No, “political correctness” started as a joke. The first few times I heard it, it was used by people on the left who were rolling their eyes at some over-the-top bit of cultural sensitivity.
It got nasty when the right picked it up as a bludgeon.
Well, you again help me to make my point. If you wish to take issue with something like hate crime legislation, go right ahead. But don’t just lump everything you don’t like under a useless banner called “political correctness.” It’s anti-intellectual and pointless.
I’ve said on this board many times before that i don’t agree with hate crimes legislation. When the issue comes up (in cases like Matthew Shepard, James Bird, Gwen Araujo, etc.) i argue that the acts themselves are awful enough that we don’t need to try and divine or punish what was going on in people’s heads. Punish the act.
I must say that i don’t quite understand your apparent lack of concern about sexual harrassment. Sure, it may “only” be words in may cases, but in contexts like a work environment those words have a certain coercive power. Sexual harrassment also frequently extends to unwanted physical advances and assaults.
Laws against making death threats, against conspiracy to commit murder, and against blackmail also punish words. And they do so because the words, in cases like this, have rather direct connections to actions and/or to coercion. I would place many sexual harrassment cases in the same boat.
If I misunderstood you then I apologise. I think it perfectly OK to criticise individual uses and abuses of anything you don’t like. If you choose to call what you are criticising ‘PC’ then I suppose that is OK too. But to be ‘against PC’ seems to me to be like being against ‘freedom’ or ‘truth’ or ‘politeness’. Certainly I can think of individual instances where these terms are ill-used for nefarious or dishonest reasons. The actual ideas though seem to me to still be useful ones.
An amusing example but not particularly relevant to the debate. Would you agree that people should have the right to decide for themselves which terms as applied to them on any individual occasion they find offensive? Maybe we can agree on that. I hope so.
It’s only pointless if you refuse to the connect the dots and ignore the evidence that points to the criminalization of words and thoughts stemming directly from the PC movement. Sure, there were other catalysts, like the civil rights movement, but I don’t recall legitimate civil right pioneers calling for the regulation of speech. As far as being anti-intellectual, I’ll cop a guilty plea. I’m completely incapable of intellectual debate 
So words that come from coercive powers in the private sector should be regulated whilst epithets from a gang of skinheads as they stomp on a victim shouldn’t?
Those offenses have nothing to do with today’s speech codes. It’s the old ‘fire in a crowded theater’ thing
I can at least anecdotally back up LHOD here. My folks, who were and are members of the “radical left” used the phrase politically correct sarcastically from time immemorial to lambast “liberals” - what they perceived as the flabby, knee-jerk, wishy-washy left who mouthed left-wing homilies without a) understanding them or b) attempting seriously to put the ideas undelying them into practice.
- Tamerlane
The clear danger of PC language is that not everybody knows how to program.
Isn’t this the third anti-PC thread this week?
It’s been a rough week.
No, that’s not what i’m saying at all. Your example does not equate like behavior with like behavior.
If those skinheads do nothing but yell out epithets on the street or whatever, then they should be left alone, as long as they don’t make any direct threats. If they start to stomp someone, the words they are yelling are, in my opinion, largely irrelevant, because we can punish their actions.
But what goes on somewhere like the workplace is quite different, because the words people use are attached to a power that can bring about detrimental consequences. So, if a supervisor sexually harrasses an underling, there is coercion involved because of the imbalance of power in their working relationship. Also, people should have the right to work in a professional environment without being subjected to harrassing behavior—of any sort.
(Sidebar: I’d actually be interested in a libertarian perspective on this issue. I know that libertarians tend to believe in freedom of contract, and the right of employers to dictate terms of employment. Should an employer be allowed to dictate that employees submit to sexual harrassment in order to keep a job?)
Furthermore, the issue here is not just a legal one. Those who make blanket condemnations of “political correctness” tend to elide the distinctions between opposing a particular behavior on the one hand, and calling for it to be banned, on the other.
For example, i don’t think we should call gays “faggot,” or African Americans “nigger,” or women “sluts.” If that makes me too “politically correct,” then that’s a designation i’m going to have to live with. But while i oppose the use of such epithets, i do not support legal sanctions against them. A person can walk down the streets shouting “nigger” all day if they want. I wouldn’t call for them to be arrested or forcibly stopped, but i reserve the right to think they’re a bigoted moron.
When i refer to “Native Americans” or “American Indians” or, more specifically, “Choctaws” or “Lakota,” rather than “the red man” or “savages” i’m not trying to be PC, i’m just trying to go through life without being an asshole. Sure, there might be misunderstandings between well-meaning people, and no-one should be excoriated for making an honest mistake. I also think that some people are far too easily offended. But people on the other side of the debate are also often disingenuous and excessively combative. They say things like “Well, blacks can call each other ‘nigger’ so why can’t i use the term?” Well, you can as far as i’m concerned, but you’ll be an asshole. And if anyone really needs me to explain the distinction here, i’m not sure there’s much point in debating the issue further.
No, it’s not.
Or, “You don’t really hold that position, you’re just claiming to in order to fit in with a particular political ideology.”
You are missing my entire point, after reading your subsequent posts I am beginning to suspect deliberately because a large portion of your arguments seem to boil down to: “But the right/conservative/fundies whoever use the term PC as an excuse for their offensive attitudes”. They wouldn’t be able to do so if there wasn’t a definite segment of the population who think that inventing new, “unoffensive”, utterly ridiculous words for people that they are actually doing something about the problems of society. Those specific people and only those specific people often do answer the description of them I gave, and since that description is based upon their actions and not some inherent physical characteristic, I stand by it as a fair one. I see that Tamerlane agrees with me that such a group of people does exist.
Aside: Hop/TU LAX tomorrow at Towson, 1:00. Wanna go?
When someone on the left is in a debate and hasn’t got anything to support his argument, he calls his opponent a “Nazi.”
When someone on the right is in a debate and hasn’t got anything to support his argument, he calls his opponent “politically correct.”
In both cases, it’s a clear sign that the debator doesn’t have a damned thing to say that’s worth listening to.
No, it’s not a matter of offensive attitudes. I’ve said, quite clearly i think, that they use the term PC as a substitute for intelligent debate on the actual issues. Calling something “politically correct” should be the beginning of a debate, but too often it’s the end, because the very assertion that something is PC is, for some people, sufficient evidence that it’s bad.
Actually, if you want to read an interesting book on what many people would call political correctness, i suggest checking out The Language Police, by Diane Ravitch. Although i don’t agree with all of Ravitch’s analysis or conclusions, the great thing about her book is that many of the problems it identifies are caused by liberals and conservatives, left and right. But when was the last time you heard a conservative position described as “politically correct”?
In many cases, the trouble with people who use the term is that they assume that the status quo is fine, and then define their position as the default position, and treat any challenge to it as politically correct nonsense. Think of someone like Lynn Cheney and her quest to change the teaching of history in American schools. She frequently used terms like “politically correct” to describe what she saw as flaws in the teaching of American history, often including things like the attempts to incorporate the achievements of women and minorities into the story of the nation’s past.
But what she failed to acknowledge was that the type of history she was defending—the older-style history of great men, presidents, explorers, etc.—is also, in its own way, just another type of political correctness, albeit one that appeals to a different audience. Trotting out the term “political correctness” often tends to make assumptions about what is truly correct, and to define politically correct as its opposite. Too often, it’s just another version of demonizing what you don’t like rather than attempting to understand it.
I never said that such people don’t exist. In fact, if you look at my posts you’ll see that i explicitly stated that they do. I’m not arguing against the idea that there are some people who are just too easily offended or self-righteous for their good. There are such people, and i get annoyed by them too. I am arguing that the use of the term “politically correct” too often lumps these people in with all leftists and liberals, and fails to take account of the differences and the nuances among a multitude of different people and groups, and that it also avoids—even discourages—intelligent debate on the subject by using the term merely rhetorically to score political points.
Thanks for the invitation, but no can do, i’m afraid. My wife’s sister is in town this weekend, and we’re hanging out. We may even go to DC or Philly for the day. Have fun, and go the Jays (not that i really care who wins).
I mistakenly assumed that you would have picked up on my background in linguistics. I was alluding to Paul Grice’s co-operative principle from his 1975 essay ‘Logic and conversation’.
More specifically, Grice broke his co-op principle down into four maxims:
Linguists have long wondered whether Grice was enjoying a little joke by popping ‘perspicuous’ and especially ‘prolix’ into his maxims, given that his theme was (casual) conversation!
Of course, the artful writer is one who can violate these conventions deliberately for effect. That was my purpose above with the grotesque mixed-metaphor sentence. And it worked. So much reaction and interesting comment was generated!
The title of a book by the philosopher J.L. Austin – also very influential in linguistics – sums up what the analytical or energetic writer is about: How To Do Things With Words. Michael Halliday (though I’m no great fan of his systemic functional linguistics) wrote a first rate book about his son’s language development, entitled Learning How to Mean.
From the cradle to the grave, one of the unchanging things about human communication is how the speaker’s intention (as well as his message) is not picked up by the hearer. One should of course always be open to the possibility that such misunderstandings may be deliberate. All part of the rich tapestry of life - of which the Dope is a fertile microcosm.
One of the key insights of my life occurred when I realized that people almost never take what you say the way you mean it.
THat insight, with all due respect, is the easy part. The tough bit is discerning the patterns, so that you can predict with reasonable confidence who is likely to take you the wrong way and in which situations this is most likely to happen.
Well, I was young then…
You did, and your apology is accepted.
Yes, and I said as much in a later post:
I prefer not to refer to my friend Rick as “my handicapped friend Rick” but if it’s necessary that he be identified as being handicapped, I use the word “handicapped” because that is how he refers to himself. In a debate about wheelchairs, for instance, I may use him as an example, in which case it is helpful to know. Otherwise it’s mostly irrelevant. However, I would never refer to him as a “cripple” because we both agree that would be offensive to most people (he doesn’t personally find it offensive, but understands that most people do - including me!)
What bothers me about the whole politically correct thing is that it makes the assumption that ALL handicapped people prefer to be called “differently abled” or that ALL black people wish to be called “African-Americans” or that ALL short people would prefer to be “vertically challenged” and so on and so forth - and that anyone who does not do so is by default a bigot.
Starvers, fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, when
you’re young at heart.
C. S. Lewis, on the freedom of attaining true maturity:
DING DING DING! We have a winner.