Political correctness is cowardice.

Great Debates
61

In post 47, You posted examples of several opinions that you felt were the subject of unfair attacks for being politically incorrect. What sort of jail time are you looking at for expressing those opinions? Or is it something more in the nature of a fine?

Sorry, that was my error.

I didn’t expect that you would.

You’ve argued, repeatedly, that there’s no real difference between modern political correctness and burning people at the stake. In this very post, you have said that the state is curtailing your right to speech because of political correctness. Now you’re saying that you don’t think it’s violating your rights at all?

Buddy, one of us is very confused about the argument you’re trying to make in this thread, and I’m not entirely convinced it’s me.

62

I dont believe I have complained about my free speech being violated. At least I hope that is not the impression I gave. I do not often get into political debate in my day to day life. However, many people and politicians who do speak publicly are subject to such State violation. It is the public sphere I am concerned with not my ability to make politically incorrect statements in privacy of my own daily life.

I do think you are enjoying my comment about todays PC not being too different from the days of imprisonment and burning too much. One unfortunate mistake on my part and its used to condemn my entire arguement. My main point by bringing up such punishment was to point out that power elites try their damnedest to maintain power. They do this the best way they can; by fair means and foul. THat people in power take any avantage and run with it as best they can. If that means wrongly tarring political opponents with the label of racist or bigot then they will happily do so.

63

Examples?

64

I think the the OP becomes more interesting if one reads it as “brooks no dissent”. In that case, of course, the right is much more PC than the left. Hell, they can’t even tolerate guns with advanced safety features, much less admitting global warming is real and man-made, or that evolution is a fact, or that God is a myth. Try spouting any of those ideas at a Tea Party meeting…
The OP fails, of course, by failing to notice that Mr. Obama won re-election rather easily… “the fact that we have a black president and he is taking the country outside the box* most of the citizens* are comfortable with.” indeed?

65

Hey, maybe you can do us the favor of defining the term?

Terry Jones is simply wrong.

66

You mean if we were labeled as unpatriotic again. I got plenty of that from around 2001-04. I don’t care about the entire concept of patriotism. It was very annoying as a pathetic excuse to avoid facing unfavorable facts, though.

By other people using their right to free speech, or by the government?

What do you think political correctness is? We’re on page two, and it’s past time someone who is concerned about it explained what it means.

67

Fortunately, political correctness doesn’t prevent a movie like that from being made, any more than it did in 1979.

The film was banned in dozens of countries, including much of the UK, and was only made at all because George Harrison set up a production company for that specific purpose (other production companies having pulled out because of the subject matter.) Jones himself got death threats, as did all the other Pythons.

68

I do recall they ran into some trouble even at the time – not because of PC, but because blasphemy is still a crime in the UK.

69

I was expecting June, not May.

70

Do you mean “was” still a crime in the UK? Because I think blasphemy laws were abolished in the UK a few years ago.

71

I think one of the things that frustrates otherwise sane and rational people about political correctness is that the goalposts change over time.

I’ll use a personal example- I grew up in SW Houston, Alief to be exact. Something like 1/3 of my classmates and the kids in the neighborhood were either Vietnamese or Chinese. The term of choice growing up was “oriental”, so that’s what I used. College really wasn’t a hotbed of political correctness or even racial diversity, since I went to Texas A&M, which at the time, wasn’t exactly racially diverse or politically correct.

At some point after college (graduated Dec. 1996),I innocently used the term “oriental” to refer to an asian person, and got my ass chewed like I’d just described someone as a kike, spic or nigger. I was taken aback, to say the least- it’s not like I’d called this person a gook, slant or chink- I’d used the term I was aware of as an acceptable term. I really wasn’t aware that the preferred term that I was aware of had not only gone out of vogue, but was now considered hateful.

The same sort of thing has probably happened to someone with respect to the terms “disabled” vs. “handicapped” vs “differently abled” at some time or another, and it’s equally absurd.

What counts is the spirit in which the term’s used- if say… my 90 year old grandmother slips up and refers to a black person as a “negro”, but not in a hateful or racist way, people shouldn’t get bent out of shape- I’m sure she knows much worse and much more offensive terms, but chose to use one of the terms that was the preference at one time in her history, which hardly seems so offensive to me.

72

It’s a game we’re all playing.

:slight_smile:

73

2008.

74

It counts, but it doesn’t count for everything.

Remember the old adage about the pavement on the road to hell.

That’s the classic excuse and one that still fails to convince me. YOU don’t get to be the one to decide what offends ME. It somewhat amazes me how many times this lesson has to be repeated.

I cut old people a bit of slack. I don’t jump down their throats like I might other people, but I don’t let them off the hook, either.

Even if you’re a good person, that doesn’t mean all your actions, no matter how well intentioned, are reasonable, nor does it mean they should be accepted by other people. We all want to think of ourselves as “good guys” and hence that all our actions are reasonably justified. It just isn’t the case.

75

What State violation? Because I can think of a politician who said something incredibly racist (basically that black urban men have no work ethic), and one of the following things happened to him:
a) He was thrown in prison.
b) He was burned at the stake.
c) He was hounded from political office by the morality police and had his vote stripped from him.
d) He remained chairman of the House Budget Committee, one of the most powerful positions in our government.

People who take “politically incorrect,” by which I mean “insanely bigoted,” positions, are routinely elected to public office, granted multi-million dollar cable TV contracts, appointed to chair major corporations, and otherwise get to occupy the very highest rungs of our society. Not only do the politically incorrect bigots not get burnt at the stakes, they enjoy the richest fruits our society has to offer.

Stop feeling sorry for them.

76

No, but you don’t get to force someone to not offend you unless you can bring an argument for why it is offensive. Ultimately it boils down to convincing people that there’s a problem.

It was wrong that the guy was chewed out for using the word “Oriental.” That doesn’t convince them that there’s a problem. It might make the less brazen kowtow and say it right, but it’s equally likely to make someone indignant.

You can try it here. Find a post where someone says “retarded” and get all angry and self-righteous about it. Watch how they will start using the word more often, especially if the post is in the Pit.

And, yes, “retarded” is likely to become a new word you can’t say in the near future. And trigger warnings are going to be standard. That’s the PC world.

Which, incidentally, is why this could be a interesting thread. PC is basic politeness–except when it has you do something you don’t normally do. Then it’s nannying or coddling.

77

I recently encountered the idea that everyone’s got some racist/sexist leanings. What determines whether you ARE a racist/sexist is what you do when confronted on some bullshit you say. If you “kowtow” (nice dig there), which is to say, if you’re brave enough to evaluate what you did and its effects, and decent enough to change going forward, well, that’s the baseline normal human thing to do. If your precious ego is so fragile that getting confronted about your bullshit makes it Drama O’Clock, and you turn the whole thing into how Mean the Politically Correct Police are, and you’re too cowardly actually to take a hard look at yourself–well, that’s when you cross over into being a racist or a sexist.

So, yeah. I used to use “retarded” in the sense you’re talking about. Then someone wrote me a private message asking me not to do so, and I thought about it, and I stopped.

78

Some interesting political facts about the UK:

Since 1945, UK politics has been dominated by two parties: Labour and the Conservatives. A third party, the Liberals or more recently Liberal Democrats, have had varied fortunes over the years; they hit a high water mark in the 2010 election and now govern in coalition with Conservatives. Ignoring Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish parties, it was fair to say that the UK as a whole had a three party system.

However, in recent years a fourth party, the UK Independence Party has entered the scene. UKIP can fairly be said - indeed pride themselves on being - the very definition of “not politically correct”.

They want to cut immigration, because they believe immigrants are criminals.
They wantveil-wearing, non-English speaking Muslims out of the UK, because they make people feel uncomfortable.
They believe the UK’s Judeo-Christian heritage should be “muscularly defended”. Anything less is “appeasment of the worst kind”. (See link above.)
They want to cut paid maternity leave; they believe working mothers are worth less to employers and should be paid accordingly.
They want to end equalities discrimination legislation. (See link above.)

I think that pretty much covers:

So, what happened to UKIP? Were they shut down by the State or shamed into silence by the political correctness lobby? Not exactly.

They were given media coverage far in excess of that given to minority parties of the same size, such as the Greens. Nigel Farage, their leader, was invited to air his views on flagship current affairs shows almost constantly: certainly more than the leaders of the big three parties. Most of this coverage was benign: initially they were treated as an amusing bunch of eccentrics, latterly as a serious political party. Only very rarely was the explicit racism of their position called out by the media.

In recent European elections, partly because of the intense and largely uncritical media coverage they’d received, they polled more votes than the big three parties. Opinion polls show that, for a UK election, they would get substantially more votes than the Liberal Democrats. They are now a genuine force in UK politics, with members of the governing Conservative party openly calling for an electoral pact with them. Leaders of all parties, rather than confronting their fear-mongering populism, now speak of the “very real concerns” of the people who voted for their racist platform.

When will this shameful oppression end?

79

To the limited extent that people decrying political correctness have a point, it is in the case where some officious type decides to “enforce” the “rules” of political correctness without having a clue about what they are doing. There may be more awareness of this shift in language in communities with a larger Asian community, but a presumption that one should “know better” for words in flux is unwarranted. The several Asians with whom I have worked have all self-identified as Oriental. When anyone has bothered to ask, the word Indian has generally been preferred to Native American by those whom the words identify. My wife worked for years for an organization providing services to multiple state and county agencies who all had “mental retardation” in their names. My kids were served by another of those agencies. I began hearing rumblings against that phrase on blogs and op ed pieces for several years, while the workers (and parents) actually had no problem with it. It has only been in the last five years that the “MR” has been dropped from “MRDD” by most of those agencies.

The point there, however, is not that “political correctness” is evil, but that there are boors on both side of the line, with some boors routinely using pejoratives and other boors rudely “correcting” people to suit their own preconceived ideas.

By not “letting them off the hook” for Negro, you simply make the case against political correctness. Negro was never offensive and the only people who get to be offended are people whom it would identify. Colored falls into the same category.

This is a point that you should ponder and recall before you decide to not let a person “off the hook” for using an inoffensive, if outdated, word.

Stand up to people who use slurs, of course. However, going out of one’s way to take offense at Negro or Oriental or Indian or Mentally Retarded when the speaker has no idea that someone somewhere has changed a rule about which they may not even be aware is simply acting the role of Mrs. Grundy and doing nothing to actually promote civility.

= = =

The claims of the OP are silly for any number of reasons, of course: incoherence, false premises, poor logic, a wholly misplaced notion of the power of “political correctness”, and an apparent desire to defend the needs of rude people to be offensive as some sort of right. It is also amusing, of course, to see “political correctness” portrayed as some sort of Left-wing conspiracy. To the extent that it exists, it is also employed on the Right; we simply have not come up with a catchy name to identify it.

80

People take offense at some words. It was not always thus for those words. It doesn’t matter. I really don’t get why this is hard to get.

People collectively choose what is and what is not currently acceptable. Like I said, I give old people a break. I explain that some words are no longer currently acceptable. If they don’t accept that, that not especially civil, either. Relying on “tradition” or “intent” is another way of saying “too lazy to change” and that’s not acceptable. It’s granting a free pass where one isn’t warranted and shouldn’t be expected.

Attacks on “political correctness”, including in the OP, often boil down to this. “(S)He didn’t mean any harm” and such. There are too many examples already where people take that small inch of leeway and push for a mile.