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I say this because, well let's face it, I can occasionally tend to whine. And leaving Space (you know, with the Capital S - like the Moon) left me annoyed, and blah blah blah.
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But when I was little (in Los Angeles! in the 60s and 70s!) there was still a lot of very overt discrimination. One of the my first High School dances, I took a black girl (the Sophomore Class Homing Coming Queen - but that didn't matter) and my dad and stepmother sat me down to discuss how if I married or dated a colored girl this would be very hard on me AND the family for the rest of my life (and look how good I listened.... I didn't marry a African American OR a girl!).
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I use to dance to music in my head when I was younger and my dad and his friends from construction sites called me their little n****r.
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Fags, gooks, spics and beaners were common words (mainly from adults) as I grew up. Ugly words used by everyday people in dismissing whole groups.
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Think about that. These words weren't used to taunt, they were used in everyday conversation to dismiss a class of humans from people "regular people". Maybe thinks still aren't great or perfect - but they are a hell of a lot better.
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For all the shit we give being "politically correct" - underneath it we don't even question the basic premise - that some words are offensive to people as human beings and we need to think about that.
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I mean it might be dumb and we might complain about having to call someone "mentally challenged" instead of a retard. But beneath that annoyance is a GREAT thing. "Retard" use to be a word to describe a sub-human. A word to describe something (not someone) that was to be locked away and not seen again. People use the word today because "Retard" is a funnier / meanier / better word to them. But the achievement hereis that isn't used as a dagger against the group of "Mentally Challenged" people.
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When you say someone is a "retard", even if it is offensive - no one is really implying "this thing is not a person, should not be treated as a real person and should be locked away."
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We are arguing about hate speech now - (which is a great discussion and "good for us"... whatever). But "better for us", truly hooray for this country and her people, is the fact we are talking about hate speech BECAUSE truly hateful actions are already outside the boundaries of what we, as Americans, accept. It that wasn't laws, it was beliefs. And we have moved there in a relatively short time - culture wise.
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So... hat's off to our parents and our grandparents - who held beliefs that were wrong and they knew better. And, most often, taught us better than they had been taught - as we do for our families.