Potentially Offensive Words: Seattle Proposes Ban on 'Brown Bag', 'Citizen'

Government officials is Seattle have proposed a ban on the terms "brown bag" and "citizen" due to their potentially offensive nature, Fox News reports.

According to a report by KOMO TV, the city's Office of Civil Rights have began instructing city employees to avoid the terms because some find them offensive. Instead of "citizen," the word "resident" has been suggested and may no longer be used in official documents or discussions.

In a memo written by Bronstein, she suggests the terms and phrases "lunch-and-learn" or "sack lunch" as opposed to "brown bag."

In an interview with KIRO Radio, Elliot Bronstein of the Office of Civil Rights explained her rationale:

"For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home."

Bronstein also mentioned that using the term "resident" instead of "citizen" is more appropriate for Seattle's population, as she claims that not everyone living in Seattle is an actual citizen:

"They are legal residents of the United States and they are residents of Seattle," she said. "They pay taxes and if we use a term like citizens in common use, then it doesn't include a lot of folks."

According to KOMO, Seattle has previously legislated language before, voting out gender-specific words from official documents. The station notes "Freshman are now 'first-years,' journeymen are 'journey-level,' and penmanship is simply 'handwriting."

In New York, dinosaurs and birthdays were banned from tests in March 2012 to avoid evoking "unpleasant emotions in the students." Because of the relation of evolution to dinosaurs and because birthdays are not celebrated by Jehovah's Witnesses, the words were revoked.

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