A History of Political Correctness

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/penns-water-buffalo-incident-20-years/?all=1

by Aloha • 13 years ago

78 193 13 years ago

_bfhp14• 13 years ago

All this weaponization of the words "political correctness" is quite obviously a nervous white phenomenon, a defense mechanism -- for example, do we talk about the banning of the ethnic studies program and Latino/Latina social studies books in Arizona as "political correctness gone awry"? [1] No, but that's obviously what it is: latin@ teachers exposing latin@ high school students to material [2] that offends white people. If anyone but white people are offended they're "just being PC"; if white people are offended, they get to be "victims of reverse racism"; same for gender of course.

As a colleague of mine put it: "Political correctness, as a concept, is a figment of right wingers, that usually accompanies ideas like agenda, or guilt. I think what we're referring to when speaking of sensitivity is something other than the typical "PC" concept. Inclusivity, and thoughtfulness are nearly unarguably good things.

I think most reactionaries, and lesser angry white guys typically dislike the increased sensitivity that goes along with this more inclusive attitude America has today. No one has a right not to be offended. No one should expect civil treatment 100% of the time; people aren't that thoughtful. Further, there's no responsibility to not harm or injure another's sense of well being through speech.

I'm free to be a racist ignoramus, and alienate anyone I choose to talk to in public, and it's a good thing. It's also a good thing that I will have to face consequences for socially unacceptable behavior. I'm mostly tired of trite apologies from people that lacked the backbone to stand behind their speech, for instance, Tracy Morgan, who repented quickly about his anti-gay stand up. I wish people had the foresight to realize the consequences, and if they decide to say something, they should have enough will to counter criticism as a valid personal opinion, which all types of heinous stuff are. It's heinousness is not the same as lacking in credibility, or serious intent."

FIRE is an explicitly right-wing org whose purpose is to deliberately conflate violation of free-speech rights (which only the government can do) with criticism and banning of certain kinds of speech by non-government people and institutions from their forums and spaces, when it is not illegal to do so. It's a bit like the ADF, whose purpose is to conflate criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism... it also reminds me of people who complain about CPS, but that's just me

[1] http://saveethnicstudies.org/

[2] http://azethnicstudies.com/banned-books

glenra• 13 years ago

it also reminds me of people who complain about CPS, but that's just me

I give up; what does CPS stand for in this context?

_bfhp14• 13 years ago

Child Protective Services, i.e. the thing that discourages people from beating their children. Some see it as "liberal values" being imposed on them or w/e rather than a legitimate attempt to curb violence

msie• 13 years ago

I "fondly" remember "Patriotic Correctness" which the right had no problems supporting. People were called out for not being patriotic: not wearing a flag pin on their lapel, criticizing the military, mistreating the flag, etc. Ah Freedom Fries...

rsheridan63• 13 years ago

How many people were fired or expelled over things like not wearing flag pins?

growupkids2• 13 years ago

Perhaps PC is really about finding offense when none is intended.

arrrg5• 13 years ago

Intention isn’t all that matters.

The point is to be thoughtful about what you say and if someone else says they are offended to actually listen and apologise. Basic empathy and all that.

It’s all quite simple and not very hard to do.

_bfhp14• 13 years ago

What do you mean by "offense"?

crassus5• 13 years ago

PC is fundamentally Marxist[1]. The rules of discourse are completely different from the logical/rationalist discourse you may be used to. Who is speaking matters more than what is said, and those not in a protected class aren't allowed to disagree with progressive ideas, however gently, if their disagreement is "hurtful".

[1] http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/regiftedxmas12.html

dragonwriter3• 13 years ago

"PC" is mostly an artificial construct by which conservatives attempt to construct a persecution narrative by falsely portraying individual expressions of offense by different people in different contexts about different things as if there was a unified group of people who shared all those instances of offense and had a coherent program behind it.

crassus5• 13 years ago

PC doesn't stop at "inclusivity" or "empathy". By threatening the livelihood of any person who says something that offends a progressive who thinks the statement might offend someone of a protected class, PC has a chilling effect on the college classroom. See "The Hidden Impact of Political Correctness"[1]

"What can be done? One option to embrace the PC party line at every opportunity since those who object (i.e., conservatives, Christian fundamentalists) stoically forbear this nonsense and lack the supporting indignation infrastructure. But, for those disinclined to fake it, the only viable option is to avoid anything that might be mangled into offensiveness. Purging the course is hardly fool-proof, but it is relatively undemanding, almost morally painless and students rarely notice the difference.

Let me offer a first-hand example. I once taught the basic American government lecture course and Constitution lecture covered the three-fifths compromise - the Article I, Section 2 provision that counted "other persons" (i.e., slaves and untaxed Indians - blacks are never mentioned by name ) as three-fifths of a person for purposes of House representation. I explained that Southerners wanted to treat slaves as a whole person since this would sharply boost their representation while abolitionist New Englanders proposed counting slaves as zero. Unfortunately, this three-fifths provision has now been interpreted by some black activists (including an African American colleague who stated her misinformed opinion in a public law school lecture) as "proof" of America's racist origins. Black students have probably encountered this historical mistruth elsewhere (Jesse Jackson once endorsed it) and it does appear superficially plausible.

Rather than risk being accused of covering up racism or telling lies, I dropped the topic altogether. I similarly removed all discussion of slavery so students thus never learned that the while the Constitution did not outlaw slavery, it did permit a ban on importing slaves after 1808 and this was, indeed, done - which, in turn, made those slaves already in America exceedingly costly and thus at times too valuable to risk at dangerous labor (I further skipped how the ever-plentiful Irish were instead hired for life-threatening jobs)."

Meanwhile, left-wing students steeped in Political Correctness regularly attempt to shut down and silence speakers that offend them. Recently students at Brown University shouted down a former NYC police commissioner[2] that came to speak at the campus, calling him a "racist" in response to NYC's very successful stop-and-frisk policy designed to get illegal guns off the street. It used to be said that the antidote to bad speech was more speech. Now, the PC lynch mob is feeling its power, since its members know that university administrators will not discipline progressives.

[1] http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2007/09/the_hidden...

[2] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/362874/how-now-brown-ko...

_bfhp14• 13 years ago

"Meanwhile, left-wing students steeped in Political Correctness regularly attempt to shut down and silence speakers that offend them"

Really? I've seen much more of this from Zionist organizations, even on my own campus. Do you denounce the phenomenon of Zionist PC, where every criticism of Irsaeli government policy is offensive and anti-Semitic? Where professors lose their jobs for supporting BDS campaigns? That sure sounds like a load of PC "lynch-mobbing" to me. I wonder why I never hear anyone call it that.

crassus5• 13 years ago

Take another example of pro-PC violence from when Tom Tancredo came to speak at UNC Chapel Hill[1]:

"A host of left-leaning groups banded together to protest the event, starting with a dance party in the Pit and a banner-making session.

The protest worked in disrupting his speech. Seconds after Tancredo started discussing his opposition to the DREAM Act, a classroom window shattered, broken by a rock-throwing protester outside.

"That's it," he said, walking briskly into the hallway with Matheson, through the the acrid scent of pepper spray that still hung in the air, and out Bingham Hall's back door. A student, carrying a cardboard sign that read "NO HATE SPEECH AT UNC," bolted after Tancredo and Matheson, screaming profanity and insults."

The students that participated in the protest had the nuanced modern progressive views towards freedom of speech[2]:

"Despite Tancredo's well-known racist views, the university administrations are defending Tancredo's scheduled appearance at UNC under the guise of ‘freedom of speech.’ But as a statement from SDS at UNC-Chapel Hill makes clear: "[People] like Tancredo do not speak in a vacuum; they support and mobilize racist and unjust actions against groups they oppose.” The statement continues, “We refuse to be silent or participate in meaningless dialogues while right-wing leaders sweep through our country and attempt to steal our human rights."

[1] http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/at-unc-student-protesters-c...

[2]http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/4/24/protests-planned-raci...

jaibot2• 13 years ago

These 'banned' topics were all covered at my public high school in one of the most liberal counties in the country.

king_jester2• 13 years ago

Meanwhile, left-wing students steeped in Political Correctness regularly attempt to shut down and silence speakers that offend them. Recently students at Brown University shouted down a former NYC police commissioner[2] that came to speak at the campus, calling him a "racist" in response to NYC's very successful stop-and-frisk policy designed to get illegal guns off the street.

Its really clear you have very little background on stop and frisk and crime in NYC in general. For the last few decades, violent crime has been a decline in NYC, predating stop and frisk. Stop and frisk has not been demonstrated to be a key factor in that decline. Stop and frisk has been shown to be 2 things: ineffective and racist. Non white people get stopped at extremely high rates and actual stop and frisk stops that uncover an illegal weapon is very low. Ray Kelly was a key proponent of stop and frisk and in suppressing and attempting to hide the statistical data about stop and frisk that clearly shows it is a racist policy that seeks to harass black and hispanic people in NYC.

It used to be said that the antidote to bad speech was more speech. Now, the PC lynch mob is feeling its power, since its members know that university administrators will not discipline progressives.

People are under no obligation to let Ray Kelly speak when the police force he oversaw actively attacked and dismantled your community, and sent to prison or killed your neighbors and family.

smsm4215• 13 years ago

I've read your first link and I can't make much sense for it. They state Latino students are falling behind and they are out to help them - which is a noble goal and would benefit everybody, as basic education is associated with improving virtually every aspect of life of oneself and surroundings. However I can not see how this could be improving by teaching students something like "ethnic studies", whatever this is. Maybe in Arizona they have some different ones, but so far all examples of ethnic studies I've seen could help people be a professor of ethnic studies and not much more, and demand for those is not high enough to support teaching this in schools. I highly doubt teaching something like "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", which is written by a Marxist and starts with the presumption the audience is "oppressed", is going to contribute much to the success of the students in American society. This btw has nothing to do with author being white or not white (I have no idea if he is) or "white" people being offended (most of any people never heard about this book anyway).

I'm not a big fan of the government prescribing what to teach to the children, but if you have government-run schools, that's what you get. As government intervention goes, I don't think something like: "The legislature finds and declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." (this is mentioned as one of the laws that for some reason prevents "ethnic studies" from being taught) is the worst example of it. I have hard time figuring out why one would object to such premise and insist that pupils in government schools should be taught racial hate or resentment.

_bfhp14• 13 years ago

"I highly doubt teaching something like "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", which is written by a Marxist and starts with the presumption the audience is "oppressed", is going to contribute much to the success of the students in American society"

Did you see the results the ethnic studies track had? Huge success.

"I have hard time figuring out why one would object to such premise and insist that pupils in government schools should be taught racial hate or resentment."

But teaching the real history of the US isn't resentment; the act of teaching these books, which may use less mainstream language, is being conflated with teaching resentment against white people and teaching only to latin@ people, at the expense of white people (it's right there in the lawsuit) -- in other words, "PC". It's a complicated issue and the website isn't the most well-designed, I admit. Not the best example; Zionism is a better one.

mynameishere• 13 years ago

It actually goes back to the early fights between socialists and communists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#Early-to-...

Religions change. It used to be about class; now it's about race. No sane person gives it a thought except when they are materially associated with the lunatics who get offended by racial thoughtcrimes.

_bfhp14• 13 years ago

What are "racial thoughtcrimes"? Maybe something like this? http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html

growupkids2• 13 years ago

Nah, that's just either a bad joke, or stupid.

yetanotherphd11• 13 years ago

I believe what he is referring to is the fact that people self-censor their own thoughts, and fear the social repercussions if they don't.

For example, I studied econometrics, and one regression that is often run is regressing CRIME (a dummy variable for whether someone has committed a crime) on a number of right hand side variables, include BLACK, a dummy variable for being Black. Now it is a well known fact that no matter how many right hand side variables you include, the coefficient on BLACK will always be significant and positive. That is, even after accounting for income, education, etc., Black people commit more crime.

Now we are allowed to say this in class, because it is already understood that by getting this far into a PhD, you have proven yourself not to be an evil racist. For example, everyone knows that the positive coefficient on BLACK must be a result of complex social interactions and not genetics.

But ordinary people aren't so sophisticated, so they are not allowed to even know that the coefficient on BLACK is significant. They would certainly be accused of racism for stating the true fact that Blacks commit more crime even after accounting for these other variables. And I assure you that none of us PhD's would come to their defense when they were accused of this. After all, that person might actually be a racist.

So thoughtcrime is thinking bad things about race, which can include true things if you're not in the inner circle of people who are allowed to discuss such matters openly.

smsm4215• 13 years ago

No, this is just silliness. It would be very dangerous (as they claim our whole structure of the society is racist, which means to combat racism we need to destroy it and rebuild anew, along the lines prescribed by these guys - and every attempt I know to do this in history ended in disaster) if anybody would take them seriously, but I don't think anybody does.

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

Sadly I'm afraid of sharing this article.

jaibot2• 13 years ago

Before engaging in any discussion of this genre, I encourage people to take some IATs, if only to have some quantifiable introspection going in.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html

PhasmaFelis4• 13 years ago

So, here's part of the problem: Sandy Hingston mentions some genuinely absurd overreactions (a student enraged when a grocery circular put an Black History Month banner next to an ad for chicken); and she also mentions Jennifer Livingston, who called bullshit on a guy who tried to guilt-trip her for being fat in public; and Hingston implies that both of these are equally bad.

This right here is half the problem. The reason we have people who are offended by everything is because of people who refuse to permit anyone to be offended by anything. Ms. Hingston, their bullshit is an overreaction to your bullshit. If you refuse to acknowledge any difference between oversensitive conniptions and calling out genuine assholes, you really have no business speaking on the subject.

laichzeit02• 13 years ago

"I have the right not to be offended" is a false statement. No one has such a right.

icebraining• 13 years ago

People have the rights we collectively want them to have. If people are punished for offending others, then that right exists, whether you and I like it or not.

pessimizer• 13 years ago

Why the quotes? No one said there was a right not to be offended.

saalweachter• 13 years ago

I feel comfortable saying there is a right not to be abused, even if it is not enshrined in the US Constitution. The dividing line between offensive and abusive is murky and grey, but I still believe there is a line to cross, and that it is desirable not to.

nemesisj• 13 years ago

I think it helps to separate the problem into two spheres. I took the article to be arguing that we've blended the two spheres below:

On a human, moral level if someone is offended by something I've said which I didn't intend to cause offence, I'll feel bad about that and apologise. I don't want that to happen.

But, on a legal/societal level, the above should not be grounds for losing your job, getting sued, etc.

This is certainly the American perspective on free speech - there is freedom of speech, there is no freedom to not be offended.

thaumasiotes• 13 years ago

there is freedom of speech, there is no freedom to not be offended.

Unless, of course, your employer is knowingly or unknowingly inflicting a hostile environment on you.

pbateman• 13 years ago

Here is exactly how you deal with some guy writing in to tell you you're too fat: delete the email and get on with your life.

It's simple, it's easy, it solves the problem.

Of course it's not the modern solution of publicly bullying your correspondent into a retraction while claiming the moral high ground but it works and it's less unpleasant.

icecreampain3• 13 years ago

Using your solution will not get the complainant the media time the person so very much craves.

gizmo6866• 13 years ago

In the language of the article, shouldn't that be "post-modern"?

PhasmaFelis4• 13 years ago

It is, of course, important to pick one's battles; but wherever possible, bullshit should be called out and dragged into the light, not quietly tolerated. Especially when, as in this case, it is widespread, entrenched, pernicious bullshit.

And you've got the "bullying" backwards. It wasn't Ms. Livingston doing it. You should know by now that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a comforting lie we tell to children.

TazeTSchnitzel• 13 years ago

Political Correctness and being insulted are not the same.

The former is institutionalised politeness where we use less objectionable terms. We'll call black people blacks and not niggers or negroes, we'll call call inuit inuit and not eskimos, we'll call Native Americans Native Americans and not Red Indians, and so on.

But being offended is not about PC. Now, yes, PC terms ultimately derive from avoiding using derogatory phrases towards people. But someone suing someone else for being offended by their remark is not "Political Correctness gone mad", as the Daily Mail might say. It is likely just somebody's overreaction.

I think PC culture is a good thing. We take a tiny effort to use more neutral language and it makes a whole lot of difference for some groups of people.

oneeyedpigeon• 13 years ago

Exactly. The right-wing's redefinition of PC, and subsequent use of such as an attack on anything it disagrees with is possibly the biggest strawman of our time.

sverige2• 13 years ago

I am offended that you spelled out the N-word in its entirety. Please edit your post to correct this grievously insulting use of language.

cjoh• 13 years ago

It's too bad that the term political correctness is so generically incorrect. Doing things like swapping out the N word for "african american," dropping the word "retard" from your vocabulary, referring to adult women as "women," and referring to people of non-european descent as more than "oriental" and "mexican" is not "being politically correct," it's doing something that takes you no effort that makes you less of an asshole.

rimantas• 13 years ago

That's the biggest problem with PC: it just makes you to switch your brains off, to the point where blacks who have nothing to do with Africa are called african americans. This PC trend is really retarded.

gizmo6866• 13 years ago

A few years ago, a friend was telling me about a post-colonial African country (I think the Republic of Congo). He mentioned something along the lines of how after they gained independence, the majority of their government was African American.

I almost imminently said something like "thats horrible", thinking that he was implying that America managed to set up our own colonial rule under the guise of independence.

icecreampain3• 13 years ago

PC-types enjoy attacking how people say things, instead of what is being said.

Personal anecdote: I started up a visitation group for the lonely elderly where I used to live because I felt that it must be pretty shitty to be old and alone. Wrote up a website, fixed up a nice pamphlet and organized everything with the municipality. All out of my own pocket.

The PC media interviewed me and they latched on to the fact that, in my personal explanation on the site, I had linked to a news story on a non-PC site that wrote about a municipality in another part of the country that had cut down on the elderly care budget so much that food rationing was implemented.

See, the PC media were far more horrified that I had linked to the site, than they were about the fact that homes for the elderly in a first-world country were even rationing food for the generation that had built the country.

newnewnew6• 13 years ago

PC rule #35 - never link to a non-PC writer, or a writer that links to a non-PC writer. A 3rd degree link is probably okay for now.

rsheridan63• 13 years ago

Why should "oriental" be offensive? It's derived from a word for "eastern." What fool came up with the idea that we should be offended by it, and start using the term "Asian," which could refer to anyone from Tel Aviv to Vladivostok?

Why should "Mexican" be offensive? It's refers to a nationality. Are you offended by "American" or "Japanese," and if not, why should you be offended by "Mexican?"

"Retard" was originally intended to be a clinical term referring derived from a word meaning "slow" or "delayed," which replaced previous terms such as idiot or imbecile. How much gentler can you get? If retard has become perjorative, it's because nobody wants to be what the word refers to, and there's not much you can do about that. If you successfully replace it with a nonsense word, say "quixmar," in ten years "quixmar" will be used as an insult in middle school, become offensive, and have to be replaced. Lather, rinse, repeat.

gms7777• 13 years ago

With regards to "Mexican", I think he meant referring to anyone of hispanic/latino descent as "Mexican". Its offensive in the same way as referring to any Asian nationality as "Chinese".

Cushman3• 13 years ago

Calling someone Mexican is fine if you know they are Mexican. Calling someone Mexican because they're Chilean and that's your word for brown people is offensive precisely because it's a nationality-- you're saying that you don't know, or more likely don't care, that there is more than one country Hispanic people come from.

I can't find a good source on this, but I suspect you're wrong about "retard" being used clinically. The terms "mentally retarded", and "mental retardation", were and still are used in clinical settings to describe delayed development (though they're going out of fashion quickly). The use of "retard" (as a noun) is pejorative because of linguistics relating to the distinction between attribute and essence; the same reason "a group of black men" is fine, but "a group of blacks" is not.

michaelfeathers• 13 years ago

I know someone has to have written about this, but I don't know who. My sense is that it is like an unconscious societal arms race. In the presence of prejudice labels take on negative connotations. People notice and use new terms that are free of these connotations. Then the new terms acquire the connotations and the cycle repeats.

Maybe this is the best we can hope for, that we get lulls in the coloration of terms and less prejudice to confront at each new cycle.

newnewnew6• 13 years ago

White progressives are fond of making up new rules to distinguish the faithful from the ultra-faithful.

pg5• 13 years ago

The funny thing is, your own comment could make you look like an "asshole" in a few decades when moral fashions change again. That's part of the problem with political correctness. The other and much worse part is that in some situations the choice of words that you present as (as it indeed is) such a trivial matter can have very nontrivial consequences.

comicjk3• 13 years ago

His comment will never make him look like an asshole to anyone with historical perspective, because they will know that he was being polite in his time. Terms like oriental are offensive to many people this decade, so I won't use them this decade. If you think that's a moral fashion, then you're confusing the data ($offensive_things) with the moral principle (don't needlessly offend people). I hope you're not hard-coding the data into your morality - that's very bad practice.

_pius• 13 years ago

The other and much worse part is that in some situations the choice of words that you present as (as it indeed is) such a trivial matter can have very nontrivial consequences.

Not calling a black person a "nigger" may merely be a trivial moral fashion to you, perhaps, but language has been a very much non-trivial tool of fear and oppression for a long time. That's a fact.

For black people, it matters that a newspaper can't be taken seriously if it uses "nigger" as a descriptor. For women, it matters that men can't walk around at a hackathon calling them "baby" and "sweetie" like it's a Mad Men episode. Surely it's obvious why.

It's OK to disagree with that, but the burden of proof is on you. And linking to http://paulgraham.com/say.html doesn't cut it.

There is baby and there is bathwater in this discussion and it's decidedly not useful to conflate them, which is exactly what glib dismissals of the whole thing as "political correctness" do.

cynicalkane• 13 years ago

If we suppose the choice of words is a trivial matter then one wonders what a nontrivial choice of words would look like, if that is even possible.

The "choice of words" argument reminds me of a teenager, upon swearing at his mother, protesting that he is "just using a word". Of course he gets grounded anyway, and in time most people learn to outgrow that pseudological pedantry. In reality we use words that mean things and express ideas, and the ideas expressed in words like the N-word are generally odious and useless. And I would hesitate to assume that avoiding referring to an entire category of people with a swear word, associated with centuries of stereotypes and oppression, is merely a "moral fashion". I didn't know that conveying the barest level of respect toward your fellow man was a "moral fashion".

tanzam75• 13 years ago

The funny thing is, your own comment could make you look like an "asshole" in a few decades when moral fashions change again.

Oh really?

Do we look at Abraham Lincoln was an "asshole" because he referred to "Negroes?" Or do we accept that he was a creature of the 1860s, and remember him for freeing these very "Negroes" who were held in slavery?

Lyndon Johnson referred to "equal rights for the American Negro." Do we regard him as an "asshole" for using the term "Negro?" Or do we instead look at the "equal rights" part of that phrase, and celebrate him for his work on the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

LekkoscPiwa• 13 years ago

You really need to show me where The Founding Fathers say that Freedom is Speech is out there to talk about weather while enjoying tea. The Freedom of Speech is there to talk about dangerous, unpopular ideas without the Fear of Prosecution. And that's what PC killed. Example: try having any type od scientific discourse even in a medical field about DNA differences among races that cause higher rates of lung disease among blacks. Just plain stupid. And I agree that future generations will be laughing at PC as much as they laugh at MacArthur communist witch hunt from 1950s.

bjourne• 13 years ago

Example: try having any type od scientific discourse even in a medical field about DNA differences among races that cause higher rates of lung disease among blacks.

Exactly what incident are you referring to? If you want to claim that scientific thought is hindered by the PC police then you need to back it up with something. Otherwise you are just repeating allegations.

rmc• 13 years ago

We should replace the term "political correctness" with "being nice". It shows how complaints are absurd. "It's being nice gone too far!"

summerdown23• 13 years ago

I think the point is that it wouldn't be long before "nice" becomes a term of abuse. For example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JddNDtC-Yrs

yk2• 13 years ago

Thats a remarkably bad article, almost to the point of satire. It just sparkles some anecdotes over the fallacy that politeness is somehow impeding free speech. If you are offending someone, then you should apologize or the offended party has every justification to think of you as an asshole. The free speech issue is actually calling someone a asshole here. And if you can not express your opinion in a way that does not offend, chances are that you should reconsider your opinion. In the unlikely case that a opinion is both offensive and reasonable, you will have to live with people calling you insensitive.

Which brings me to this gem:

    Yes, of course there are students, and citizens, who
    have genuine grievances. But we no longer distinguish
    between them and those claiming harm where none exists.

Problem is, there is no objective scale to the subjective qualia of being offended. People have every right to be offended whenever they are.

[Edit: botched formatting.]

jniles• 13 years ago

I thoroughly disagree.

The point is that we are seeing too much PC, and it is corrupting the nature of public debate. All comments become subjective to the audience, rather than subjective to the speaker. The examples cited by the author all are encompassed in the quote

" I think it’s these very small things that reinforce cultural and racial stereotypes.. "

to which the author disagrees. You are correct, there is no appropriate scale to measure being offended, which is why unchecked (read: no scale to judge) PC results in kids being kicked out of school, a huge industry being built around PC counseling, etc. The author is not proposing removing PC altogether, just that it is being laughably abused to the detriment of everyone.

I'd be inclined to agree.

yk2• 13 years ago

    " I think it’s these very small things that reinforce   
     cultural and racial stereotypes.. "

I tend to agree with the quote. To use a analogy to programming languages, in Python one is always tempted to use lists, whether they are the appropriate data structure or not. And experience then comes in the form of many solutions using lists.

As for too much PC, I think the problems are rather created by lazy thinking instead of PC. So in a way there is a industry which exploits PC, but the solution is not less PC, the solution is more critical thinking. ( And bad articles really do not help with that.)

gizmo6866• 13 years ago

And if you can not express your opinion in a way that does not offend, chances are that you should reconsider your opinion.

This is the crux of the problem. Suppose you believe that Blacks tend to commit more crimes than Whites. This fact itself may be offensive to some people regardless of how you say it. However, this offense has no bearing on the truth value of the claim. Saying that you should "reconsider your opinion" here causes these offensive possibilities to be considered far less seriously, and causes people to speak them far less clearly.

This is not just some abstract problem. I have been to several conversations about race and discrimination. By far the best one started with the instructions "nothing that is said in this room leaves this room". Some very "offensive" things were said, even to the point where a couple of people had to walk out of the room for a few minutes. However, everyone I talked to (including those who walked out) said that it was one of the best such conversations they had attended.

In the unlikely case that a opinion is both offensive and reasonable, you will have to live with people calling you insensitive.

The problem is that someone may rationally decide that it is in their best interest not to voice their opinion because of this, in which case we all loose.

mvaliente20014• 13 years ago

Oh, god, how I hate political correctness! I can understand that people get upset and offended. They can boycott someone they don't like, but that PC bullshit infuriates me. It only makes communication difficult and people more manipulable.

Take terms like "imbecile", "Idiot" and "retarded". They were medical terms applied using more or less objective measurements. What happened then? They became un-PC and were replaced by "intellectual disability". How much time before the "dis-" is considered offensive? Maybe we should use sometime abstract like "green thinker" and "orange thinker"? But it doesn't matter what term we chose, it'll be associated to something negative and it'll become an insult for the general population.

Do you want to live in a world where you have to say that the umpire has "visual impediments" for fears to offend to blind people? No, "impediments" is too strong, maybe "visually challenged"? No, too negative. "Almost all the senses of the umpire are up to the level of a person of his age, with the possible exception of one that, although its absence doesn't demerit him at all as a human being, maybe would suggest that he'll be better in another line of work, like piano tuner."

DanBC4• 13 years ago

Take terms like "imbecile", "Idiot" and "retarded".

These words now have an everyday use. They are no longer used medically because medical science advances and we have much better understanding.

They were medical terms applied using more or less objective measurements.

They were medical terms used to detain people in hospital, or to deny them medical treatment, or to keep them in prison, or to deny them rights to fair trial or to justice if they were abused or murdered.

They became un-PC and were replaced by "intellectual disability".

No. They became outmoded and less useful because times change.

Do you want to live in a world where you have to say that the umpire has "visual impediments"

I don't want to live in a world where it's acceptable to kill someone who has a low IQ just because they have a low IQ. I don't want to live in a world where someone with a low IQ is denied medical treatment. I don't want to live in a world where someone with a low IQ is raped with no consequence. I don't want to live in a world of lazy stupid designers who can't make a website accessible to all. I don't want to live in a hateful, hurtful, world where ignorant bigots can spew their bile and get offended when people tells them they're being an arsehole.

mvaliente20014• 13 years ago

I'm not sure that we're participating in the same conversation. They were medical terms, yes. They have an every day use, yes (that was exactly my point). They became outmoded and less useful, yes. But, no, not everyone who has used or uses those words is a proponent of IQ-based euthanasia, rape, and segregation.

Any reasonable people will criticize someone who bullies others who are in a weaker position. It's the bullying what is to condemn, not their particular use of words.

A History of Political Correctness

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