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Non Politically Correct Stamps In 2020

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Bedrock Of The Community
United States
10599 Posts
Posted 03/15/2020   4:17 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add revcollector to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
Everyone has stamps that they will never use, either because of the people, places, events, or ideas that are pictured. It's really impossible not to given the quantity issued, and would we really want it any other way?
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Bedrock Of The Community
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Posted 03/15/2020   4:23 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add rogdcam to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
The 1948 Poultry Industry Centennial issue is one that offends me to no end given that I have a Niece that is a vegan.
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Posted 03/16/2020   2:46 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add Perf10 to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
This is bound to happen when the standards of one time period are measured by the standards of another. Maybe 100 years from now the stamps of the early 2000s will be considered too bland, just inoffensive flowers, birds, food, frozen treats, and similar.
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Posted 03/16/2020   5:02 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add angore to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
inoffensive flowers, birds, food, frozen treats, and similar.


Dark Ages.
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Al
Pillar Of The Community
Canada
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Posted 03/16/2020   8:22 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add jamesw to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
The 1948 Poultry Industry Centennial issue is one that offends me to no end given that I have a Niece that is a vegan.


Not meaning to offend, rodgcam, but wouldn't you be more offended if she were a chicken?
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Bedrock Of The Community
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Posted 03/16/2020   8:26 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add rogdcam to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
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Posted 03/17/2020   10:46 am  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add rogdcam to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
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Valued Member
United States
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Posted 03/19/2020   11:48 am  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add BFRomeos to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
Expressions of "political correctness," the sense of offense that it stimulates, and any indignance engendered in return, are all made possible and amplified by communicating anonymously behind a keyboard. Just sayin'.
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Posted 03/21/2020   6:55 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add DrewM to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
Get some popcorn, people! It's time for all the Old Folks to bemoan how much simpler it was back in the olden days when we called people with physical problems "retarded" and ignored widely-accepted racism toward (do I really have to list all these groups -- sigh?) Indians, Blacks, and so on.

One of my favorite stamps, #565 is the 14c so-called "American Indian" stamp. All the other people in that 1920s series of regular stamps have their names included on their stamps. So why does "American Indian" not get a name? It wasn't unknown at the time. It was "Hollow Horn Bear". I'd guess it was because any Indian, especially one as handsome and "Indian-looking" as this guy, was simply considered "an" Indian without bothering to notice that he was a particular person. It's a little embarrassing today. Okay, it was the 1920s, and we were pretty archaic in our racial attitudes, but do we still have to do this today? I don't think we do. How about a stamp with an African-American on it, someone important like Frederick Douglass or Crispus Attacks, labeled "American Negro"? A bit creepy? Would you label a stamp "American Caucasian"?

In the entire 16-stamp Columbia issue of 1898, I think only one stamp even attempts to show the people who actually lived in the Americas at the time. It's a fairly minor image and it's incorrect. On the 1c stamp, a North American Plains Indian is shown in full headdress. The Taino Indians that Columbus encountered in the Caribbean in the 1490s (and enslaved and killed) didn't look like the 19th century Plains Indians of the American West. Unless you think all Indians are alike. These are the people, in the millions, who Columbus encountered. How do they get ignored?

Today, people would object to these over-simplifications. "American Indian" on the 14c stamp would get a name. The Columbian series would have some stamps showing what Indians actually looked like in 1492. And maybe one stamp in the series would show the devastation (diseases, enslavement, and so on) that resulted from Columbus' arrival. Roughly 10 million natives died over the next century from enslavement, being worked to death, and diseases. Worth remembering? You bet it is.

"PC" is not an inconvenience, it's a way of repairing past mistakes. Does anyone call Black people "Negroes" anymore? Good luck with that. Sure, some PC terms are silly, sometimes it gets too much, and we all make mistakes. But we don't talk like racists, sexists, or other reprobates anymore. Good for us that we don't. When I was a young boy, my grandfather used to refer to all black people as "Boy". But he was born in the 1880s. We weren't.

More recently, the Postal Service embarassingly mixed up one Black cowboy in the 1994 Legends of the West series with another Black cowboy. Do they all look alike? I don't think they do.But at least in this modern series the Indians were given their actual names, and the real Black cowboy got a different stamp.

Before the modern era, women almost never appeared on stamps. How can that be? By choosing to honor almost entirely political figures instead of ordinary and lesser known people, you can easily do that. We don't do that anymore.

In 1960, maybe embarrassed by its own stamp-issuing policies, the Post Office issued a really strange stamp, the "American Woman" stamp. Can you imagine an "American Man" stamp? Did they suddenly realized that for years they'd forgotten to include almost any women on stamps? Was this to make up for that? Why not honor actual women who did something? That's what we do today. If it's PC, good.

The old rules of issuing stamps in the U.S. before the modern era were (a) never identify the Black person or Indian you're showing on the stamp, (b) honor men nearly all the time, women almost never. We don't do that today. Good for us and no one is going to apologize for it.

As for the "Retarded Children Can Be Helped" stamp, it was issued nearly half a century ago in 1974. Back then, the word "retarded" was widely used without offense. However, that term is no longer used because it acquired a kind of jokey, adolescent meaning that we wouldn't be comfortable with today. We wouldn't use that term on a stamp today. We try to be respectful.

There are lots of racial, ethnic, sexual words once used that people don't use anymore. It's part of not treating people as second-class. That's a good thing. Many were derogatory terms for immigrant groups, some for homosexuals, many for women, and so on. All part of the habit of insulting people who were different in order to prove how superior you believed you were to them. I could list a dozen of them here if you'd like. No, on second thought, I don't think I will.

Stamp Collecting, which is sometimes described rightly or wrongly as a dying hobby, is today populated mostly by older white men. Many of them don't like "political correctness" because it inconveniences them. But it's not that hard to avoid insulting people. How would you feel if the Postal Service issued a stamp honoring "Old Codgers"? Make you feel good?

Things change over time. It's not that hard to adapt. Stop complaining that things change. You know, like old people do all the time.
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Edited by DrewM - 03/21/2020 7:27 pm
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Posted 03/21/2020   7:38 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add rogdcam to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
Drew - Your generalization that philately is populated mostly by older white men that do not like political correctness because it inconveniences them is quite frankly not in the least politically correct itself unless you feel that somehow it is OK to denigrate an entire class of people based upon their age and skin color and predetermine what they ALL think because they are white and old (whatever old is defined as).

I might add that your avatar might be deemed by some as not being PC given that George Washington owned slaves his entire adult life.

See how that works?

And then there is this:


1. A college diversity-training course taught that it was culturally insensitive to expect people to be on time.

A Clemson University training course taught its attendees that it is offensive to expect people to be on time, because "time may be considered fluid" in other cultures.-

2. The phrase "trigger warning" was deemed a trigger.

According to a piece in Everyday Feminism, "trigger warning" is actually in itself a trigger — because it could "be re-traumatizing for folks who have suffered military, police, and other forms of violence." (The piece recommended using "content warning" instead.)

3. A professor was accused of sexual harassment for saying that effort is 10 percent of the grade.

A Brooklyn College of City University of New York professor says he was forced to change his syllabus after he was accused of "sexual harrassment" for stating that effort was 10 percent of the grade.
4. A campus survey included a trigger warning to caution college students that it may contain "anatomical names of body parts."
The survey was distributed at several major universities — because, apparently, college students just might not be able to handle the kinds of words that most kids hear in their middle-school biology classes.

5. University researchers demanded that we accept people who "identify as real vampires."

Apparently, it's the least we can do to prevent anti-vampire discrimination.

6. A Seattle-area councilman was concerned about the city hosing poop off of its sidewalks because he thought that it might seem too racially insensitive.

The area in question reportedly stank like "urine and excrement" — but one councilman was worried that hosing it down could be a microaggression.

7. A bathing-suit advertisement was criticized for being "sexist" because it depicted a woman in a bathing suit.

I thought it was normal for product advertisements to depict the product that they're selling — but apparently, I was wrong.

8. Some feminists decided that "hats" were both racist and transphobic.

Why? Well, because not all women have vaginas, and not all vaginas are pink, of course.

9. A professor claimed that the small chairs in preschools are sexist, "disempowering," and "problematic."

Apparently, it makes no difference that preschoolers are small people.

10. College students decided against bringing a camel to school for a "Hump Day" event, due to concerns about racism.

Students at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota were worried that the presence of a camel might offend Middle Eastern students.

11. A school in Seattle reportedly insisted that Easter eggs be called "spring spheres."

Maybe calling them, simply, "eggs" would still have been too religious? Hard to say.

12. A group of Berkeley students insisted that they could not take their in-class exam due to their lack of privilege.

Apparently, test-taking was just too emotionally taxing for some University of Berkeley students to be able to handle.

13. The phrase "long time, no see" was reportedly declared to be "derogatory" toward Asians.

A student at Colorado State University said she was told that she shouldn't use the phrase — despite the fact that even NPR admits that "it is so widespread as a greeting that there's nothing to indicate the term's origins, be they Native American or Mandarin Chinese."

14. A college newspaper changed its name from "The Bullet" because its editors were concerned that that name was too dangerous.

The University of Mary Washington changed its newspaper's name from "The Bullet" to "The Blue and GrayPress" — because its editors were worried that the old name "propagated violence."

15. Lecturers were warned that capital letters might scare students and that they should avoid using them.

Journalism lecturers at Leeds Trinity University were instructed to avoid using all caps when communicating with students, because it might make them too afraid to do the assignment.

16. A campus-wide email told white students to stop wearing hooped earrings, because doing so was cultural appropriation.

A resident assistant at Pitzer College sent an email to her entire school claiming that white girls wearing hooped earrings was offensive to "the black and brown bodies who typically wear hooped earrings."

17. A campus Christian club was found guilty of discrimination for requiring its leaders to be Christians.

Apparently, the Chico State University club's rules violated a 2011 executive order.

18. Oxford University law students were told that they didn't have to learn about rape or violence law if they found it too triggering.

Undergraduate law students were reportedly allowed to leave during any lessons about such material if they felt uncomfortable.

19. The word "too" was declared sexist.

According to a piece in the Huffington Post, the adverb has "deprived" "most women" "of self-satisfaction and appreciation."

20. A liberal author demanded that "normal people" avoid wearing any kind of red hat, because all red hats can be too scary.
Sorry, Washington Nationals fans.

21. Skinny eyebrows were declared "cultural appropriation."

Apparently, it is offensive to tweeze your eyebrows a lot if you're not Latina. (Note: Thick eyebrow styles were called "cultural appropriation" during the 2010s, too.)

22. Evergreen State University told professors to take student protesters' feelings into account when grading them.

Apparently, their "emotional commitment" to protesting should be taken into account when evaluating their academic work. (Apparently, grading classwork based on, you know, classwork would be too insensitive.)

23. A lot of college kids were upset about The Vagina Monologues.
Several colleges and universities either canceled or adapted performances of The Vagina Monologues over concerns about excluding women without vaginas. One school, Southwestern University in Texas, canceled theirs for another reason: because a white lady wrote it.
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Edited by rogdcam - 03/21/2020 7:47 pm
Valued Member
Ireland
292 Posts
Posted 03/21/2020   7:39 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add FitzjamesHorse to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
DrewM makes very valid points.
It is not just USA of course.
In the 1990s, I wrote an article in Irish Stamp News in which I drew attention to the fact that only six women had appeared on Irish stamps and four of them were nuns. There is thankfully a redressing of this imbalance in the last two decades and speaking as an Irish person I love how women are so influential in Irish life, the most welcome development in my lifetime. The reasons are complex so forgive me if I pay no heed to the stereotypical reasons.
In relation to Stamp Collecting itself, some 30 years ago I was at a major exhibition in London and I heard a collector make a very racist comment about African nations. He dismissed these nations saying that Hell would freeze over before he used names other than Bechuanaland, Basutoland, Rhodesia etc. Of course the dealer agreed with the collector.
The exchange left a profound effect on me. Id hate people to think I am like that.
As Drew notes we are in a dying hobby and while I agree with his sentiments " I think the term "mostly older white men" is too provocative as maybe its not diplomatically correct as it plays into a sense of faux victimhood. There are some older white men who would form a "Me Too" movement to raise concerns about the terrible time there are having.
But there is a kinda "group" think within Stamp Collecting as indeed there is in many interest groups.
For example, I used to ride horses a lot (you might have worked that out from the screen name but I am a dazzling urbanite and I dont like the idea of fox-hunting but most horsey people do. And I learned that it was best to keep my mouth shut.
On the other hand my screen name indicates an interest in 18th century "Jacobite" and French history but surprisingly there are modern (sic) Jacobite groups who still believe in those values such as divine right of kings and to them I am a dangerous "satanic" (yes the first democrat and republican was Lucifer...he thought he was as good as GOD).

It is "group think" and rather like the man 30 years ago who cant bring himself to say "Lesotho", "Zambia" or "Botswana", there is a kinda narrative set especially in a hobby where a large part is "nostalgia".
With deference to Drews excellent comment, I think that "nostalgia quotient" is much more a factor than "older white men"...not least because I am an older white man.
I have never based my friendships on the politics, creed or colour of person but I draw the line at racism, homophobia, sexism, islamophobia, anti-semitism, imperialism etc.
In that context I think we are a much more diverse hobby than appearances suggest but we should not fall into the trap of allowing the most extreme to be recognised as representing our broad church.
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Edited by FitzjamesHorse - 03/21/2020 7:57 pm
Bedrock Of The Community
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Posted 03/21/2020   8:14 pm  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add revcollector to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
The fact that there are ignorant fools in the world does not make DrewM's points any less valid. Such people have always existed.
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Posted 03/22/2020   06:19 am  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add angore to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
There has always been people that lack empathy (no need to tie to some demographic) and then there are others that try to enforce their idea of empathy or other social protocol.
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Al
Edited by angore - 03/22/2020 06:28 am
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Posted 03/22/2020   07:51 am  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add 51studebaker to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
There is a big difference between having true compassion and consideration towards other people and virtual signaling.

I have been apart of conversations where highly inconsiderate people are perfectly politically correct. Virtual signaling is easy; wearing a t-shirt proclaiming righteousness, using the current politically correct pronouns, or posting your PC position is easy and actually means very little. What is meaningful is how you treat other people, how you behave when no one is looking. Frankly the most compassionate people I know rarely if ever signal their virtues.

And there are many gray areas in human behavior. I get treated by a healthcare provider who uses words which are clearly considered not politically correct today. From what I have observed over the last 5 years, he provides compassionate and considerate healthcare to everyone he treats. He also moonlights as a First Responder and won an award for entering a fiery crash to pull several non-white children from it, saving their lives while putting his own at risk.
This is a guy who you would want to be there to help you if you were in trouble no matter who you are yet I have heard him use obvious politically incorrect language. Should society judge people on their use of language or should it judge people on their actions and behavior?
Don
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Posted 03/22/2020   08:19 am  Show Profile Bookmark this reply Add jkelley01938 to your friends list  Get a Link to this Reply
I am so tired of hearing about being politically correct. Like racism. Everything is racist. Everything. I am so tired of it.

Jack Kelley
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