I refer you to post #99.
That is a good example. The people that claim that Political Correctness just means simple courtesy simply don’t know the true definition of it. It has nothing to do with being courteous to others and is often quite aggressive and malicious. It takes on various forms at different times but the one common factor is targeting common behaviors that may or may not consist of ill intent and then targeting the supposed perpetrators personally. The target could be any hot topic of the day no matter how justified it is.
For example, I went to high school in Louisiana where hunting is huge although I never liked it. Students at my high school were allowed to have rifles in their personal vehicles during deer season as long as they left them in their vehicles during school hours. There was nothing unusual about that. Deer hunting is most effective during the early morning hours and people that appreciated it had to go straight from the woods to school just like any responsible kid in the area would. Everyone knew how to shoot quite well and it didn’t cause any harm even during the worst fights. Nobody was going to shoot someone at school unless they were suicidal. If you threatened someone with a deer rifle, we all knew that you are going straight to prison and not a nice one so no one did. This was in 1991, not 1920.
Fast-forward 9 years later. My much younger brother was in high school and the political climate shifted greatly because there were some pre-meditated school shootings during that time (that had nothing whatsoever to do with deer rifles). Zero-tolerance policies (which I would argue are the epitome of Political Correctness) were in vogue. He and his friend explored an old and abandoned falling down barn and his friend found an old, rusted out farm implement that sort of resembled a machete in advanced stages of archaeological decay so he put it in the back of my little brother’s truck planning to clean it up and hang it up somewhere.
The next day, my little brother forgot one of his homework assignments in his truck. The insane rule in place at the time was that no student could go to their own vehicle during school hours but they could give their keys to a teacher to search and retrieve whatever was needed. He gladly asked one to hand over his keys and found himself under detention by police officers not 20 minutes later because of the ‘weapon’ in his vehicle. Zero-tolerance procedures demanded an expulsion with no recourse never mind the fact that our mother was a locally famous college professor at the time and one of the most famous speakers on education in the region if not the U.S. She tried and could do nothing.
The impotent administrators claimed their hands were tied and he had to be expelled because of a rusty artifact put in his vehicle by someone else. He had to drop out of high school and get his GED. They can all happily burn in hell for the rest of eternity as far as I am concerned. However, my little brother immediately enrolled in community college to finish out his senior year, transferred to a 4 year university, graduated and then was accepted into one of the rare Coast Guard Officer candidate slots that he finished quite well. He is a very successful Coast Guard Officer even today. They did a thorough background check on him early on and determined that the only thing he was guilty of was living in a place and time with horrible policies.
I am mystified by people that claim that Political Correctness is motivated by kindness. In my experience, the people that preach it the strongest are among the most obnoxious and nastiest people on Earth.
A political correctness once kicked my dog, so now I hates it.
:rolleyes:
Maybe not, but it’s how you place your bets.
I don’t think some of you really know what Political Correctness really consists of or, your are so warped yourself, that you can’t see how ludicrous it can be. Most of us aren’t talking about simple human courtesies at all when we complain about PC rhetoric. The chances are excellent that I have that covered much better than you do in day to day life.
It is a general term meaning excessive, mandated speech and behaviors as prescribed by the winds of political style. Most of us don’t change our personality and general interpersonal style as easily as we change our wardrobe. It is a personal intrusion to demand that anyone change arbitrary behaviors based on the ever-changing opinions of a few people, many of whom are factually ignorant. That is tyranny of the loudest and I don’t follow it just because someone else said so. It is a fool’s game because it is much more about social control rather than anything they claim to be the hot topic of the day. You can never win even if you treat everyone better than they do themselves so I just stay true to myself and give them the mental middle finger every time I hear white, upper-middle class person try to assert some degree of dominance over me using disingenuous and passive-aggressive tactics like these arguments.
The Onion had a relevant article on this topic today just like they always do. Many of you will be happy to learn that there are still secure places in the world:
“Parents Dedicate New College Safe Space In Honor Of Daughter Who Felt Weird In Class Once”.
If Politcal Correctness kicked my dog, it would already be dead and buried by now. Nobody fucks with my dog. She is a half Golden Retriever and even threatening to burn her is enough to get someone’s ass kicked to the moon.
While your story is an example of a terrible policy horribly implemented I’m not sure what this has to do with anything:
A shit policy is a shit policy no matter who your mother is (no disrespect to your mother, of course), and someone in the situation as you describe it shouldn’t have been expelled regardless of the eminence or non-eminence of their parents.
I completely agree. However, I do believe that zero-tolerance policies fall under the umbrella of general Political Correctness. My little brother wasn’t the only one affected by it. They are still enforced all around the nation. That has led to lots of innocent people including elementary school students getting into unjustified trouble for everything ranging from simple drawings, written stories, having Tylenol on them as well as their own prescription medications that they didn’t follow the proper procedures for even though their doctor already prescribed it to them.
I do not agree with the OP in the least but it may be because our definitions of Political Correctness are quite different. Some people seem to be implying that the definition involves simple courtesies for people with different backgrounds than you. My definition requires excess and absurdity that flies in the face of common sense. I believe my definition is more correct because the former is better described as civility, grace and common understanding.
I am all for that but it is absurd to think that certain people don’t take things way to far sometimes. It could be because they have more money than brains, they want to assert social dominance over others using guilt as a tactic or they have an extreme leftist and authoritarian outlook on the world but I am not abiding by it at all. I treat people of all different backgrounds quite well and with due respect by all accounts but I do it in my own style and that will never change.
If all political correctness is is treating people with respect, then I think we’re all in favor of that.
But if it’s mandating language changes on penalty of administrative punishment or social ostracism, or shutting down legitimate political debate, then it’s a big problem.
One of the most concerning aspects of political correctness that we’ve seen in recent months is treating current, bipartisan policies as racist, and those who expressly support that status quo as offensive. Support the increased immigration enforcement in the immigration reform bill? Obscene! Support voter purges, as mandated by the Help America Vote Act? You don’t want black people to vote!
Now granted, current policies can be discriminatory and wrong. We only just got gay marriage recognized in all fifty states. And there’s no question that marijuana prohibition has had a disproportionate impact on minorities for little or no benefit. But democracy can’t function is we pass or repeal laws based on shouting down the other side and labelling them bigots and their views out of bounds. Especially when like good religious fundies, they give a pass to fellow travelers on the left. As when Barack Obama and HIllary Clinton opposed gay marriage, and the PC crowd had a “hate the sin, not the sinner” tolerance towards it, but continued to go after conservatives in a “hate the sin and the sinner” approach.
No matter what you do, eventually someone is going to call you a bigot.
According to Janet Napolitano, a pretty mainstream Democratic figure, if you say, “The most qualified person should get the job”, or “If you work hard you’ll get ahead”, then you’re a bigot.
You mean “According to one woman with an axe to grind and books to sell to right-wingers, that’s what Janet Napolitano is saying”. Seriously, dude, that was pathetic.
So she’s not saying that “The most qualified person should get the job” is un-PC?
Which flies in the face of the guiding principle of political correctness: if anyone, for any reason is offended by something, it is therefore offensive. It may be deliberately or accidentally offensive, but still offensive.
Since you resist this understanding, we will engage with you in a struggle session, after which you’ll be paraded through the commune wearing a dunce cap.
As I am now living in Beijing, I really did enjoy this comment from you.
From that article it’s pretty much impossible to tell what she is saying, given the use of a few quote fragments (few of which are actually from Napolitano) buried in a sea of partisan invective. That you appear not to have not noticed this suggests that maybe bias awareness courses aren’t such a bad idea.
She’s the president, the fact that she didn’t write the course is irrelevant. She expects it to be attended and approved it.
So you’re saying she didn’t say what you said she said. Got it.
Although a facetious answer, it’s dead on. Most rational people who object to political correctness do so on a couple of points. First, there’s the nebulous idea that nobody should be offended in any way, and that the onus for someone being offended is always on the party doing the offending, even if they’re unaware.
So you end up with the situation where one person may think something’s offensive, a second person may find slightly more about it offensive, and a third person may have extremely narrow boundaries of what’s offensive and what’s not.
So you end up with “accepted terminology” that’s used, which would be fine, but the terms seem to change fairly regularly, and frequently are absurdly euphemistic and frequently wrong. I mean, I can remember the term being “handicapped” growing up, and then “disabled”, and then “differently abled” came along, although it never really caught on. “Differently abled?” In what way? Most disabled/handicapped people aren’t Professor X- they’re people whose abilities are diminished for some reason, not different. And now “handicapped” is apparently offensive, even though it’s accurate, and was once in common usage.
It’s like if I, a 6’1" 295 lb fat guy got all huffy and offended about being called fat, and demanded that I be called “calorically enhanced.” Say what you will, but I’m fat, overweight, tubby, whatever.
Rolling that particular turd in glitter by using some silly term isn’t going to change that, and puts the onus on everyone else to tip-toe around me because I might be offended.
Now it’s “handi-capable”, which is ridiculous. “Cripple” was kinda nasty, but disabled and handicapped are PC. If a term keeps on having to change, it’s because what it actually means is troubling. Changing it again doesn’t make it any less troubling.
Remember when they wanted us to say “X challenged?” That also went out the door because it still means the person has a problem of some sort.