“I got called a slur the other day. That sucked. Hate speech is a real problem!”
“I got in trouble at work the other day for using a slur. That sucked. Political correctness is a real problem!”
I’m not surprised that 60% of Americans can hold both these ideas in their head at the same time. cf: LHoD’s comments about the intelligence of the general public.
How about spelling it out for us?
This is America, and Americans generally lack traits like empathy and tact, look at our “President”. He is as popular as he is because he acts the way he does. And there are quite a number of liberals who would support someone similar if they aligned with their views.
Sure, everyone who supports social justice is rich and elitist, right. That statement just shows your elitism since the rampant inequalities in this country are definitely an urgent problem, or haven’t you been watching the news. I live off of VA disability, wouldn’t be able to afford healthcare without Medicaid and shop at dollar stores. Yeah, i’m rich and elitist… 
PC stands for “Political Correctness”, and is therefore definable only in political terms. Any political stripe is equally free to use PC to describe its ends. PC, in the form of NewSpeak, was used to justify and enforce the fascism of Big Brother in “1984”. There is nothing intrinsically Corrrect about Political Correctness, other than its conformity with a political objective. PC actually means Political Compliance, or better, Political Obedience. Your adversaries are just as politically obedient as you are.
Woah, this is so silly. People who are worried about capitalizing “black” are, in general, journalists and academics and others who make their living with words. They put the time and energy into using words correctly because that’s how they get paid. I’d no more expect an electrician to know these rules than I’d expect an investigative reporter to know how to rewire a broken ceiling fan.
The idea that someone faces any serious consequence because they didn’t know that “Black” is getting capitalized now is an idea both essential to the relevance of your example, and totally absurd.
This is lunacy. PC is the ultimate mutable term, applicable by any group to attack or protect another group. It can have political meaning in the usual sense but it is far more commonly used today in personal contexts. You can argue that since the personal is political there is no difference, but only in so far as you make that definition clear from the beginning.
When put in conjunction with “hate speech,” obviously not a political term, “political correctness” is also obviously not being used as a political term.
From the same post you just replied to:
Or try reading the focus group replies I quoted. Or the article linked in my first reply.
I strongly suspect that I’m one of those “culture warriors” you’re referring to. “Condemn” is a ridiculous word to describe what I might do, which is, “criticize” or “educate.”
If someone uses (for example) the word “gyp” to describe being ripped off, I might say, “Hey, I don’t want to make a big deal, and I used to use that word, but you maybe should realize it’s based on an ethnic stereotype of gypsies, so maybe use ‘ripped off’ instead?”
And that’s how virtually every confrontation I’ve heard around unintentional use of problematic language has gone. If someone is so fragile that they can’t stand even that, the problem isn’t with political correctness.
They would if there were an enormous propaganda machine connected to a major political party under the control of a megalomaniacal lying president all focused on convincing them that it was a problem. Just, y’know, for hypotheticals.
Political correctness is such a vague word, and covers many things. Certainly you shouldn’t use slurs or hate speech. I don’t think anyone on this board would disagree. But there is a lot of nonsense going on, a lot of over-reactions and a lot of mostly white people taking offense over nothing.
A couple of examples from where I live:
There are four white guys who all work in the restaurant industry and were really tight. One of the guys roommates–a Filipino–called them a Barkada, which is a Tagalog word that roughly means a group of close male friends, but it has that certain je ne sais quoi that a lot of non-english words have, where you lose the sense when you translate them into English. When they all opened there own place, they decided to call it Barkada. The backlash was swift. They got accused of racism and cultural appropriation. One Mensa candidate named Jennifer Millette posted “Your bar has wines from SPAIN! The Philippines were colonized BY SPAIN!” The guys caved and wrote a grovelling apology. I kind of wish they hadn’t, but I gete it. They can’t really afford to alienate any potential customers, and the young white women who get irate about these things are also the kind who go to upscale wine bars. I talked to one Filipina who owns her own joint and knows these guys and she was not annoyed at all by the name. Why should she be? It’s just a foreign word, no different from naming your place The Biergarten.
An acquaintance of mine is Navaho and works for a brewery. His grandfather was one of the Code Talkers in WW2, and to honor him he rolled out code talker IPA. (Side note: I don’t like IPA’s but friends who do say it’s pretty good.) Mostly this went fine, but there were people on social media accusing him of “Cultural appropriation.” It’s his own culture! But I guess they didn’t take the time to look into it. There’s outrage to be felt! Sample post
Another Mensa candidate: Fuck the government.
Normal person: What does the government have to do with this?
AMC: It’s brewed in Washington DC!
I could go on. There was a petition to rename Captain America: Civil War. (There’s only been one civil war in all of history you see,) And there was the time protesters pulled down a statue of passionate abolitionist and Union general U.S. Grant.
Is all this a problem? Well, it’s not much of a problem. There’s not much anyone can do about it. Like the man said, you can’t fix stupid. But I can see several bad things coming out of crap like this. I don’t think it will get anyone to support Trump who didn’t already support him, but it is something that riles up his base and might motivate a few apathetic Trump supporters to go to the polls. It gives easy stories to people like Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson. Also, it trivialises real problems. There are genuine problems with police brutality, income inequality, actual racism, etc. To elevate nonsense like the above to the level of those real problems, diminishes those problems, at least in the public perception. Normal sane people who read or experience stuff like this will tend to grow disinterested in solving the actual probems here. Maybe they shouldn’t, but they will.
You’re very selective with your sympathy. Someone else might say that using the word ‘gyp’ is hardly a big deal, and if someone is so fragile they can’t stand hearing it, the problem is with them. This is not my view, but I do think you underestimate how demoralising it is to be held to obscure, ever changing rules on what is acceptable and unacceptable to say. Especially when you then turn on the TV and see celebrities getting in hot water and forced to apologise for using an outmoded word, or even fired because of it.
Trump is indeed the problem. I never saw Americans holding such bad and jaded opinions of their compatriots before Trump was elected. It’s sad. Only 27% of eligible voters actually voted for him, yet many of you seem to be writing off the majority of the population as irredeemable assholes.
I found a poll from before Trump was elected:
Back then only 71% of Americans thought political correctness was a problem, so maybe Trump and his propaganda machine are responsible for that 9% increase.
Yo, follow the conversation. We were talking about “people who hesitate over what word to use because they do care and they don’t want to offend anyone.” We weren’t talking about someone who is–and thanks for clarifying that it’s not your view, because now I can say the obvious-- an asshole who is perfectly fine offending others and who doesn’t consider it their problem if others are offended.
It’s not that I underestimate how demoralizing assholes might find it to be educated or corrected or even, after they’ve double down, shunned or mocked. It’s that I’m okay with that. Maybe if the people who think using ethnic slurs “is hardly a big deal” and that if someone’s bothered, “the problem is with them”–maybe if those people are demoralized more often, they’ll shut their stupid asshole faces.
This sort of equivocation, this bait-and-switch, where you start off talking about people who are genuinely trying not to offend, and then belittle me because now we’re talking about people who won’t make the tiniest effort not to offend, is deeply shitty argumentation. But I’m glad you’re making it, because when you do, it makes the whole concept of “political correctness” as a problem ever more transparently absurd.
You totally misinterpreted my post. I’m saying you underestimate how demoralising it is for normal people who don’t want to offend anyone, to be repeatedly corrected for using various terms that weren’t considered offensive in the past, and seeing progressives assume bad faith on the part of people making similar mistakes.
And I’m comparing your view to the people who’d call someone fragile if they objected to use of the word ‘gypped’. Is that clearer?
You repeatedly say that people who haven’t learned that the world, as it does ever single year, has changed are correct when they have to be confronted with the fact that the world has changed. They are not. It’s not one side versus the other but a simple fact. It’s a fact exactly like wearing a mask during a pandemic is a fact and that people who deny that or feel they are being demoralized by being forced to do are assholes. Additionally, those who sympathize with and even support non-mask wearers are themselves part of the problem. They are not correct, they are not morally superior, they are not entitled to pat themselves on the back. They are wrong and they are going to get schooled by anybody who understands how the world works, whether they like it or not.
No, that’s not clearer. Your comparison is bizarre. But I’m happy for you to keep making terrible arguments about the bogeyman of political correctness, because you illustrate the emptiness of the concept better than I could.
Okay, let’s try again.
Most political correctness is pretty damn minor in the grand scheme of things. Saying Jewish instead of Jew. ‘Down syndrome’ instead of ‘Down’s syndrome’. It’s not exactly world changing stuff. I was always told the point was to be polite, and avoid hurting people’s feelings unnecessarily. You, based on the “if someone is so fragile line”, do not appear to give a shit about people’s feelings, even when the people in question are doing their best and mean no one any harm.
Is that correct, or did you just express yourself badly?
And if it is correct, if you don’t care about people’s feelings, why exactly do you care about being politically correct?
I wake up this morning with gratitude in my heart for a universe that doesn’t limit me to these two snide choices that you offer.
If anyone else is confused about my position, I’m happy to clarify to them—but your serpentine argument that somehow being sensitive to offensive language is the new insensitive is so sad that I don’t think I need to explain it to you. It falls in line with your other deeply ridiculous arguments, and it just makes your position look bad.
Please proceed.
Oh, so this is what you’re confused about in that other thread. I wish you had been more direct about what you were asking. I answered too generally. No matter–it makes more sense to be specific here.
The answer here is simple: PC isn’t some generic term for caring about the feelings of everyone. It’s specifically about choosing language to avoid marginalizing people who are disadvantaged. It definitely isn’t some argument that you need to be nice even to assholes.
LHOD is talking about the people who go around saying that PC is bad. They argue it’s okay to be assholes to the disadvantaged. So they don’t get to turn around and attack you for being mean to them. If they can’t take it, they shouldn’t dish it out.
Those are the fragile people he mentions.
Your definition of PC wouldn’t make any sense. If you have to never offend anyone, then you wouldn’t be able to call out people for being offensive. PC would cancel itself out. It’s only about not punching down.
Yeah, I wanted to see if my understanding was wrong and get some different people’s opinions.
But I never thought PC was a generic term for caring about the feelings of everyone. Rather I thought it’s a particular way of not hurting the feelings of (possibly) disadvantaged people. So if you don’t care about hurting people’s feelings in general, why would you care about the feelings of disadvantaged people?
Also, LHOD wasn’t talking about people who argue it’s okay to be assholes to the disadvantaged in the bit I quoted. He was talking about people who unintentionally use problematic language and get corrected. Above you said "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.’” So presumably you believe it’s possible to dislike political correctness without being an asshole?
Also, how did you vote in the polls, if you don’t mind me asking?
Just a heads-up: DemonTree has yet to represent what I’m saying accurately, and I’m past the point of trying to explain it to her one more time. If anyone else really cares about the point that’s being misrepresented here, let me know; but please don’t take her word for it.
He can read the post in question if he’s not sure: