We’re not suppossed to call them “bums” anymore. There are people who get red-faced when I use that word. They jump up and down screaming that I am suppossed to call them “homeless” people. I said, how do you know the guy I am talking about is homeless? Why can’t he just be a worthless bum?
Another one that gets me is “disadvantaged.” I have no earthly idea what that means.
Bums / Homeless, that one doesn’t bother me so much. In fact, I once turned the PC “relabeling” madness back on the other side during a campus debate about the homeless. I called them “characteristically underhoused people.”
Got quite the reaction, that one did.
The one I LOATHE tho, is this “disadvantaged” label. Also, “under priveleged.”
I don’t mind “less fortunate” or “less well off” or “poorer”.
When teaching my own kids about charity and compassion I always try to say, “those who have less than we do, at the moment.”
I’ve no idea what advantages or priveleges the person has. He may have squandered them. And it isn’t so much about advantages, anyway.
Thanks for bringing up a good one!
Professor Walter Williams still calls them bums. I love it when he does.
I still have a tape of him on Crossfire.
“underprivileged” or “homeless” may be presumptuous – but so is “bums”. The word has obvious negative connotations that immediately writes off the person to whom it’s applied. There are a lot of things that can land a person into the position of being on the street – mental illness being a big one.
I think there’s some middle ground between PC and offensiveness that can be found.
problem with the middle ground, is it is often at different places for different people. one of the classics, which I just remembered, had to do with the elder George Bush, when he was Vice President.
He and Reagan had flown to Houston in August, 1988, for the GOP Convention that would nominate Bush for the Presidency. His family was at the airfield waiting to greet him. Reagan went to a window on Air Force One and asked which people out there the Veep knew. Bush pointed to Jeb Bush, and his children. Reagan, seeing the general area, but still not able to pick out the specific kids, asked something about what they looked like, “Is she the tall girl with blonde hair?”
Bush said, “No, my grandkids are the little brown ones next to that girl.”
His grandkids were brown and little, standing next to a blonde.
His opponents tried to paint him as something, with that bit of words.
I think the negative presumption you imagine is all your own. Not trying to attack you. When I was growing up in Australia, we used the word Bum for anybody who sat about for long periods. A person with a desk job was a desk bum. A person in a wheelchair was a rolly bum.
Bum is also a slang word from England for someone who sits on his arse, regardless of why. There are all sorts of bums. Harmelss bums. Lazy Bums. Lovable bums. Crazy bums.
Many will prejudge and have disdain for the homeless, no matter what they are called. So the policing of speech or labels doesn’t do much.
My family still says, when asked what they are going to do over a long weekend, “we’re going to bum about.”
None of us thinks that makes us homeless or worthless or anything else bad.
Thus concludes my defense of using the word Bum in everyday conversation.
(hee hee)
I use it the same way. But if I pointed at someone sleeping on a grate, and said, “look at that bum!” it would mean something else, don’t you think?
i don’t argue with that. my point, I think, is that there is no word that describes that guy that doesn’t do the same thing, especially if you are pointing at the bloke.
his own image will do whatever negative bits come with people looking at him.
you can say, look at that guy, and the effect would be the same, I think.
The word homeless conjurs up the very same image, in most people’s minds. Most don’t think of the mother with kids or those who lost their home in some disaster.
My objection to the PC speech movement is that it doesn’t do much. Sure the N word is horrible, and should be avoided. But the word “bum?”
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kneelock wants to swear less
Make money doing something I love.
Buy a House
Go skydiving
get another tattoo
be a good wife
asams wants to be wealthy
get a cat
donate hair to Locks of Love
grow wheatgrass
pay off my student loans
become a better photographer
relax
manage my time better
go to vegas
go to thailand
live each day as if it were my last, but learn each day as if I'll live forever
get into a good college
run a half marathon
publish an online comic strip weekly
be more adventurous
play bass
