Sir, - Have your readers not had enough of Kevin Myers's tiresome whinging on the subject of political correctness (An Irishman's Diary, September 11th)? Mr Myers accuses us of cowardice and racism for holding a special place in our political brains for the people descended from the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, and for referring to them as Native Americans. We do not think, Mr Myers attests; rather we submit placidly to "classically agenda-driven linguistic politics".
Clearly, the singular experience of Native Americans in modern history warrants that special place and designation. When Columbus first graced Caribbean shores, there were as many as 12 million Native Americans living north of the Rio Grande. By 1900 they had been reduced to around 200,000. The interim history of extermination, expropriation, transplantation and indoctrination may have appropriate parallels in European history, but Mr Myers makes a travesty of these also with his silly comparisons with French Belgians, Welsh Celts, etc., etc.
Mr Myers should reconsider his own contemporary history. "Political correctness" is a term coined by ideologues on the American Right to demonise a robust historical revisionism that since the 1960s has maintained a tenuous foothold in the academy and the embattled and tiny Left media. Part of that demonised legacy has been a deeper understanding of the role of Native Americans, African Americans and women in American history and society, the abandonment of formerly sacred myths, and the potential at least of greater mutual respect and recognition between races and genders. Reflecting these changes, nomenclatures have been reinvented.
An old version of PC, defended by Mr Myers (Indians, Miss, Blacks), is being replaced by a new one (Native Americans, Ms, African Americans). For those inspired by Mr Myers to think about linguistic politics, the question is: whose side are you on? Are you for striving for historical truth, for mutual respect between individuals and cultures, for equality? Or are you with the misogynists, slavers, exterminators, and expropriators - the heroes of a now disgraced version of history? Where do Mr Myers's sentiments lie? - Yours, etc.,
From Martin W. Dowling
Adelaide Park, Belfast BT9.