Think back for a minute on the incident between Cory Goldstein and Bonita Tindle. Do you think “oh, it’s ok, it’s a corrective to millennia of injustice so no big deal” is the appropriate response to her wanting to cut his hair off because “cultural appropriation”? She just went overboard with it a little bit?
Right.
There’s this new form of completely lazy “journalism” that I think is really damaging, and it’s this: “People are going crazy over this thing!” All you need is some clickbait title and 6 individual tweets. Six, being more than one, is enough to satisfy the definition of “people,” but still small enough to make it possible to find enough examples of pretty much any boneheaded idea. So we have, as a recent example, “Conservatives are running to twitter to express their regret over voting for Trump!” This was posted, non-ironically, here on the dope and it’s true – there are some people who have expressed regret on Twitter. Ahh, there’s that dopamine hit. But is this is a significantly important sentiment? Of course not, millions of people voted for Trump, and the vast majority of them regret nothing.
So if you’re not attending a university, but these “gone-too-far” examples of PC culture exist mostly at universities, I’d posit that you probably have an opinion of it because it was on Fox & Friends, or /r/conservative, or Drudge Report, or wherever it is you go when you’re not here. It’s not a problem that was affecting you personally, it’s not even a real problem in any meaningful sense, but it became an easy target for people looking for that dopamine high.
Who?
Actually, I’ve run into the ‘cultural appropriation’ accusations in person and in non-political but somewhat left-leaning facebook groups. The standard response on this board to any discussion of it seems to be that I must just be making it up, or have gotten it from watching conservative media that I don’t watch, but it’s definitely out there outside of universities. And it really doesn’t matter how widespread it actually is, because when the response to bringing it up is to either deny that someone’s personal experience happened or minimize it with ‘well, there are MILLENNIA of CULTURAL OPPRESSION in the other direction so it doesn’t matter’, you actually cement to people that it’s real and that you support it.
The really bizarre part is that the people who object to “political correctness” are the same ones who lament the lost days when people were polite. But politeness is really all that political correctness means.
Of course, I suspect that a lot of these folks have a very warped notion of what “politeness” actually means.
…In other words, you erected a straw man and knocked it down.
Again, in this thread, I am not asking what political correctness is intended by its supporters to mean, or be. There are many other threads discussing that.
Because ultimately it does not matter, at least for now, whether the *supporters/defenders of PC * believe that it is about civility or politeness, etc. What matters is - is that how the ***general public ***sees it? Is that how the ***voters ***- especially, the centrist swing voters see it?
Whatever PC may have been *intended *to be, it has taken on a speech-suppressing, Orwellian, Red Guards-ish connotation - whether fairly or unfairly.
My understanding is that microaggressions are actions that are not intended to be racist, sexist or bigoted but have some negative baggage associated with it that may not be obvious to the offender but is pretty clear to the recipient.
One example is when you ask an Asian that you just met “where are you from” It highlights the fact that you (and pretty much everyone) sees Asians as being from somewhere else. It might just be an honest attempt to get to know someone better but it does reinforce the notion that Asians are “others”
The concept is supposed to help make people aware of these microaggression but they get used as accusations and what is clearly inadvertent is imbued with intent and malice and the inadvertent microaggressor is made to feel like a racist. Generally too much fucking anger during teachable moments.
My understanding of cultural appropriation is where people adopt the culture of a minority in a way that is either exploitive or harmful to the minority. Once again this is not always intentional.
A classic example is when boy scouts form Native American dance troupes and mimic dances that have cultural and religious significance for Native Americans.
Another form is when a white artist or performer adopts a minority style and either passes it off as their own or adopts it to appear edgy or cool. To exploit the minority culture rather than to share the minority culture with others.
I think the term political correctness is frequently used to enforce liberal orthodoxy. If I believe that a large part of the cause for racial disparities is differences in culture, I am not being politically correct. The politically correct view is that the disparities are primarily the result of racism and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
There are several facets to this liberal orthodoxy, but in almost every case, the politically correct view is the more liberal view and any contrary view is racist or sexist or bigoted.
I don’t find the concept of trigger warnings controversial (we use them on TV programming, movies, video games, etc). But I have seen people use the concept of trigger warnings to accuse someone of using trigger words as an excuse to treat that person like they are intentionally inflicting emotional distress on the listener. I don’t know that we needed a new easily misunderstood phrase for this long held practice of warning people of upcoming disturbing content.
I think that there are a lot of younger folks that are adopting colloquial versions of these terms that may not coincide with the academic meanings.
I see the term white privilege used incorrectly to mean wealth privilege frequently enough that some white people correctly point out that they are poor. Then they say “but you’re still white” and go on to describe other elements of wealth privilege.
I see accusations of racism, sexism or bigotry used not to identify actual racism, sexism or bigotry but to shut down debate.
Much of today’s race theory revolves around things that don’t require active racism but still has racist effects. Microagressions and white privilege don’t require active racism but when people accuse others of microaggressions or white privilege, its not an attempt to educate, it is frequently an indictment of that person’s moral character.
The problem is that a lot of these concepts are scalpels that are being used like sledgehammers by people who are perpetually offended. The guy that brings up sexual assault in a conversation is not trivializing or “normalizing” sexual assault but that is how the concept of trigger warnings get used sometimes.
That’s the only meaning it’s had since the late eighties at least. I see no reason why anyone on the left would want to rehabilitate “PC” any more than people on the right would want to rehabilitate “reactionary.” The premise of this thread is weird.
OK, I believe you. Now, when someone said something silly on the internet, did it chill you to your core? Did it silence your freedom of expression? Take away your rights? Or did you just laugh quietly in bemusement while looking at your Galaxy S5?
Let’s be honest here. Of course it matters how widespread it is. Internet accusations of cultural appropriation aren’t a problem that anyone would normally bother themselves with if it weren’t for the warm blanket feeling that comes from being against them.
Right, this. I’m 37 and I don’t remember a time when PC wasn’t already a derogatory phrase. It seems to have been invented solely for people to brag that they’re not PC.
Just so we can get away from the potentional silliness of microaggressions and cultural appropriation, here’s a recent example that might be fresh in your mind: anchor babies.
I believe many on the left would argue that dehumanizing people is bad, and things like “anchor babies” or using “illegal” as a noun is a pretty good way to make people think of them as less than human. Is that “politically correct?” Certainly I can’t find any examples of liberals saying, “Hey guys, you need to be more politically correct here,” as if they’re reminding everyone that there’s a black guy in the room before they accidentally say something racist. No, the only people using the term PC in this case are Republican politicians who think that any objection to “anchor babies” must be political correctness run amok, or liberals being too easy to be offended. Tell me, who here in this case is using the term “politically correct” to silence or dismiss the opposition?
So yeah, fuck the phrase, it’s always been garbage and there’s no reason to rehabilitate it.
Good luck rehabilitating the term or concept when you take such an asinine, condescending, assumptive attitude towards someone trying to engage in actual discussion on the topic. OP remember responses like this when you’re wondering why people feel that whatever is involved in ‘PC’ is a negative thing and don’t want to listen to you when you talk about it.
Politeness is only part of what political correctness means, and really the most innocuous part.
I specifically remember an interview with Dick Cheney during the Bush II years where the interviewer was using the word “torture” to describe waterboarding, and Cheney kept correcting him to “enhanced interrogation”. It would be hard to say that that is not making a politically correct term. Or that whole “Homicide Bombers” crap.
Sorry if it’s not politically correct to ask those questions.
Who remembers “Freedom Fries”?
Or has heard of “Liberty Cabbage”?
The right has its own version of political correctness. It’s just as stifling.
[QUOTE]
“Freedom fries” were about as stifling as whatever trifle example of “cultural appropriation” Pantastic is too shy to tell us about.
Many years ago, there may have been a handful of uses of the term “politically correct” that carried an assumption that being PC was a good thing. But as several have noted, it’s been a term of disparagement for far longer.
What the left needs is a term that connotes both ‘information conveyed to those who may not wish to be offensive’ (a la the “kefir/kaffir” mixup) AND ‘a reminder not to make the conveyance of information into an exercise in one-up-manship.’
Because that’s what anti-PC grumblers are grumbling about: the fact, obvious in many cases, that the person doing the Correcting or Informing is very much ALSO saying “I am more sensitive and a better person and superior to you, and I am one up.”
Doing this does not inform anyone about cultural sensitivity or about diversity or about how not to be a dick, because doing this is BEING a dick.
The fact is that there are hierarchies in human society and those in higher-status positions are frequently rude to those in lower-status positions, and they should be informed about their choice to be rude and invited to make a different choice. But if the lower-status information-bearer conveys that information by saying ‘I’m one-up on you,’ they will fail to inform. They will simply breed resentment (and bad voting decisions).
Did you actually read the article?