Do you personally agree with the following statement: “Political correctness is a problem in America.”
Yes
No
0voters
Do you personally agree with the following statement: “Hate speech is a problem in America.”
Yes
No
0voters
According to a 2018 survey, what percentage of Americans do you think agreed with the following statement: “Political correctness is a problem in our country.”
0-25%
25-50%
50-75%
75%+
0voters
According to a 2018 survey, what percentage of Americans do you think agreed with the following statement: “Hate speech is a problem in our country.”
0-25%
25-50%
50-75%
75%+
0voters
Two purposes to this. Compare attitudes of Dopers to those of average Americans, and also see how in touch posters are with the views of the latter. Survey results to follow…
Point being, the OP doesn’t suggest that the public at large is right in their beliefs, but just in case anyone would conclude that the public knows best about such measures, it’s worth remembering that a lot of the public are goddamned stupid.
The conclusion one can draw from that - that the vast majority of Americans oppose both political correctness and hate speech - is that they don’t think that being un-PC and hate speech are necessarily equivalent at all.
Shouting “Go back to Africa, N-word” at a black person would likely be considered by all to be hate speech and politically incorrect. But a statement like “there are only two genders” or “marriage should only be between a man and a woman” would be considered by many to be un-PC, yet also not hate speech either.
I think we’ve got enough results now to draw some conclusions. My only surprise is that Dopers are no more likely than the average American to consider hate speech a problem. The collective guesses for how many Americans think political correctness and hate speech are a problem are both far too low; right now the correct answers have the fewest votes. Interestingly, the guesses for political correctness do give the right range for people here on the Dope.
Yes, indeed. It’s not that they have a burning desire to say racist stuff or are budding fascists, it’s that they are afraid of accidentally saying the wrong thing or not knowing the latest politically correct term, and getting in trouble for it. From the article:
The percentage of Dopers who see political correctness as a problem is very similar to the progressive activists group mentioned in the research and very different to Americans as a whole. I wonder how the demographics compare?
This group is a rather elite imposing their views on the country as a whole, and insisting everyone else should spend the time and effort to keep up with the constantly evolving terms.
Do you think they are wrong on hate speech or wrong on political correctness? Re the latter, I’d argue that this is one of those things where if enough people think it’s a problem, it is a problem by definition, because having a majority afraid to give their views is not a healthy situation.
However, whether they are right or not, even ‘goddamned stupid’ people vote. Let’s hope that if your favoured politicians share your contempt for the general public, they manage to hide it better.
These two contradictory statements are revealing of the actual truth behind the numbers. If you’ve been following the perversion of the meaning and purpose of political correctness from the beginning, as I have, it’s clear that no matter what people are willing to admit to interviewers, the true hatred of PC comes from those who are no longer allowed to openly and freely use terms of disparagement.
Yes, they do fear the consequences of their actions, because the culture has changed. But that’s exactly the same as saying that they want to use the terms. They indeed burn to use the terms, as can immediately be seen from anonymous online comments where there are no consequences. That the terms they want to use are bigoted, intolerant, and hateful are indicated by the extremely high percentage of conservatives who are unhappy with the consequences. They would prefer to go back in time and use their class and cultural superiority to rule over those they put outside their inner circle.
Frank Wilhoit’s beautiful putdown applies here: “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect…” PC is hated because it binds conservatives. Therefore it must be mocked, derided, and circumvented. They’ve done their best to achieve the death of PC, but fortunately they can’t turn back the clock, no matter how they burn to do so.
Even still, though, when a full 80% of Americans think political correctness is a problem, that can’t be pinned on conservatives alone. You don’t get to such an overwhelming percentage without a substantial majority of liberals opposing PC as well.
Note that in that Atlantic article, 74-79 percent of young people also said PC is a problem. No doubt many of them are liberals.
Saying PC is a problem is meaningless noise unless you know both how people are defining PC and why they are considering it a problem. Some might be responding under the assumption that there is too little PC and that’s the problem. Nevertheless, we have a good half century of evidence that conservatives hate PC because of the way it binds them. We can even see it here on the Dope, with multiple posters hating the restrictions of using hateful terms. If it’s true here, it’s true 10X over in the real world.
Uh, yeah, I’m not a politician. Politicians have to prevaricate and rub shoulders. Their need to dissemble doesn’t apply to me in my role as someone shooting the shit on a messageboard. Excellent observation.
As is your observation that goddamned stupid people vote. Of course they do. And when they’re being misled by the Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and President Trump shitshow that terrifies them about how political correctness is a threat to free speech, the right thing to do isn’t to be soft and accommodating and pretend like there’s an ounce of truth to that nonsense. The right thing to do is to present them diplomatically but forcefully with the truth, which is that “political correctness” is like 98% a bogeyman concocted by the right to silence marginalized voices, and 1.9% a bunch of college freshmen enacting teenage foolishness in the context of politics, and 0.1% actual things that are a problem.
Finally, the poll is asking if a bad thing is a bad thing. “Political correctness” is a political slur, a heavily loaded term that’s cannonballed into the mainstream of politics. Of course if you ask about it, people will say it’s a problem. What if you phrased it differently, and asked folks these two questions:
“The increasing attention people pay to their speech in an effort to avoid offending their neighbors and fellow Americans is a problem in America.”
“Speech used to insult and dehumanize others based on characteristics such as race and gender is a problem in America.”
I suspect you wouldn’t get the “Bad things are bad” results you get by asking about “political correctness.”
Just to re-emphasize: “political correctness” has no non-problematic meaning. It’s like asking if “rudeness” is a problem: of course you’re going to say “yes,” because rudeness is by definition a problem. But if you asked (to continue the analogy) if the inclusion of wedding registry information on bridal shower invitations is a problem, you might find that, having addressed a specific phenomenon with non-loaded language, your percentage of affirmative answers would plummet.
People hate political correctness because the term is defined as being too polite when you should be more direct. It’s equivalent to saying “Sometimes it’s okay to be rude.”
Asking about hate speech has the same problem, but in the other direction. People define hate speech as “speech so bigoted that it shouldn’t be said.” So of course people don’t support it.
In both cases, those who vote against the grain are usually thinking about it in terms of how the terms tend to be applied, in their perception. So people who are for PC think about all those people shouting “I hate PC” for not being racist. And those who are against the concept of hate speech think along the lines of “people usually use it to try and stop freedom of speech.”
That said, the fact that people think hate speech is wrong does show us something–people do think there is speech that is so racist that it shouldn’t be said. So the idea of hate speech has resonated. That at least opens the doors to see if there’s any speech we all agree is hate speech and that we might want to forbid, whether legally or socially.
Sometimes people say the quiet parts out loud. The sheriff in Kenosha is getting some notice for comments he made in 2018.
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth, now in the spotlight amid civil unrest in Wisconsin, previously called five Black people arrested for felony shoplifting “trash” who should be locked in a “warehouse.”
“Let’s put them in jail. Let’s stop them from truly, at least some of these males, going out and getting 10 other women pregnant and having small children,” he said in video posted by WTMJ-TV.
“Let’s put them away. At some point we have to stop being politically correct. And I don’t care what race, I don’t care how old they are, if there’s a threshold that they cross, these people have to be warehoused, no recreational time.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what conservatives think political correctness means. Never be fooled by apologists.
This Republican idea seems to go like this: “We spent the last forty years building an incredibly powerful media network that promulgates all sorts of mistruths, conspiracy theories, and bigotry. Our institution’s immune system includes the term ‘political correctness,’ a term we use to attack anyone who challenges our ideological hegemony. Now, you recognize that this term is overwhelmingly nonsense, but a lot of people don’t realize that. Even though you know better, if you don’t placate them, you’re going to lose elections. So start placating!”
I’m starting to think that this “you better placate them even when you know they’re wrong” and this “you should know that speaking up is how we got Trump” approach is a secondary aspect of the immune system. It’s quite an elegant approach to silencing dissent.
Unless I’m doing the math wrong here, at minimum about 60% of the American people believe that both “political correctness” and “hate speech” are problems.
I’m not sure telling 60% of the American people that they are “goddamned stupid”–especially when they more or less agree with you on half the issues–is a really great way to win hearts and minds. Or elections.
Fortunately, I’m unable to tell 60% of Americans anything, so that’s not a concern. As I said before, a tremendous number of Americans believe (for example) that vaccines cause autism, or believe (for another example) that Trump isn’t a pathological liar. If you want to use a phrase other than “goddamned stupid” to describe such beliefs, keen. And when I’m around folks that I’m trying to persuade not to have those specific beliefs, I’ll use other words, too.
But right now I’m not trying to persuade folks about the non-link between vaccines and autism, or about Trump’s inability to tell the truth. I’m criticizing the entire framing of this debate, a framing that’s the result of at least four decades of deliberate effort by the right to devise a way to silence dissent and push back against any social change.
Not even a decade ago, calling two men’s union a marriage was considered the height of political correctness. Placing women in the military was the height of political correctness in the nineties. The term “African American” was similarly derided in the eighties.
I’m unimpressed by this framing, and I’m not willing to placate people who’ve bought into it, nor am I interested in being quiet because I’m warned about four more years of Trump otherwise.
And once again, it’s not significant that many people, when asked, “Is this bad thing bad?” said, “Yes.” The very term is used exclusively to describe a bad thing. It’s an extremely leading poll question.
We do not have enough evidence to assume this. Look at what the OP’s article says.
One obvious question is what people mean by “political correctness.” In the extended interviews and focus groups, participants made clear that they were concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could lead to serious social sanctions for them. But since the survey question did not define political correctness for respondents, we cannot be sure what, exactly, the 80 percent of Americans who regard it as a problem have in mind.
It is not in any normal sense a problem that 80% of Americans (taking this percentage as fact for the moment) feel that offending minorities the way they used to may lead to social sanctions. It is instead a gigantic victory for a more decent society. In a few more years, it will become absolutely the norm and the minority who continue to violate the norm will rightly be outcasts. Think of the way cigarette smoking has turned from the norm to an antisocial behavior.
PC is only a problem if it can be construed negatively. Once you remove the negative, the problem disappears.
Hate speech cannot be simply reduced to a positive in any sense. Eradicating it would be a positive, but in the meantime hate speech is a serious problem that must be strongly addressed. The difference is profound.
It is not an extremely leading poll question. They are extremely leading poll questions. “Hate speech” is at least as loaded a term as “political correctness”.
And when people see things like a public opinion researcher who has worked for progressive causes being accused of “anti-blackness” for citing research showing that non-violent protests increase the vote share of the Democratic Party, but violent riots reduce the Democratic Party’s share of the vote–culminating in successful calls for that person to be fired from his job–it makes many Americans uneasy about “political correctness”, even as they also oppose “hate speech”.
So we have two contradictory explanations offered for the data:
People hate political correctness because they’re bigots. (Despite the fact that a majority of all age groups, races and political groups across the spectrum voted yes, with the sole exception of the ‘progressive activists’ group.)
‘Political correctness’ is widely perceived as a bad thing, but that’s just because people don’t understand the term the way we do (and let’s blame anyone except the progressive activists who are pushing PC for this perception).
The article gave a couple of quotes from people in the focus groups:
This is what I have seen in real life. People who are smart, well educated and politically active have created a complicated set of rules that other people are supposed to learn and negotiate in order to talk about certain issues, and they are required to continually update their knowledge too, because mistakes are uncharitably interpreted as evidence of bigotry rather than ignorance.
I reckon most posters here find it fairly easy to keep up with new terms, to remember to use person-first language (except when the persons in question have indicated they don’t like it), to be inclusive at all times, and know when to capitalise words and when not to. They know which of the old fashioned terms are merely quaint and outmoded, and which have become offensive. Most ordinary people do not.
To use the new lingo, there’s a certain amount of privilege in having the time and leisure to worry about language, the connections to find out about new PC rules early and become comfortable with following them before the old ones become stigmatised, and the mental capacity to remember and juggle using them without forgetting what you were trying to say in the first place.
Imagine if, in order to have serious discussions about important issues, you were expected keep up with the latest teenage slang, and not only risked being laughed at if you used it wrong, but judged as racist or accused of holding abhorrent opinions. I think that’s how a lot of people feel about political correctness.