It's so confusing. I was born end of the 70s, so raised in the 80s, I'm white and the word P*** shop was used flippantly and the term coloured was the word most used for black people (not other ethnicities). My best friend since aged 6 had a white English mum and black African dad and used to say she was half-caste.
One thing I do recall is my best friend saying that many white girls shunned her for not being white and many black girls did the same as she wasn't black. Even as I child I couldn't get my head round this. She identified as white incidentally, liked white boys, wasn't into black culture, history, music, or boys.
Years later, in my 20s, I used the term half-caste and received a gasp of horror from whoever it was and they said I must use the term mixed-race. Confused, I asked my best friend and she said she still referred to herself as half-caste, but yeah some people prefer mixed-race.
Fast forward another decade, I was working for a retailer in its photo studio and noticed the models were all white, so started making a conscious effort for model bookings to be more diverse, white, black, Asian, mixed-race. One day I was looking to book a mixed-race child and the white lady at the model agency corrected me and said I shouldn't used that word, it's "dual-heritage"! I asked my best friend again and she laughed her head off and said, surely it's
mixed-heritage if they want to to get sniffy about it, as you're assuming that the person only had two types of ethnicity in them.
Nowadays, it's people of colour, which I understand to be anyone not white (is that correct?), but my black friends still refer to themselves as black.
It's a minefield. I feel we've come such a long way in some ways, but gone back in many others.
Also, when I was 19 (in 1996), I moved to London for my job and was temporarily living with my aunty while hunting for a place, she was 30, so we were very close in age, but it she was a totally different generation, being the youngest of my dad's siblings. One day she asked me if I would take her 10 year old daughter to the P*** shop to get a loaf of bread and some sweets. I was horrified and asked her to not use that word. She genuinely couldn't see what the problem was. She laughed and said, that's what it's called. Everyone calls it that.
I corrected her and said not everyone calls it that and besides P*** being a derogatory term, how did she know the shop keeper was from Pakistan? Maybe they were from India, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka. I also pointed out that her daughter was hearing the term P*** used so flippantly, that tomorrow she could go to school and innocently refer to another child by this term, without meaning any offence.
My aunty laughed and said, "Sorry, please can you go to the Asian outlet and get a loaf and sweets!"
I even heard someone use the 70s term for Chinese the other month when referring to going to get a takeaway. They were my age and thought I was being over sensitive.
Thing is, I'm also that person that thinks the world has gone mad in other respects when people say we can't say Merry Christmas anymore as it will upset other cultures and religions. Utter rubbish. I reckon it's right-wing white people making this up to whip up hatred.
I bought a pack of Christmas cards online this year and was fuming that they had the yucky "happy holidays" inside them instead of "merry Christmas", I've never met anyone who's offended by Christmas (except Jehovah's witnesses), my Hindu neighbours celebrate it and posted us a card, my Muslim neighbours don't celebrate it, but dropped us a card and a gift on Christmas Eve (we did drop them a card and home baking for Eid to be fair). The local mosque collected food and presents for 100 local elderly people for Christmas too.
I just wish the world could find a happy medium. Where we are all considerate to others and the rules for etiquette are clear. But it won't happen. Times change and terminology changes.
Queer used to be an insult, now some people identify as queer. LGBT was a term, then it was LGBT+, then LGBTQ+. Again, I can't keep up. I've gay, bisexual and trans friends, who all use different terminology. As a white, heterosexual person, I don't know what it's like to be in a minority. Actually, I'm vegan!
I get a lot of
tit, abuse and hate for that, and I honestly rarely talk about it, and I never push my beliefs on anyone, I just quietly get on with it. But the absolute vitriol and grief I get from some people is bizarre! Out for a meal for a friend's birthday, I order a dish and some bloke I've never met before in the group notices it's vegan and starts verbally attacking me. Yeah, that's fun.
Joking aside, I know veganism isn't the same and I can't genuinely ever understand what it's like for people in a minority who go through life feeling persecuted, or different and I'm constantly walking on eggshells, which I'm happy to do, so as not to not offend, but just wish it was clearer. Diversity is beautiful.
theres an article today about her drawing attention to how cameras zoom in to chest apparently.
. I thought she only got smacky when Pete Doherty was on the scene?
Seem to remember having to snort off a car bonnet instead outside once 
