Personally, I prefer gender-neutral terms because they are shorter and more efficient...but I really don't care whether people call me "Chair" or "Chairman" or "Chairwoman," so long as I'm still the boss.
Gotta say, though, Jayne, I am deeply suspicious of the idea that referring to either blackboards or black coffee is EVER considered racist by ANYONE. Both sound like deliberately ridiculous and purely hypothetical examples of "Political Correctness--where will it end?"
At most, these might--MIGHT--be things that a few overanxious white people, whose primary goal in life is to Avoid Looking Bad, worry about, but I highly doubt that it is a real concern to actual ethnic minorities, who tend to have far, far more important things to get agitated about. ("Choose your battles" and all that.)
I mainly hear the pejorative "PC" rolled out by the sorts of privileged people who used to enjoy telling jokes that pissed on the underprivileged. Now they resent having to watch their language even when among other privileged people, lest someone call their contemptuous comments racist or homophobic or snobbish or whatever.
(Of course, none of them are ACTUALLY racists or homophobes or snobs--they're just convinced of their inherent superiority, which happens to be aligned with their race and sexual orientation and class PURELY BY ACCIDENT.)
Precisely because they are privileged, the horror of being "mistakenly" thought a racist or homophobe or snob is among the worst things that ever happens to them. And therefore such social disapprobation--a.k.a. Political Correctness--is one of the Major Ills of Modern Society, about which Something Must Be Done.
Actual racism and homophobia and poverty can take a back burner until these folks' God-given* right to piss on the underprivileged is restored.
* God having seen fit to make them privileged in the first place. Cf. verse 3 of Mrs. Cecil Alexander's lovely hymn, "All Things Bright and Beautiful":
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
We nasty godless liberals are forever trying to upend the social order that God Himself ordained. We're all bound for hell, I'm sure, for not realizing that "Love thy neighbor" is only supposed to refer to the guy in the next castle. But I digress.