Articles like the one in the OP are just ‘look at these silly students/leftists’, similar to articles making fun of corporate buzzwords.
But a lot of people do hate PC culture in general. It feels like the language has been filled with invisible tripwires, that every week the rules are changed and you can get in trouble for saying something perfectly anodyne - and this culture is created and enforced by educated professionals, ie the actually privileged, and serves to silence the poorer and less educated who do not have the time and connections to keep up with the latest politically correct terminology.
I’m sure you’re perfectly well aware that actions can have unintended effects, and that this student group is very, very far from being the only people pushing PC terms.
Maybe you meant to post this in another thread? This student group is not even pushing PC terms, really – they’re not telling you what to say or not say. The list is a list of terms which some people may find troubling, and it’s just something to think about.
But, anyway, please do tell about the unintended effects of people avoiding racist terms, anti-disabled terms, and other actual speech changes? The intended effect is to make minority, disabled, and actually oppressed people feel more welcome. What are the unintended effects?
I already told you. It makes it harder for older, less educated people who aren’t up on the PC subculture to talk about issues where this language comes up, because they are afraid of saying something ‘wrong’ and being embarrassed/shamed/accused of being a bigot, or even suffering more serious consequences like losing their job. And many times these are important issues which people need to talk about.
Also, it’s annoying in the same way as corporate buzzwords are, and provokes the same resentment. It’s obvious that to some extent the adoption of new PC terms is driven by the same forces as teenage slang - demonstrating in-group affiliation, showing off how clever you are, fashion - but the rest of us are not expected to keep up with and correctly use teenage slang.
I know! Remember when we used to call flight attendants “stewardesses” and police officers “policemen”? Remember when we didn’t have to worry about “chairperson” because we knew chairman would be the norm? Why, there wasn’t even a pandemic then!
I’m sure that older, less educated people who aren’t up on the PC subculture appreciate all your efforts, though.
Now, when you start decrying actual legislatures actually banning words like climate change in official documents and actual legislatures actually banning teaching about America’s racist past, I’ll understand that you’re worried about the real-word effects of word policing. I think those efforts will have a much stronger negative effect on the world than not being able to tell sexist or racist jokes at work.
So was it wrong for people to use shame against the usage of racial slurs? If not, then we don’t have any philosophical disagreement - sometimes language use should change, and sometimes shame is a good strategy to change it. We just have a tactical disagreement.
Once upon a time many people casually used racial slurs, and that was bad. And some other people decided to try and change that, and they succeeded. Good job.
But instead of being happy with their achievement, these people decided to go out and look for other things to take offence at. No matter how many changes they pushed through, they were never happy. They could always find something else to object to. Last year’s PC terms became this year’s problematic terms to be avoided. They refused to recognise that there were any downsides to this quest, so there was no balance; any small potential for offense was enough to spur them into action, no matter how much inconvenience or even harm it caused the majority.
And the result is that 80% of Americans think political correctness is a problem for society.
Have you ever slipped up and used a word which has fallen into disrepute? I have. And i was corrected. And i apologized and moved on. And it wasn’t a huge deal.
I mean yeah, if you are a politician and you throw around well-known racial slurs, you might be in trouble. (Or you might not.) “Well known” is important in that sentence. Also, politicians are supposed to be up on current cultural norms, it’s kinda their job.
Are you crazy? It’s already at the point where the CEO of a pizza chain can’t go around using the n-word without losing his job. It’s a travesty, I tells ya.
See, this is exactly the problem. People who think there is nothing offensive about ‘master password’ and don’t see the point in changing it are conflated with those who want to use the n-word. It’s a shitty rhetorical tactic that is used to justify anything the PC supporters want.
Except that’s not how it works. Show me someone who got in trouble for using “master password”.
It’s not until AFTER the language had been successfully changed, and everyone knows it, and the vast majority of people have moved on and don’t use some word any more that anyone actually gets in trouble for using a depreciated word.
It’s not as if the “PC” movement is the only reason language changes. When i was younger, “hookup” didn’t have sexual connotations, at least in my circles. If a friend was coming into town, i would arrange to hook up with them, which literally referred to “where will we find each other”. I don’t use that expression any more.
I, too, grew up thinking a “thug” was a young white man with short hair and a penchance for violence. But then the racists started using the word as racist code, so now i don’t use it that way. Really not different from the other example.
It doesn’t bother you, and that’s okay. But many other people say PC culture is causing them problems. You have the choice whether to listen to them and believe them, or to pretend they all want to be free to say the n-word and ignore and dismiss them.
If you choose the latter, don’t be surprised when they don’t want to vote for you.