitting in my eye doctor's office and picking up a magazine......EBONY. I was really surprised to see the advertisements were not like the ones I normally saw in my parents magazines such as Saturday Evening Post, Look, Life, Time, etc.......

Then, shortly after the Newark, New Jersey riots.......right about when our baby daughter was born , I went back into the city to shop.........it had totally changed...........and the manikins in Bambergers windows or the other big department store windows were no longer all lily white.

Prior to that........we had been SHOCKED when in 1965 we drove to Miami Beach Florida on our honeymoon (aged twenty) and while stopping each night in a different southern state.....or just stopping at rest areas while traveling south.........we saw the "White Bathrooms" and the other bathrooms...........ditto for the water fountains.......so they were still there in 1965.

Not sure what state Paula Deen was raised in...........

[DianeM]

Let's be real here. We're all from an era when those words were acceptable. She is is a product of her time and public humiliation because of the past is absurd.

[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by redwitch

being of a liberal bent, i do believe in political correctness. I do believe that someone should never be called a derogatory name because of their race, religion, sexual preference. If it will hurt someone and i know it, i will not use a word or phrase around that person. Period.

However, that is today. My parents were both born and raised as bigots. My father was a southerner. My mother was german. By the time i was born in 1950 neither of them would dream of using the words they did of their youth. Dad learned that the color of a man's skin had nothing to do with his intellect or courage. My mother learned that a person's religion did not make that person better or worse. They both learned this in wwii. While my father would occasionally slip and use the n word, he made sure his kids never did. Both of my parents worked hard to teach my brother and me to judge a person by their words and actions, not anything else.

I lived all over the world as a child. More than once, my brother and i were the minority in class. I still remember living in the congo and actually have kids come up and touch me just to make sure i wasn't a ghost -- some had never seen a white person before. There were two nations that i saw and heard bigotry used in everyday language and behavior in my travels (up to and including a lynching in the late 50s) -- england and the usa.

There is no excuse for bigotry and perpetualizing any thing by words or deeds that denigrates another because of their differences.

However, ms. Deen made her derogatory comments many years ago, at a time when the use of those words was acceptable. She does not use them today (i can't comment on how she feels today, i'm not in her skin) and that is what should matter. If she still uses or thinks those words, then shame on her. If not, it was an act of the past and should be treated as such -- something that was accepted at the time and something that we, as a nation, and, hopefully, individually, regret today. She does not deserve the issue made of her admission that she did in fact use those words in the past. If she did in fact treat her restaurant employees as alleged, she does pretty much deserve all the negative publicity and the results thereof.

great post.

[Parker]

Paula Deen is groveling. I am not familiar with her show, but groveling always seems so....cringeworthy. Just fess up that you were a product of the times you grew up in, that you've grown up and evolved now, and move on. With a little dignity please.