Let's talk political correctness.

Great Debates
1

It’s pretty much an insult nowadays, or at least i’ve not seen someone write “political correctness” without adding “pointless”, “nonsensical” or the like. But I don’t think I get it.

Political correctness seems to be the idea that you attempt to take the most politically astute route, which usually seems to mean “make things less offensive”. It tends to be different for different people… some seem to think that political correctness itself is a bad thing. Others only complain at political correctness* gone mad*. People who sell “family trees” instead of Christmas trees? Political correctness!, people say. But surely pretty much everything politicians do is politically correct - they try to maximise their support, after all.

The problem (it seems to me, anyway) is that if political correctness (or political correctness gone wrong) is about trying to make things less offensive, surely that people complain show that it is not? I’m not really sure. Anyway, I thought i’d ask people what they thought “political correctness” actually means, whether it’s always bad, or if they could give some examples of it?

I predict… four mocking political one-liners on the first page.

2

This side of the pond the term Blackboard was banned in favour of Chalkboard just in case it offended any kids of W.Indian background.

I’ll bet that the person who came up with this little gem was a P.C. White Liberal who was as totally out of touch with the Black community as they were with the real world.

I cannot see any benefits from this piece of censorship whatsoever.

3

Here’s an example of political incorrectness:

You’re in a fundamentalist church bible study group and you tell your peers that you don’t believe in the bible.

While society cherishes the freedom of expression, it provides a great deal of discomfort to those who are of a minority view contrary to the popular view. We no longer attempt to put down people because of race, but we still want to put down people with contrary views. Good or bad? Hell, I don’t know except for the fact that it diminishes the value of freedom of speech.

4

I’m not going to deny that some of these incidents have happened, but part of the problem is that many “PC gone mad” stories are either fabricated, or blown up out of all proportion, as the above is. Same as “not being able to say black bags” or “manhole cover” - just nonsense, or maybe, once, they were some suggestion by some twat at a committee meeting, dismissed in the same committee.

If they happened at all, they were usually some well-meaning dickhead in some local authority, or some company somewhere, long forgotten. But then the misleading, or frankly untrue, anecdote is trotted out by the tabloids, or by people who believe the tabloids, to imply a consparicy of political correctness that doesn’t really exist.

I was talking to several middle-aged men today who were bitching about “a world gone PC”. Five well educated, grown men, all agreeing on “PC” being bullshit. What were they actually bitching about? Health and Safety legislation. Just as annoying but nothing whatsoever to do with people being “politically correct”.

I think the overly sensitive PC brigade are a big bunch of arseholes - such as the incident in my home town where a student was arrested for calling a horse “gay”. But thankfully that piece of nonsense was rightfully dismissed when it got to court.

On the flipside, though, I also think there is some legitimacy to requests that certain terms are refrained from: e.g. in the UK if the work “Paki”, which might be seen as a reasonable contraction of the word “Pakistani”, is actually known to be deeply offensive to the people to whom the epithet is applied (often nothing to do with Pakistan at all) due to an unsavoury history, then I think it is reasonable that people honour that.

The convenient thing is that if one agrees with a request or advice, then that’s all it is, and if one disagrees with a similar request, one can brand it “PC” and that, apparently, is meant to end the argument.

It doesn’t help the unofficial campaign for sanity, with which I think we’re all in agreement, if half-truths and misconceptions are presented as gospel.

5

Do you have a cite? Not that I doubt you, but your post is vague, and as other posters pointed out, these stories tend to get blown out of proportion. What does banned mean, for example? I can’t imagine an actual law was passed forbidding the use of the term.

6

I would like to see a politically neutral definition of PC, so that it can be applied to practitioners of any political POV as applicable.

As commonly used, PC strictly means lefty PC.

7

To my knowledge the majority of modern blackboards aren’t. Black, that is. Might the term ‘Chalkboard’ have been adopted for that reason?

8

Oh, God, please don’t get Lust4Life onto that again.

9

I suspect that both terms always coexisted to some extent. Jjimm is right, and chalkboard never became a standarised term, invalidating the premise on which Lust4Life’s perception of some sinister banning of blackboard is based. Most schoolkids nowadays will never see one, anyway.

10

“political correctness = intolerance.” - me :cool:

11

Lust said the word was “banned” in the UK. While I suspect that must be an over exaggeration, surely he/she must’ve had some particular case of some actual gov’t, group, institution, etc. actually making a rule, law, request, suggestion that people avoid the term. Not just that the term fell out of use.

12

Well, it’s not just on the left-remember “freedom fries”, “freedom fighters” to describe terrorists we supported (the contras, for one), or whatever.

13

In the thread I linked to, it was ‘paki’ which was apparently banned. Or something. Don’t expect any firm evidence.

14

“Political correctness” is a fairly old concept, and did not start wth silly “senstivity language” overreactions in the 1980s.

It has always been the case that people who voice politically unpopular opinions have been subjected to substantial pressure. “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” was cancelled in part because he was too politically incorrect, when he said the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards. The prevailing political correctness of that time was to say they were cowards; he went against that, show gone.

As long as you have politics and opinions, you will have issues of political correctness.

15

if political correctness is meant to make things less offensive, than it only means that the offended is intolerant to whatever it is that needs to be politically correct. It all comes down to intolerance… you can use any example of political correctness, and at the core of it is intolerance.

…edit: and for the record, I don’t think I need to write a thesis to prove anything. Its common sense.

16

I did not hear the term “chalkboard” used until the 1950s when the schools that were built in our community had green boards instead of blackboards. When I later worked in older buildings as a teacher, they were still black and still called blackboards. I don’t think that my black students ever commented on it and I didn’t think about it myself.

I am told these days that the new ones are white boards. Ah oh.

17

I remember first hearing the term “politically correct” back around the time of OJ Simpson’s trial. People were talking about Mark Fuhrman and how he felt it was okay to use the word “nigger” as long as no black people were around to hear it. The idea was that white people wouldn’t be offended by the use of the word even if they didn’t say it themselves. One result of this public discussion was that idea was changed - it was no longer acceptable to use “the n-word” even if it wasn’t be said directly to a black person.

And this to me is what political correctness is about. You’re not going to change a racist’s mind - if he hated black people before he still hates them now. If he was calling them niggers (or spics or gooks or hebes or queers or gimps or tards or cunts) before he’s still thinking it in his head. But you can train a bigot. You can make him realize that most people - black and white - don’t agree with his idiocy and don’t want to hear him talking about it. So he has to pretend to be normal even if he’s secretly a bigot. Political correctness is actually a form of intolerance - it’s people saying that bigoted words and jokes and attitudes don’t belong in normal society. Bigots are obviously going to be unhappy when they are confronted with the fact that they can no longer act out their bigotry among normal people but that’s just something they have to live with. Because I for one am happy I no longer have to listen to their bullshit.

18

I first started hearing this term when I was in college in the 80s. The crowd I hung with used it in two ways…one, to describe language that was not considered the “right” language to use, usually, of course, in reference to minority groups. The other way was much more literal, and referred to what was considered to be the “correct” political opinions. For example, support of Israel was not considered “politically correct.”

19

Alright, I think it’s healthy and positive to be sensitive to minorities; to correct racist expressions and racist thinking… so I agree with this part of political correctness.

But to impose what some might think are “correct political opinions” is unacceptable and way over the top. Its all so oppressive … and intolerant. It makes me wanna hollar, throw up both my hands…

/marvin gaye

20

The term “Politically Correct” originated (or received currency) in the 1970s on the Left, first as a term (usually used in the negative) to point out events or attitudes that “should” not be tolerated in a civil society. Thus, the word nigger was clearly not Politically Correct. However, it was also used to castigate other matters that were not particularly so clear cut. It was also not a term that received widespread usage.

By the early 1980s, it had been adopted by the Right as a term of disparagement for any “overly sensitive” application of rules to civil language. Thus, the use of the adjective “challenged” and similar constructions were mocked by substituting “height challenged” for “short.” Interestingly, the sort of language changes being mocked in that case rarely had any connection to Political Correctness. Rather, they were part of the ongoing effort to replace insulting terms with neutral terms that had been going on for decades, with the technical terms moron and imbecile replacing dummy and fool, only to be replaced by retarded (that quickly devolved into REEtard) and so on.

Now we have truly ignorant people making silly claims that terms such as “previously owned” replacing “used” is some sort of Lefty “Political Correctness,” never mind that no Lefty would care about the term “used” (or that it was coined to sell luxury cars to what one would suppose was a more Righty consumer group).

There have actually been cases of truly stupid “Political Correctness,” of course. The most egregious, in my mind, being the 1993 abuse of Eden Jacobowitz at Penn State for calling a bunch of drunks (who happened to be majority black) “water buffalo” despite the fact that no one on Penn’s campus could provide a single citation that “water buffalo” was a racial slur–since it clearly was not.
Less egregious examples of actual Political Correctness would include the use of “Native American” for “Indian” when the overwhelming majority of people whose ancestors lived in North America prior to 1492 would prefer to be identified by the name of their actual nation, (Lakota, Ojibway, Mohawk), and, if a broader term is required, they are quite comfortable with Indian.

However, most accusations of “Political Correctness” that have been hurled over the last 25 - 30 years would have been better labeled “stupid euphemisms” as they rarely had any connection to political causes and they have been instituted fairly evenly by right-leaning and left-leaning people demonstrating ignorance. However,it is a catch-phrase that seems to be employed mostly by the ignorant on the Right, (the ignorant on the Left having different silly catch-phrases).

Of course, by decrying “Political Correctness” instead of “abuse of the language,” you set yourself squarely in the camp of those who only wish to suppress the euphemisms on the Left while accepting the euphemisms on the Right (or who has swallowed 20 years of Limbaugh propaganda that such abuse only originates on the Left, so even Right-leaning language abuse is attributed to “liberal” sources). The imaginary War on Christmas (from which Bill O’Reilly finally backed away) was never a Lefty thing. The use of “holiday” for “Christmas” arose not on Left-wing college campuses, but in places like the Right-wing Fundamentalist Christian offices of Wal*Mart and other bastions of corporate conservatism in a misguided effort to be more open to a wider constituency of customers.

I have no idea what oppression you believe you have suffered for your use of language. I refer to people using the terms that I understand they wish to be known and I do not encounter censure for having done so. I would be curious to know just what sort of words you need to use for which you believe you are being abused.