Help with a question of morality / political correctness?

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I've created a sort of dictionary / thesaurus containing more than 100,000 French words translated to English to include in some software I've written for public release. The words have been automatically collected from various out of copyright and public domain sources. Personally I have read only a fraction of the words included. Today I noticed that thesaurus definitions for the word Negro also include the offensive words n**ger and c**n.

Should I delete those words because they are offensive or leave them in because they are historical synonyms for Negro? Should I censor my dictionary or not? I honestly don't know what to do here. Maintain historical accuracy or censor? If I start censoring then where does the slippery slope of political correctness end?

Leave them in with some sort of an added footnote or annotation?

I'd take them out. They're slurs not synonyms with black or negro. Although I guess negro is considered a slur now too.

I don't think they are synonyms. If they are slang, then you could leave them out.
But what is the purpose behind the thesaurus? If it is to aid writers then those words could be useful. Like if I were writing a story about the old south or civil rights movement.

I would likely remove them simply because they are of no good or practical day-to-day use, and I would consider their deletion an altruistic act of civility and not an act of literary censorship or mere political correctness.

The offensive words are in relation to the French word "nègre". I suppose the English translation should be faithful to the accepted meaning of this French word as it was used in the nineteenth / early twentieth century. Does anyone know French well enough to advise if the French word simply implies "Negro" - the accepted word for a black person at the time, or if it has/had offensive connotations?

The full translation text is:

nègre = negro, ghost writer, n**ger, c**n.


Edit: I've just checked in my Oxford English dictionary and it has entries for both offensive words but flags them both as (Offensive). Maybe that is the way to go. Include them but mark them as such.

I wonder how many of the other hundred thousand translations are worth closer attention

Most thesauri I've read (yeah, I'm the kind of person who actually reads thesauri ) have had those and similar racial slurs included, but they're clearly marked as 'derogatory' or 'offensive'. I would assume that's the usual procedure.

I guess I'm not certain what's being done - editing your own personal dictionary or editing something that hundreds of thousands of people will be reading?

If its just yours - do whatever you want, hardly matters. Other than that though, it is important for humanity to know the caveats and weaknesses of its own nature, ie. the less cogniscent we are of past mistakes and blunders the more likely we are to relive them. Its debatable whether editing one specific dictionary (unless your a head editor at Merriam Webster) will have such a broad reaching effect but overall though we do need to remember that racism was once a strong force in the world, that we apprehended it as horrifically incorrect when we used it as a measure of human equality/inequality, and that the proclivity to go that route is something that should in fact be fought, just as much as the urge to scream racism/sexism if sensitive societal dynamics are analyzed or discussed; both habitually miss reality and ultimately hold humanity back.

I would leave it in with an explanation that these words are offensive and advise against their use.

On the issue of entomology I was under the impression that the use of negro to identify a dark skin person was of Spanish / Portuguese origin from around the mid 1400's, negro simply means black in Spanish / Portuguese and it was used to describe the locals in Africa. So it is not a French word at all

Yes. That would do it. An annotation such as "considered by many to be offensive".

ruveyn

If you start with this, there is no end. What do you for example with 'dar es salaam'? Considered by many to be offensive?

I don't know. But pointing out that a certain word or phrase is considered by many to be offensive simply states a fact. A dictionary should be factual and not a perscription for propriety. If you look in The American Heritage diction the entry for the word "n****r" reads "Offensive Slang 1A Used as a disparaging term for a black person ...." or the entry for "s**thead" -- Vulgar Slang An inept, foolish or contemptible person ....


etc. etc. etc.

ruveyn

I dont know the purpose of this digital dictionary.
But my mental image of a typical user would be a French businessan representing his company in America.

I can envision this hapless executive innocently using the word "coon" and "N-gr" in certain stiuations here in the USA - and - well -loosing the account--- maybe even loosing his life!

Id say leave them out.
Unless you have sapce to put in disclaimers.
But it would be no crime to just omit them.

A dictionary is supposed to accurately describe word usage. Leaving out facts, regardless of how distasteful the fact may be is not the way to go.

ruveyn