Political correctness in Seattle

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

Political correctness: �Brown bag,� �citizens� are out at City Hall
Public affairs officers at Seattle city agencies were advised in a recent memo that use of the phrases �brown bag� and �citizens� are potentially offensive, and that the words must be chosen.

�Luckily, we�ve got options,� Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in a missive entitled �On �brown bags, �citizens� and language�.

�For �brown bag,� try �lunch-and-learn� or �sack lunch,�� wrote Bronstein. �For �citizens,� how about �residents?� (Our Citizens Service Bureau became the Customer Service Bureau a few years ago.) Just thought I�d bring this up. Language matters, and the city has entrusted us with the keyboards.�

What could be the offense of using �brown bag� or �citizens,� especially having witness Mayor Mike McGinn�s special pleasure at the swearing in of new U.S. citizens at the Seattle Center on Independence Day.

�This issue came up in one of the departments and I thought I�d send it around as an fyi for your consideration. We often use the expression �brown bag� to designate a bring-your-own lunch time event. We also use the word �citizens� as a synonym for �residents.�

�Innocuous phrases, right? Mm, not so much for. For some people, the phrase �brown bag� calls up ugly associations with use of the expression �brown bag� to determine if people�s skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event, a home, etc.

��Citizens� is a different case: We sometimes use it as another way of saying �members of the public� � except for all the members of the public who aren�t actually citizens but who live and work here.�

I think that Citizen is exactly the right word to use -- the employees of the City need to remember that it is the Citizens who put them there and pay their salaries. The city employees are public servants. The demonization of brown-bag is just downright silly...