Words can and have been used to harm and oppress people and races in this country and abroad. America has long been a melting pot for various ethnicities and taking the good with the bad has also experienced many different waves of racism. Before this century, and more accurately before the civil rights movement, many ethnicities, and African-Americans in particular, were held down by highly negatively loaded language. From the time of slavery African-Americans where held down by various words that today hold such engrained meanings and are so hate charged that mentioning them even for analytical purposes in this essay would be risky. Later on new groups got exposed to these types of words as Irish, Italian and whatever the newest immigrant group of the period was, got negatively charged ethic slurs 'assigned' to them. In it initial intent, to eliminate harmful and hurtful words from common use the move towards political correctness was highly successful. In other ways it may have set back ethnic relations more than anyone could have expected.

As necessary as it is in many ways, political correctness does have one major drawback, that being that it furthers

Some common words found in the essay are:
Irish Italian, , African American, political correctness, cult ethnicity, politically correct, ethnic relations, ethnic background,
Approximate Word count = 791
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)