Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 19, 1994 TAG: 9411020011
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
These days, it's hard to keep up with near-daily additions to the politically incorrect dictionary, and to avoid every expression that might offend somebody. No more going Dutch, feeling gypped, welching on bets, getting off scot-free. In Colorado, ``Dead End'' street signs are being taken down, lest they hurt anyone's feelings.
It's hard, though, to sympathize with Walter Barbee, appointed by Gov. George Allen to a task force studying waste in state government, who recently referred to some members of state road crews as ``wetbacks.''
Barbee, during a public discussion of the state's contracting with private businesses, said he'd noticed that trash pickup crews had plenty of ``wetbacks on the job.'' That was offensive to, among others, the first Latino to a Virginia Cabinet, state Transportation Secretary Robert E. Martinez. Neither Martinez nor Allen was amused.
Barbee, head of the conservative Family Foundation, has apologized. Martinez accepted, saying he recognized that people from some parts of Virginia ``just haven't known a lot of Hispanics.''
But Barbee is from ethnically diverse Fairfax County, and his explanation - that it didn't cross his mind that the word would offend anybody - seems like a, forgive the expression, cop-out.
Wetback - which originated as a reference to Mexican laborers who illegally entered the United States by swimming the Rio Grande - has long been considered an ethnic slur. If Barbee didn't mean it in a derogatory sense, what exactly did he mean by it?
by CNB