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| A title that many strive for (market business news) |
The word “chief” will no longer be used in reference to job titles in the San Francisco Unified School District in an effort, school officials said, to avoid the word’s connotation with Native Americans.The leader of a tribe is referred to as "chief", but the term, IMHO, has long ago ceased to have its principal association with Native Americans.
"Chief" is employed in U.S. military ranks, from "Chief" Petty Officer to Joint Chiefs of Staff to Commander-in-Chief. Used colloquially, "chief" is a useful term that combines authority, informality, and affection. I have never heard it used pejoratively or mockingly.
And the word doesn't even come from the Native American language. It's Old French:
c. 1300, "head, leader, captain; the principal or most important part of anything;" from Old French chief "leader, ruler, head" of something, "capital city" (10c., Modern French chef), from Vulgar Latin *capum, from Latin caput "head," also "leader, chief person; summit; capital city" (from PIE root *kaput- "head"). Meaning "head of a clan" is from 1570s; later extended to headmen of Native American tribes (by 1713; William Penn, 1680s, called them kings). Commander-in-chief is attested from 1660s.Normally I wouldn't care about words that organizations choose to use internally, but we have seen what happens when woke-ism declares itself to be the arbiter of acceptable ways to communicate in schools.
Indoctrinated intolerance leaches out from the schools to society, and pretty soon the products of the school system are cancelling people because of the way they speak.
In February three members of the San Francisco Board of Education were recalled because they spent their time renaming schools, replacing merit-based admission with a lottery system at Lowell High, and dragging their feet on re-opening. It looks like not everyone got the message.
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