That's never going to happen, because the politics of avoiding offense is decided by aging bra-burning lesbian-wannabe feminists in academic "study circles" who haphazardly decide that something is now offensive and must be banned at all costs.

Well, maybe. In this particular case, though, offensiveness -- or offendedness -- is simply imported from the US. The word "nigger" was a non-offensive term for "black person" in Britain right up into the 60s, and, like I said, "coloured" was considered polite through the 80s. What we have is a case of British West Indians gradually moving from their own dialect into Black American English, thanks to rap and films and TV. I'm not necessarily against that; I just think that there's a difference between racism and mere failure to keep up with the linguistic evolution of a particular group of Britons.

As Berke Breathed once asked, if "coloured" is offensive, is it OK to say "The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People"?

I didn't say they weren't in the US -- in fact, I was thinking of a few right down the hall here ...

"As Berke Breathed once asked, if "coloured" is offensive, is it OK to say "The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People"?"

Nobody has ever resolved that paradox.

Historically in the US, "nigger" was the perjorative, and "colored" was not, at least back in the duck-and-cover Cold War US when I was a child. As far as I know, "nigger" has always been a pejorative in the US. "Colored" became PI in the 70s, when the aging lesbian-wannabe feminists were burning their bras, and they decided "black" was to be the PC term. Of course, now "black" is PI, in favor of that hyphenated term I will not type.

All haphazard, all nonsense. But such is life on a university campus.