Tamar, many moons ago during summer vacation I took a job as a drainlayer. It was XY-chromosome-heaven... working outside in summer, heavy physical labor, large machines making big holes and smashing stuff up, beers with the team every evening...

Having become accustomed to varsity PC I was surprised to discover that my maori drainlayer pals thought nothing of being called or calling another maori by terms that I would have expected to be abhorent. One of the highlights of my drainlaying career was seeing a maori calling his fair-skinned Irish boss a "dirty black b*stard"! Nobody except me seemed to find that interesting.

Some would say these people who spend their days unblocking sewers and covered in filth have so little self-respect that they become inured to it. That wasn't my read at all. They had a great deal of pride in their competence and contribution to society. I once watched a drainlayer and his toothless foreman lay 100 yards of gently sloping concrete pipe, laying length after length completely straight by standing at opposite ends with two crossed pieces of wood and making gestures to each other. Incredible. These days they need lasers to achieve it.

I wonder whether people who work inside all their lives over-analyze stuff and create extra barriers that we can then feel good about dismantling again. Those uneducated men were comparitively comfortable in their own skins and had more to worry about than whether somebody used a label that might fall under the forbidden "racist" category.