At least someone gets it. But I’ve changed my mind; if any politicians do agree with LHOD, better that they are honest about it. People ought to know what they are voting for, and someone who thinks they are ‘goddamn stupid’ isn’t likely to pay attention to their concerns, follow their wishes or do a good job of representing them in general.
This kind of drives me crazy. Without even digging into this case–because the last time, like last week, when DemonTree started a thread trying to get us all worried and sadface over the perils of political correctness, every single example I dug into was a nothing burger–without even digging into it, this boils down to “it is a problem in America when someone is criticized incorrectly by someone else.” If that’s genuinely the level of problem, it’s not a problem at all.
DemonTree’s motives are not 100% clear to me, as I’m no mindreader. But it looks awfully like, having failed last time to come up with a single genuine example of “political correctness” being a problem, the new approach is to say, “Well, everyone thinks it’s a problem, so it must be!” This remains unpersuasive.
Sure. Absolutely. The second question is uninteresting, except that it might serve as some sort of attempt to treat the two issues together, to make it seem that if I disparage the poll results for the first, I must also be disparaging them for the second.
This isn’t the first time you’ve used this sort of “I know you are but what am I” debating strategy, trying to inoculate yourself against arguments from people on the left by accusing them of words that you know they use. It’s very akin to the “Black Lives Matter are the REAL racists!” line of arguments, and it’s just as fallacious.
I’ve not always used the latest lingo, either. I think–and 15 years ago argued with professors–that “people first” constructions are counterproductive and arise from a flawed understanding of how English grammar works. I’ve faced pushback, and I’ve backed down, not because I agreed, but because some arguments aren’t worth it.
So fucking what? Am I gonna say that was a problem in America? Shit no. What kind of tissue-paper skin would I have to have?
Your “hahayou’rejustprivileged” silliness doesn’t hold. Nobody faces any real consequences because they use the phrase “mentally retarded” to describe someone who’s now called “developmentally delayed.” Nobody loses their job because they say they like Oriental food. Nobody receives death threats because they talk about a blind person instead of a person who is visually impaired. That doesn’t happen.
What does happen is that people who are affected by social stigma think deeply about how they’re affected. They think about how different language would help them feel better and would help the speaker recognize them as equals. They ask people to use that language.
And Fox News encourages Americans to lose their everloving shit over the requests.
It’s simple. I think you’re wrong, and that you don’t understand how the majority of people see political correctness, and this is a site for fighting ignorance isn’t it? Plus I agree with the author of the article about this:
I’d really rather you didn’t hand another election win to Trump, but I’m not optimistic.
I included the question on hate speech for two reasons: one, to show that the majority don’t dislike political correctness because they’ve swallowed the Fox News platform whole, or because they just want to be able to use racist terms as per Exapno_Mapcase. If that was the case then most would have said hate speech was not a problem, as the Dopers expected. Two, I was curious if guesses on that question would be as far off the mark as I anticipated the ones on political correctness would be. They were. I was surprised by both results myself when I read the article.
I’m also part of that group - wealthier than average, better educated, white. I was politically interested enough to keep up with the lingo and understand the principles behind it, and easily able to remember which terms to use when. I used to believe as you do. But then I got a bit older, and started getting annoyed when technology changed for no good reason, and finding it a bit harder to keep up with linguistic changes, too. And I started to sympathise with the people who don’t know their BIPOC from their BAME, and don’t understand why ‘people of colour’ gets you praise while ‘coloured people’ gets you condemnation and assumptions of bad faith. And I also learned from experience that politically correct terms said with a sneer can be much worse than outdated ones said with no ill intent.
They face being judged by more ‘woke’ acquaintances for it. Social stigma is a powerful thing. And it’s an easy way to ignore the points they were trying to make if you can use their language to dismiss them as a bigot.
Another thing I have increasingly come to realise is that you don’t change attitudes by changing language. It has to be the other way around. And the fact that according to the article a large majority of every race, including 75% of black people, think political correctness is a problem suggests your formulation may not be correct. Does anyone poll black people to find out what terms they prefer? Did anyone consult members of the Deaf or autistic communities before adopting person-first language and insisting other people also use it?
I don’t think these are particularly useful questions because, like the Political Compass questions, they seem to imply that you think your opinions should have the force of law.
Particularly with regards to hate speech, since there are actual laws about hate speech. If you say that hate speech is a problem people might use that to justify harsher laws against hate speech even if you think that your first Amendment rights trump the problematicness of the speech. Whereas there aren’t laws enforcing anything formally called “Political Correctness”, so it is more obviously about social attitudes as a whole toward whatever you think PC is (which is of course a whole other ball of wax.)
And here we go with the “This is how we get Trump!” canard. So absurd.
Stop demanding to be treated like a fellow human being with rights or I’m gonna keep not treating you like a fellow human being with rights even harder!!!
The questions were specifically asked of Americans, about American society. There are no laws in the United States either against “hate speech” or for “political correctness”. Both–laws banning “hate speech” or laws mandating “political correctness”–would almost certainly be struck down as being in violation of the First Amendment.
I’m an older white male too. I can’t keep up with popular culture and most names in the news are unfamiliar ouside of politics.
But I’m sufficiently with it to recognize that we’re in the middle of a literal revolution. The old white dominating culture is being overthrown. It will hurt whites while it’s going on, older whites especially because they no longer swim in the waters - modern social media - in which the revolutionaries dominate and so they will be confused and resentful.
Most cultural revolutions settle into a new normal where the battlegrounds of the old are forgotten by the young. I expect this one to also do so. The intervening years will be turbulent. Just remember that the revolution is a good and worthy one. Hate speech, bigotry, intolerance, and general insults of everyone different from you are indeed bad things that require challenge. No one can defend them and look good in the process.
Do I think both of them are problems? Yeah I guess.
If someone says something offensive, and you want to cancel them, whatever. Sometimes I won’t like it, but whatever.
If someone spews hate, I don’t think anything beyond cancelling is acceptable. Obviously advocating violence is unacceptable, but I don’t believe speech that isn’t directly calling for violence is “violence” that should be prosecuted. YMMV.
Things like “political correctness” and “cancel culture” are typically only problems for people who find themselves frequently at odds with changing social mores and can’t or won’t adapt. As I get closer to middle age, I find myself grumbling over what new slang kids today use, but eventually it’s not too long before I start using it myself. It’s resistance to and fear of change.
It’s the evolution of society to a more tolerant and equitable one, and an awareness that just because you can say something, doesn’t mean you should (which honestly is something that should have been taught in elementary school.) And while new terms and concepts might seem scary, it doesn’t take much to adapt except a willingness to do so, which bigots lack.
This sort of sugarcoating or euphemism is what many people are getting at when they talk about PC.
This is silly. How much ink has been spilled on this by the right compared to, for example, roving gangs of right-wing thugs attacking people sitting peacefully at a cafe?
I absolutely agree with this change. Labeling students as “at risk” is a way of dehumanizing them and basically condemning them from the very start. “At promise” emphasizes potential future growth rather than focusing on their past. The words we use matter, especially to young children.
I have a problem with political correctness in that I think it prevents a lot of people from discussing delicate situations frankly for fear of appearing to be bigoted. I mean, how do you express disapproval of say, the fat acceptance movement, if the second you do so you’re excoriated for being a looksist bully? Even if you have perfectly normal concerns about what being obese does to people?
This is a fair question.
Here’s how you do it, and feel free to use this quote word-for-word: “I disapprove of the fat acceptance movement.”
If I say that, true, someone might come at me and say O NO YOU ARE A LOOKSIST BULLY.
And that’s their right, too. What am I, a baby? Can I dish out criticism, but I can’t take criticism?
I might think they’re wrong to call me a looksist bully. And that’s okay, too. They have a right to be wrong.
One of the most remarkable things about this whole dynamic is that some of the people loudest in their condemnation of “political correctness” are also the first to call other people “snowflakes.”
Yep, as someone who is overweight and has a history of diabetes in my family, I’ve never been on board with that kind of body positivity due to it’s health risks. But I can criticize it without being a dick to other overweight women.
It’s called tact and empathy.
I’m hopeful that this is actually what’s happening. If so, it explains an awful lot. Why so many otherwise decent and normal people are suddenly acting all panicky and whiny as if they’re in danger, when they face nothing at all except maybe some criticism.
From the article,
This is similar to things I have been saying for years, and I’m tired of saying it. The national argument is always these people <------- way over here against those people way over there------->, when the vast majority of people are actually in the middle. The results are a bit skewed from my usual rant (5-10% here vs. 5-10% there with 80-90% in the middle), but the point still stands.
Oh, by the way, notice that NOWHERE is the question “Is hate speech bad?” or the question “Is political correctness bad?” asked, only “Is it a problem?” Vast difference. I’d say only a very small majority of people would say hate speech was not bad, while a whole bunch would say “Yes, it’s bad, but it’s not a problem in America today.”
I’ll bet you are. I know a few real, honest to god racists. I also know a hell of a lot of people who hesitate over what word to use because they do care and they don’t want to offend anyone - and then they pick something that the culture warriors here would condemn them for anyway. If tact and empathy were enough then 80% of Americans wouldn’t say political correctness was a problem. But no, they must all be closet bigots. 
And it isn’t some rhetorical move to say I see an element of elitism in the people pushing for this. If you have the time and energy to worry about capitalising ‘black’ or whether ‘jew’ or ‘jewish’ is acceptable, you probably don’t have more urgent problems in your life like paying the next bill. You don’t see poor and uneducated people coming up with new politically correct terms and enforcing their use on the rich.
And there’s definitely an element of elitism in how they dismiss the concerns of anyone who disagrees. “They’re bigots”, “they’re brainwashed by Fox News”, “they’re goddamned stupid”, “they just don’t understand it”. How about considering that maybe, just maybe, they have a point?