Political Correctness vs Sensitivity

Great Debates
1

As a former English, speech and communications teacher, I am aware of how much language has the potential for affecting the thinking perhaps the actions of others. I’ve watched formerly generally accepted language become unacceptable.

The word nigger is an example. Black people have had to make a point that they are fully human and not to be disparaged. I don’t hear many people refer to this concession as “political correctness.”

There remain other groups who also, through no fault of their own, have had to make a point of their humanity. Are they not equally deserving of our respect? Why is it seemingly fair game to ridicule people who have little or no control over their situations? Why perpetuate stereotypical thinking? When is it considered a matter of that hated “political correctness” or “a lack of a sense of humor” and when is it a matter of simply being sensitive to what hurts other people and helps to keep them down?

I do want to make my own view very clear. I try to be sensitive to the damage that labelling can do. But I hold most dearly the right to freedom of speech. I do not believe in censorship. My desire not to hear other groups ridiculed does not trump anyone’s right to do the ridiculing. Further, someone’s right to ridicule does not trump my right to protest that ridicule and so on. I support the right to freedom of speech equally for both sides.

If you are offended by my protests, then you too have become a member of the “Offenderati” and so that has become virtually a meaningless term.

What say ye to any or all of this?

2

Can you give an example of grous, who through no fault of their own, need to make a point of their humanit and towards whom ridicule is acceptable? I can’t.

3

I can think of many groups that, at one time or another, have not been recognized as full human beings. At one time Jews were referred to as “vermin,” the Irish were portrayed as sub-human in cartoons, women weren’t allowed to vote. There are still stereotypes abounding to the point where people are disrespectful of a group; they fail to see the individuals within that group. Southerners, white trash, rednecks, hillbillies, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, Blacks, the overweight, the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped…

I personally don’t find ridicule of any of these groups to be amusing or “acceptable.” Put downs are humorless. But many people at SDMB and elsewhere seem to feel very comfortable with promoting stereotypical thinking. Their right to make fun outweighs, for them, their responsibility not to promote ignorance.

I find that unusual at SDMB.

4

The thing is Zoe, some groups you consider to be helpless and members of that group through no fault of their own, others don’t. For example, I don’t believe people that would fall into the “white trash” or “playa” categories are there through no fault of their own. They didn’t wake up as white trash or playas. They chose to be members of that subgroup and thus take the negatives with the positives.

I don’t see you differentiating between race and subculture. In my mind, they’re two very seperate, distinct things. The later is open for jokes, the former is not, usually.

As a member of society, you choose how you want to present yourself to other members of society. You choose to don the wifebeater or the gold chain, you weren’t born with it.

That’s the difference, IMHO.

5

My answer is that it’s political correctness when the terms that supposedly cause offense appear innocuous to reasonable people outside that group.

For instance, about ten years ago I was ADA coordinator for a major cultural institution in Our Nation’s Capital. I was told – I am not making this up – that deaf people were offended by the expression “the deaf,” as in “Our organization is dedicated to helping the deaf.” The source of the offense? The language didn’t treat them as “people.”

In fact, “deaf people” was no good, either. In the mid-1990s a “people first” movement arose in the disabled community, which asserted that “disabled people” was not acceptable, because it didn’t sufficiently emphasize that they were people. The correct and proper term was “people with disabilities.” The only correct and proper term. (Imagine the havoc this plays on a serious writer trying to compose a report longer than a couple of paragraphs, when there is no acceptable synonym for the ponderous phrase “people with disabilities.”)

At this point, no doubt many readers are thinking that I’m joking or that I’ve pulled this from The Onion. But no, this is all completely true.

I call this “linguistic fascism,” because it is nothing more than people using language to impose their will on others using the threat that anything but the approved terminology will cause offense and pain. Never mind that the non-approved terms (“the deaf”) have no painful history like “nigger,” and would never be considered by any reasonable person to be inherently offensive (as, for instance, “gimp” might be).

I don’t believe for a second that ordinary deaf and disabled people really were offended by these terms, and rose up to throw off the linguistic bonds of oppression. I’m convinced the “movement” came entirely from activists, consultants, Ph.D.s, and other people with too much time on their hands, and heady with power after the success of the ADA.

Unfortunately, there were not enough people who, like me, looked at this, said it was stupid, and refused to go along. People did what the squeaky wheels wanted, rather than risk embroiling themselves and their employers in some artificial controversy.

(Disclaimer: I haven’t been involved in diabilities issues since 1996, so things may have changed. But I doubt it.)

There’s a similar (if more sensitive) situation with the terms for people of African descent. When I was a child in Maryland in the 1960s, some of my white friends routinely used the word “nigger” (when they were among whites) without any sense that it was improper. I was taught that the correct term was “negro.” “Colored” had been acceptable earlier, but was considered old fashioned and vaguely incorrect.

By the 1970s, “black” had become the correct term and “negro,” while not as offensive as “nigger,” was no longer acceptable. (There was a relatively brief flirtation with “Afro-American” in the late sixties, but it didn’t stick, except as the name of a Baltimore newspaper that is still being published, AFAIK.)

“Black” was the standard term through the 1970s and most of the 1980s, when “African American” showed up. From my casual observation, “African American” now seems to be virtually the only acceptable term. “Black” appears to be edging toward disrepute.

The problem I have with “African American” (apart from being a two-word, seven-syllable, 15-letter term replacing a one-word, one-syllable, five-letter term) is that it is arguably less accurate than “black.” Yes, black people obviously come in a range of hues and few, if any, are really black. But the same can be said of “white” people, and almost no one takes offense at “white.”

The point is that “African American” cannot accurately be applied to the majority of black people: those who live outside the US. African-Canadians? African-French? It just seems silly. And If we have turned “black” into something vaguely offensive, how then do we distinguish between such Africans as Nelson Mandela and Charlize Theron?

I’m all in favor of sensitivity and not causing people unnecessary pain and offense. But look at what you said: “…being sensitive to what hurts other people and helps to keep them down.” There’s the problem right there. Hurting someone’s feelings is not the same as oppressing them. But people have conflated the two, so that any time someone’s offended they believe their rights have been infringed. Last time I looked, there is no constitutional right to freedom from offense.

In fact, the First Amendment virtually guarantees that you will be offended. (That is, if we still have a First Amendment by the time Bush and Ashcroft are thrown out of office. But that’s a different thread.)

When people try to manipulate me by claiming that some ordinary turn of phrase offends and causes them pain, I say, Grow up. They’re only words. Remember what you learned in kindergarten about sticks and stones? Still true.

6

IMO, joking about a stereotype is not promoting it - it is deflating it.

Individuals aren’t being ridiculed - the stereotypes are being ridiculed. Putting stereotypes in a comedic context is proof positive - to me at least - that they are not to be taken seriously. That’s why we call them jokes.

As I see it, that goes further towards fighting ignorance than silence (or humour righteousness) ever could.

I could quote various well known comedians and political humourists, past and present, who would assert the same thing. Have they been invalidated by some world event that proved otherwise?

7

Good OP. I agree somewhat with lezlers, except I’m not so sure about the level of choice in being ‘white trash’ (what’s playa?). I do agree that there is difference between race (which is impossible to change or hide) and subculture (which to a certain extent is).

I’d like to add that things furthermore are rather context-sensitive, like the oft-mentioned ‘rule’ that a person of the subgroup may make such stereotypical jokes. Generally speaking, if a word preys on the lower social status or vulnerability of a specific group, and its usage will or may perpetuate a sense of inferiority or insecurity of members of that group, I think it should be avoided. Hence I can’t feel offended at all about the yuppie thread in the Pit right now, even though I’d probably qualify as one.

8

Fabulous post commasense. VERY well put.

9

Tusculan “playa” is kind of like “gangsta”. Guys that wear their jeans around their ankles, thick gold chains and teeth, that kind of thing. Somehow I doubt they were born that way or are that way out of no fault of their own.

10

I thought maybe ‘playas’ were people who slept on the beach.

11

I’ll second that. “Linguistic fascism” indeed.

If anything, it’s worse now than it was in 1996. Now everyone is either a “victim” or a “hero”, or incredibly, both a victim and a hero at the same time.

There’s a joke there, but I’m not gonna touch it.

12

Well, one of the problems with some of these groups is that there is no hard definition of who is a member. Ask ten people what it means to be white trash; get ten answers. So people who, by your standards, are merely poor and uneducated will be defined as white trash by someone else.

Should people get up every morning and look in their closets, wondering what they should not wear so as not to be lumped into some catagory to be the butts of jokes? What a way to live your life–worried that some choice of hobby or car or hairstyle will have you permenently dismissed as a redneck, or a yuppie, or a playa, or a hippie…“lifestyle choices” will get you summed up as a stereotype, and dismissed as a person.

13

Aww, shucks. 'Twarn’t nothing.

14

sugaree,

Yes, people are going to put you in a category. You can’t avoid that. Typically jokes are made about the members of subcultures that are on extreme ends, not people who “might” fit into the categories. There are many comedians who make their living off of making fun of subcultural sterotypes. They’re doing rather well, so I’m somewhat doubtful that everyone belonging to that subcultures are feeling exploited and “kept down.” Those comedians usually touch on a variety of subcultures as well, they seldom focus on one. Everyone makes fun of everyone else, it’s seldom with malicious intent. I reiterate my previous point that members of a subculture choose to be members of that subculture (yes, even the “white trash” subculture. Were they forced to get mullet haircuts? Forced to wear cowboy boots? Just because you’re white and uneducated doesn’t automatically make you “white trash” How many times have you automatically known the extent of someones education upon first laying eyes on them?) they are not there out of no fault of their own, as the OP stated.

15

I think we may have to look a bit deeper to see why these terms are offensive.

Any term that identifies a ‘group’ of people has connotations. There are the characteristics that make someone a member of the group (for example, people with disabilities have, oddly enough, disabilities), and then there are the characteristics that most or some of the members of that group share, and which often identify that group to outsiders (for example, the able-bodied may think of disabilities as implying wheelchair, which of course, it doesn’t necessarily).

I think the shift from term to term (thus changing the “rules” of political correctness from time to time) are an ongoing attempt by members of each group to come up with a term that lacks the connotations of the current term. So a "handicapped’ person implies a wheelchair, while a “person with disabilities” does not, at least at first.

I have two problems with this. The first one is that, as commasense so eloquently pointed out, you often lose accuracy or get further and further removed from reality as you exhaust one term after another to identify a group. “Challenged” for “Disabled” is another example of this.

The second problem is that the connotations don’t generally have anything to do with the word used - whether validly or not, the connotations follow the concept of the group in question. Whether we call people invalids or handicapped or disabled or george, once we know what group the term identifies, most of us will still flash on a wheelchair. Changing the term doesn’t change that.

And that’s my problem with relentless PC and shifting euphemisms/descriptors. YMMV, of course.

16

commasense, excellent post. I was shouting out in agreement with you. Until…

That’s hardly fair, given that the Bill of Rights was handed to them shredded and in tatters after the 8 Clinton years.

But, like you said, that’s a different topic. As for this one, you could not have nailed it any more on the head.

17

I can’t avoid other people putting me into a category. I can damn well avoid putting other people into a category by treating them as individuals instead of filing them away according to this or that. I refuse to believe that “choosing” anything is an invite to ridicule. What, those poor, uneducated people who are not white trash? Didn’t they choose to remain poor? Didn’t they choose not to become educated? Does that mean we can riducule them?

You use the example of a mullet cut as an indication of white trash. In the interest of full disclosure, I have relayed to these boards in the past my adventures in mullet hunting, when we would form the mullet pool and bet on how many mullets we’d see before going into a certain bar. But I don’t dismiss mullet-wearers as white trash. I don’t believe that because a man has a mullet, he keeps Raid with the condiments, deliberately hits critters with his vehicle, sleeps on a nasty mattress, ect. It’s a freaking hairstyle. It means nothing.

The problem I see with stereotypes is that, as you say, we don’t automatically know the extent of someone’s education upon first laying eyes on them. But people that believe in stereotypes think they do.

Everyone does make fun of everyone else. Conversation would be damn dull without that. But would you go into my old favorite bar and pull out the “You might be white trash” jokes? Would you risk having it perceived as malicious? And I want to mention that the thread that inspired this was indeed meant to be malicious. The OP mentioned that she has problems with “white trash.”

18

I am impressed by the general quality of the responses here, even though I continue to disagree with many of you. You have obviously put some thought into this and are not just talking off of the top of your heads. We have just reached different conclusions.

Since I don’t believe that anyone is white trash, I would have to agree with you. But there are people born into poverty and into homes where reading and education are not encouraged. The customs that they learn as being “normal” are as ingrained into them as yours are into you. In that sense it is through “no fault of their own.” Sometimes they just haven’t been taught any better or motivated to desire anything different. There are some who catch on, want out and find another way. But that is the exception.

No, I don’t consider any of the groups to be helpless. Speaking up for themselves is only one of the ways that they can empower themselves.

There are many comedians who make their living off of making fun of subcultural sterotypes. They’re doing rather well, so I’m somewhat doubtful that everyone belonging to that subcultures are feeling exploited and “kept down.”

I agree that some people can get away with it and other can’t. It helps if you are a member of that group. But just because Chris Rock or Richard Pryor can say it and make people, in this case Blacks, laugh at themselves, doesn’t mean that David Letterman or you or I could.

Sugaree pointed out that it’s just a haircut! It means nothing. Hairstyles that are considered tacky one decade may be the preferred cut in another. I would never have dreamed when I was a kid that stringy hair in the face or hair sticking up in the back would ever be in style. But it is. “It’s just a haircut.” There is nothing inherently superior in how one trims the protein growing out of the top of his head.

The same is true with the cowboy boots. They are just leather shoes. Not good. Not bad. Not culturally inferior. Not ridiculous. (But damned comfortable and practical!)

more to come…

19

Who determines what is reasonable? What happens when reasonable people disagree? And shouldn’t people within the group being ridiculed have a say?

Ponderous? It’s one syllable longer than “American Indians.”

Catchy phrase but it doesn’t hold up. For one thing, I can’t impose my will on you by telling you how I feel. I cannot keep you from ridiculing people, labelling them, and putting them down. Nor would I choose to impose my will on yours. But it is considered emotionally intelligent to tell people how one feels. I don’t attack the person using the putdown, but I will let her know that when she calls my friends white trash, I feel offended.

Well, actually Canada is part of North America so citizens could be called “African-Americans.” Maybe some countries don’t make distinctions between the races. I have wondered myself how people of color in other countries prefer to be referred to. To me that’s the important thing. Accomodation is such a small thing to offer. It costs nothing.

One of the definitions of oppress is to burden mentally. To me that’s the same as hurting someone’s feelings. It’s not the worst form of oppression, but ridicule and putdowns do affect the way people actually think about other people. And thinking can lead to oppressive action.

If a person tells you how they feel, they are being direct and honest. The word manipulate as you have used it denotes trying to control, especially in unfair ways. I am not trying to control you. I am trying to reason with you by being as honest as I can about my own feelings and sharing with you what I have learned about language as it relates to stereotyping. “Only words?” Words are incredibly powerful. Grow up? Never! :slight_smile:

More to come…

20

So when a Klansman uses “nigger” or “boy” he is making fun of the stereotype? I don’t follow you.

Are you saying that it offends you when someone uses the word “victim” or “hero”? I have noticed that it isn’t politically correct to be a “victim” anymore. “Suffer” is another one. I try to avoid using either in reference to myself. That’s all I can promise.

I remember the words of a professor quoting a student poem which began, “Man, man…put him in a can. Give him a label fast as you can.” I think those words have affected my attitude and that’s why I remember them forty years later.