"We did not invent PC but we can fight it"

When I was a child growing up in the 60's there was a boy in my school called John. Actually there were probably around 6-8 Johns as it was still fairly common to call a child after his father. The John to which I am referring was black. He was adopted (would it happen these days?) by a white couple with grown up daughters. Everyone, and I mean everyone referred to John as black John as he was the only "coloured" child in the school and it seemed a natural way of telling him apart.

Looking at my grandchildren's primary school (incidentally the same school) there are only 2 non white children in the school. I cannot imagine in a million years either of those children being called "black Jane" or "brown Billy" .

They wouldn't be Gillybob, thankfully we have moved on from those days

I wonder how the other Johns were differentiated. Is it possible that their surnames were used?

I don't suppose there was any malice in describing the boy as "black John" but it perhaps indicates a certain mindset, and my feeling is that if you know a person's full name, why not just use that? I think describing someone as Black, Asian, etc., is reasonable if you don't know the person's name and it is the easiest way of describing them to someone else.

My husband says that if people know his full name, he would expect to be called by it and not have his first name preceded by a word denoting his colour. He would, however, not object to being described in that way if someone wanted to point him out but did not know his name.

In the 60's Eloethan I would guess that most boys (and some of the girls) who shared Christian names would have had some kind of "nickname" in order to tell them apart. I remember some children being referred to as fat xxxxx or smelly xxxxx. Cruel but that is the way is was.

Yes Anniebach. Thank goodness we have. However back in the 60's i don't think there was anything nasty meant by it at all.

I remember chanting a "choosing" rhyme

Eenie, meanie, miney mo...
Catch a xxxxxxx by the toe
Etc.

Truly horrible by today's standards but we knew no other.

Gillibob, that rhyme is great. You can use it with young children and just change the offending word to tiger.

Also generally we don't use the term Christian names any more as many children in schools are not Christian, unlike when I grew up in the 1959/ 60s.

So we use first name and sirname. Now I think of it that is a bit sexist!!!!!

Why is surname sexist? I think it comes from the Old French 'sur nom' and has no gender connotations.

Right, just my awful spelling!!!!!!!

Yes LullyDully my DGC say the rhyme too but they say fishy or sometimes baby (poor bloomin' baby)

first and last names, not difficult surely.

Children are not into surnames , when my younger was in the juniors there were twin boys, they were always known as twinie1 and twinie2

Children love nicknames

I recall a Christmas when the head of the Birminghamprimary school I taught at said it would be 'low key' with no decorations and the dropping of other traditions. A Muslim teaching assistant who had been a pupil there 20 years before thought it ridiculous and said how she'd always been more excited by Christmas in school than by Eid.
The words Winterval and Twixtmas were coined then I think, to general derision.

Ana - maybe 'surname'sounds male!! Never heard of 'madamname'!
A friend of mine in the 1980 each time someone used the PC 'person' instead of 'man' or 'woman' always objected to the sexism and insisted (tongue in cheek) upon 'peroffspring'!

I thought 'Happy Holidays' was to cover Diwali, Hannukah and other winter festivals of light ( Samhain, Kwanzaa, the Solstice et al).

Indeed Ana it does

Prénom (name before, first name)
and
Surnom (name above, main name).

Personally I am glad we do not call children with special needs 'retards or spazzers'- glad we don't call black people 'niggers', glad we don't call lesbians 'dikes or lezzers' - etc- although yes, I agree that it's daft if people jump if you order a 'black coffee'.

@elrel - "Winterval" had nothing to do with Christmas - it was coined as a title for a Birmingham arts festival, and served as such for several years.

It was probably the Daily Mail that picked up on Birmingham's Winterval arts festival and propagated the myth that the city had banned the use of the C word

PC silliness -i was driving a school bus (all age groups and sexes) and while waiting at the school to pick up the children -one 10 year old female got her legs tangled up, as they do, and grazed her knee. I am a certified first aider but school bus rules state no touching at any time. so i had to phone my base and ask them to phone her parents for permission to clean the graze and apply a plaster. it appears that i could have been charged with assault on a minor if i did not have the parents permission to treat the graze.

All that "you can't sing baa baa black sheep" etc is mostly urban myth! I was a teacher in urban Sth London in the 70s/80s and we sang all the trad. nursery rhymes and I was the equal opportunity lead in the school. I did sometimes change language to make sure there was a better gender balance ! (Five little men in a flying saucer became 5 Astronauts etc to give the girls an idea they too could be an astrophysicist) but we had black sheep and we had black kids & teachers too! I was asked on the phone the other day who had served me and I said the young black guy. It's OK!

The article is referring more to academic work / thinking than to the nonsense often publicised (often proven to be incorrect) by some papers with a particular agenda. Also when an 'opponent' plays the PC card (either way!) it is a strategy to undermine an idea or action. If it is genuinely a stupid idea or action then that should be shown up in well aired knowledge based debate and not simply rubbished as non PC or PC!

My DGD did sing:

"baa baa pink sheep have you any spots"
"yes sir, yes sir lots and lots"

Total gobbledegook.

Also my DGC often refer to children in their classes by Christian name and Surname as there are a few children sharing the same name.

But not in Birmingham or London or High Wycombe or Bradford or Portsmouth or............... Not every child is Christian any more.