The Cult of Ethnicity Essay Example

various words that today hold such engrained meanings and are so hate charged that mentioning them even for analytical purposes in this essay would be risky. Later on new groups got exposed to these types of words as Irish, Italian and whatever the newest immigrant group of the period was, got negatively charged ethic slurs ‘assigned’ to them.In it initial intent, to eliminate harmful and hurtful words from common use the move towards political correctness was highly successful. In other ways it may have set back ethnic relations more than anyone could have expected.

As necessary as it is in many ways, political correctness does have one major drawback, that being that it furthers the current cult of ethnicity that exists in America today. The terms that are now supposedly politically correct today are in many ways very segregating in nature. Each given group is referred to by a iven name but these names are troublesome because they place the group in front of the whole. People now are quick to refer to themselves and others by the politically correct name that is formatted with the ethnic background first, an example being Irish-American. Just in structure these names are a problem as they place the ethnicity before the nation.

The main problem with these politically correct names for various ethnic groups lies in the gravity that many groups place in being referred to by their proper name.Now as in the example of African-Americans this may very well be justified but nevertheless promotes the cult of ethnicity and with it all the potential negative repercussions. In order for people to be concerned with the name their

group is referred to they must first be highly aware that they belong to a separate ethnic group. With the extent to which political correctness encompasses ethnic relations in American today this posses an obvious problem as when we think of it that way then political correctness and peoples attitudes towards it can be used as a gauge of the cult of ethnicity.

The subjects of the cult of ethnicity and political correctness are in many ways intertwined in a delicate manner. Ideally there would be no need for social and political standards of speak as all people would be treated the same but as we all know the world is far from perfect and when left free of regulation the powerful will abuse the minorities or outnumbered peoples.African American is one term that has been formed in this movement that I feel we must keep as the pain which this ethnicity has been put through by hateful language is immeasurable. Other classifications of ethnicities have to go.

There is no need to constantly refer to natively born and raised, Caucasians facing no threat of discrimination by a special name. All this practice does is make the cult of ethnicity not only acceptable but in fact the expected norm of society. Bibliography none Word Count: 768