"It's the Thing that counts..."

There isn't a ruling to give, NotTooOld That is what makes it difficult. A word may be fine with some people and offend others, who would themselves be perfectly OK with something that the first one doesn't like. Something may be a bland description one week, and taken up by bullies the next as an insult.

It's as bad as clothes fashions.

The only defence is never to mention skin colour at all - but if you are describing someone and give details of everything they are wearing and carrying, how can you miss out the most obvious characteristic of all - their skin, hair, type of features, shape of eyes . . .

Elegran - was your point about the use of the word cripple? In that case, I take your point because I accept that people either no ill intent will use what is now an unacceptable word. However, if it is also about mentioning the disability , then that's a different point.

Not either - I meant with

Reminds me of an old joke about Paddy and his friend Mick (there you are, it is racist even before it starts! Substitute Kevin and Dick if you like)

They went to the horse sales and each bought a horse, which they planned to keep in the same small field.

Kevin -"But how shall we tell them apart?"

Dick - "We'll tie a ribbon on the tail of mine" So they did. but the ribbon fell off, so they were back to the drawing board.

Kevin - We could paint a green patch onto the back of mine." so they did. but the rain washed off the paint.

Dick - "How about cutting the mane of one of them into a pattern?"

Kevin - "Oh what a good idea! Shall we cut the mane of the black or the grey?"

GranntTwice If you break a leg and go around with it in plaster, then even a stranger will ask you how you did it without you being embarrassed.

There is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about in having a chronic disability which causes you to walk as unevenly as a plastered leg. Having people treat it as something not to be mentioned is to make it something to hide, to be ashamed of.

Id rather be brown, that'd mean it was lovely warm and sunny. Which it certainly isn't.
Surely man of colour is ungrammatical?

elegran as a disabled person I have no objection to being so called! ( particularly when it means I can skip the queue for the ladies and go straight to the disabled one! Well there must be some compensations)
I must say I like being one of retiredguy's 'Hell's grannies' it fits what my darling daughter says about my scooter driving.

If mixed marriages were compulsory, rather than voluntary and often frowned upon, all offspring would be lovely toasty colours and then perhaps the need for all this angst would disappear.

Anyone who wanted to be insulting (or be insulted) would then find some other little detail to seize upon.

Lets mix it up.
I dont actually like being called white much.
I know I am pale, but not that pale.
And white is just so wrong.

Elegan-why on earth would anyone ask a total stranger with a leg in plaster what had happened? Offer to help yes if appropriate eg offer a seat, hold a door open. I am not in the slightest ashamed or embarrassed about my disability but WTF should anyone feel they can ask me about it? It's my disability to mention or not as I see fit. I accept necessary help, I ask for necessary help but I don't have to explain the cause to anyone and none should be asking.

I would have thought anyone with any emotional intelligence at all would be able to appreciate that 'coloured people' is offensive, whilst 'people of colour' is simply descriptive. If you don't see that then.... [shrug]

Cumberbatch must have been raised in the ark.

Galen - I thought the issue wasn't about being described as a disabled person but that someone could feel free ask you about it and that if you minded this it meant you were ashamed or embarrassed about your disability

Have you not lived through times when 'coloured people' was used disparagingly? Or read any books when the same kind of terminology was used by people looking down on black people?

How about 'a person of pallor' soontobe?

Jingle - I couldn't agree more.

Raised in the ark? Attended a public school...what's the difference?

Your choice, GrannyTwice, but it doesn't mean they insult you by taking an intelligent interest.

That's better Anya. Anything is better than white!

Cumberbatch was not using the term in the way it might have been use in the South Africa of apartheid and that would have been obvious to even the meanest of intellects that heard him, so why get all het up? He wasn't being offensive so why take offence? That's the long and the short of it.

<Waits for someone to jump on the expression "meanest of intellects">

The people making a fuss about what Cumberbatch said are just stirrers and troublemakers, whatever colour their skin is.

I don't mind being asked, but then as a doctor I anm always interested in causation of morbidity

Elegan- you just don't get it do you? Can you explain to me why a complete stranger ( intelligent or otherwise) should ask me what's wrong with me or why I walk as I do? That's actually defining me by my disability , that's all they see. I don't want their totally unacceptable curiosity interest

Clearly I am lacking^emotional intelligence^, and no, I don't remember when the phrase coloured people was used disparagingly. I seem therefore, along with Cumberbatch, to have been 'raised in the ark'....... Somewhat insulting I feel.
Ouch

Galen- you might not mind being asked (as you have gathered, I do) but do you think it's ok for strangers to ask ( which is a different point)?

The problem is that words change their meaning as those inclined to sneer will hijack innocent words and turn them into derisory ones.

Coloured was once an accepted term - I was tripped up by that nebulous moment when a word slips from favour. It's a bit of a challenge to stay up to speed.

I always remember when, at the height of politically correct, I was called to the ward to see a man who was, as the ward sister put it "height challenged." I had to fill in some boring form with him and asked how he would like me to describe his "disability" for the purposes of acquiring whatever benefit he was applying for his answer was: "I am 70 years old; I was born a dwarf; I have always been a dwarf; and I will die a dwarf. Put that on your form!"

You don't get what I was saying either, so we are equal.

In conversation with someone (not a complete stranger, in fact, but someone at a social do to whom he was chatting) my son-in-law was asked a perfectly polite question by someone who was interested in him and his life. He found her choice of terms unusual at this time, but not offensive - because it was not meant to be offensive.

You would find that intrusive. That is up to you. But there is no diffeence to me between that question and saying to someone with a plaster on a leg "That must have been painful, what did you do to it?"

If you never discuss a disability with anyone, then it becomes a dirty secret - and it should not. That is the route to people with disabilities feeling that they are second-rate citizens.