know that you are ONLY supposed to refer to people of your rough general skin color as WHITE? No, I'm not kidding. I know, I know. Why you could have knocked me over with a pin feather.

You see tried to vary my adjective use last night and substituted 'Caucasian' for 'White' and got jumped on by a supposedly reasonable poster. He, and I assume it was a HE, got all kinds of upset, going so far as to imply that I was an Archie Bunker sort of individual because I got tired of writing White. Perhaps he was just having a bad brain day.

You know, as writers, we are rather limited as to how we can refer to the great oppressors of the masses. I can, for instance call HIM [it's always a he, isn't it?] White or I can call him [if I want to be offensive to the subject in question] Whitey, Honky, Fey, or make up some sort of funky new term that will be momentarily cute but thereafter confusing to readers, unless the masses accept the term in general usage. Little chance of that happening.

Come to think of it I could switch to 'Anglo-Saxon'. Would that term be less offensive to certain racially tender sensibilities than Caucasian? Or as a writer am I only allowed to restrict word usage to 'White'?

Now proper terminology is not restricted only to Caucasians [Ooops! Pardon that slip. I meant Whites] in my youth, in mixed company, should the subject arise for some reason, [and once in a rare blue moon, White people DID discuss race relations in what passed for civilized manners among their backward kind] we were instructed to name African-Americans in general reference terms as Colored. This was because the term Negro was a bit to close in general sound to the nuclear 'N' word. A slip of the tongue leads to broken teeth, eh; or at least to injured feelings? Then for some reason Colored was out and Black was substituted. Then a decade or so later the term 'African-American' supplanted 'Black'. NOW Black seems to be sliding back into preferred usage.

I have been using the term African-American as that was the last official word I heard on the subject. Why inadvertently give offense?

Unfortunately it doesn't end there. We might as well address the hot topic nomenclature of other races or ethnic groups. Is it, for instance, Hispanic or Latino/Latina? How about Native-American? I KNOW that it is no longer remotely correct to say Indian when you mean Native-American, or is it? Actually, when sending charitable donations to Native-American organizations we frequently see references in the literature to Indians. It's all so confusing!

We also could go into Middle Eastern racial and ethnic references, but then perhaps there should be a cap on this discussion somewhere.

Oh, and one can't just ignore race. Not in writing when one is actually referring to race relations. Names are rather necessary so as to avoid confusion and embarrassment.

Now I don't care what you call Whites from the standpoint of race relations. I'm not sensitive on the subject in that respect. I just need some other proper term than White so as to vary the writing.

So does anyone know of any proper and respectful alternate terminology in regard to Whites as it appears to be NOT PC any longer to refer to them as Caucasians. Please tell a struggling writer what to do in this regard when referring to people of relatively pale skin color with the nasty habit of running things.

It pays to stay up to date with trends.