When I was a kid, I was raised in a very singular community. In a way. It was signular by its lack of cultural diversity, singular by its traditional religion, singular by its farm based ecomony. The singinificant difference singular communities have over very multi layered communities is that in a signular community you are seldom challleneged to step outside your frame of reference. You seldom question your ways of thinking, doing or speaking. You seldom take such things out and look at them through someone else's eyes.
Sometimes words, terms, ways of speaking from that past singular childhood creep into my language that are not relfective of what I believe and that do not reflect who or what I am. They are the sorts of terms that are considered to be politically incorrect and they are leftovers from that very singular background where such terms were not attached to cultures or a people, but were just part of the lexicon, part of the way we spoke, the way we expressed things.
If political correctness is the only thing I serve in the terms and forms of language I use, all it is is window dressing. I'd really rather clean the glass in my methaphorical windows and clearly speak what I believe.
I have to take some old terms out, put them away with the other bits of old fashioned baggage from that small singular childhood place, buff up the glass and generally tidy up my windows to more clearly refelct who I am. Old terms need to be replaced with better words.
But I will always bear the regret that I didn't get this little corner of my windows cleaned sooner, that I did not get this little term out of my lexicon.
