Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture | Hacker News Reader

Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture

theatlantic.com

Honestly, I suspect there isn't a single place on the planet where the majority of the population likes PC culture, or thinks like many of the more vocal types on Twitter do. The stats would probably be pretty similar in the UK, much of Europe, Australia, etc.

Either way, the stats provided also likely hint that the best way to deal with online controversies over political correctness and offensiveness now is simply to ignore them altogether. I mean, at the end of the day, how much of a sales drop does an angry mob on Twitter account for? For many businesses, probably about 0.01% at most. Ignore it, and any issues will just go away on their own eventually.

It's like the meatspace world never learned the golden rule of the internet: don't feed the trolls.

Right. It's appalling how often I see Twitter metrics drive product decisions --- as if Twitter were the real world. It's a cheap and easy substitute for real market research. When you let Twitter lead you around by the nose, you're going to see an awfully distorted view of the world.

There's a semantics issue at play here. Buried about halfway down the article is this:

"One obvious question is what people mean by “political correctness.” In the extended interviews and focus groups, participants made clear that they were concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could lead to serious social sanctions for them. But since the survey question did not define political correctness for respondents, we cannot be sure what, exactly, the 80 percent of Americans who regard it as a problem have in mind."

In other words, the anxiety is not "oh god I'll have to treat people with basic respect." The anxiety is "oh god they'll cancel me if I make an honest mistake," and possibly "the ensuing social dynamics will mean I'll be out of a job."

I'm a trans woman. I get misgendered a lot. Trust me when I say that we can tell, by and large, when it's an honest mistake. The people who are doing it just to be malicious are easy to spot.

I'm about as far left as they come and I think "cancel culture," by which I mean the practice of cutting off everyday, actual social interactions with people who say something wrong, is the real problem here. You see it a lot on Twitter, especially leftist Twitter, because there are a lot of people who use social media explicitly to harass others, and so people who don't want to be harassed adjust their priors accordingly and quickly. And, yes, some people do it for the social clout of showing off how woke they are.

I think the fact that people are expressing this specific anxiety, rather than spewing obvious racism, says they want to do better but fear they aren't being given the chance. This is irrational.

If people correct you, they are giving you a chance. They're not going to turn around and tell their friends that you messed up, except maybe to vent. It won't spread like a rumor. That's all in your head. If people cut off contact with you because of one thing you said, continuing to worry about it or spend time with them probably isn't beneficial to you anyway.

On the other hand, if you want to be in someone's good graces, maybe you should listen to them when they tell you how to address them.

We call it "political correctness" because of politicians. We hold politicians (and writers) to one standard _precisely because they have the time to compose what they want to say._ We do not hold our friends to the same standard.

I'm in my 40s and was raised in a town that was 99% white and leaned republican. Casual racism and violently anti-gay speech was the norm.

Living today in a world of political correctness just feels like we're finally all being responsible. I haven't changed my speech or how I address people one iota. I work at a certifiably woke organization and all I see is people celebrating their cultures and treating people like people. Anyone who thinks they have to watch what they say are people who are just used to being assholes to minorities and aren't used to being judged for it.

In most contexts that's how it is, which is great. But it's going way too far on college campuses, where professors can get crucified on social media and then fired for saying the tiniest "problematic" things.

I know there were a couple of incidents of this that were cited in [1]. The only other time something like this happened that I can call to mind is [2]. I haven't heard much of it at all since the last election, though. Maybe there are better, more visible targets now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coddling_of_the_American_M...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Salaita

I don't think of anti-Zionism as a symptom of PC culture. If anything, it's the opposite. Woke kids support Palestinian sovereignty.

I agree, but I would be short on examples otherwise.

I just googled "PC professor firing" and found these examples right away. What's especially bad is that the departments publicly denounce the person. In [1] a committee of deans said he was "uncivil, illogical and damaging to rational thought" which is just not true (he anonymously tweeted opinions that can be debated and aren't objectively true or false). This is still going on, [4] happened a few months ago.

[1] https://nypost.com/2016/10/30/nyu-professor-who-opposed-pc-c...

[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/pc-hysteria-claims-another-pro...

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/stripp...

[4] https://quillette.com/2019/05/02/cambridge-capitulates-to-th...

Zero of those cases were over lack of political correctness. First guy created a sock puppet Twitter account and was caught and requested a leave of absence and was later accepted back.

Second one used the n-word in class.

Third one named and shamed a student publicly on his blog.

These all stemmed from them expressing their regressive beliefs but action was only taken after they committed an action beyond expressing an opinion. And you've got 4 examples stretching back 6 years. This just isn't a widespread issue at all.

I think people get uppity when "common courtesy" becomes a policy proposal.

I personally have no problem referring to someone by a preferred pronoun or whatever (though I'll ask that you choose one of the two traditional options), but I don't want it to become a policy that I have to comply with. If I'm forced to do something I would otherwise do if asked nicely, I will resist.

And that's where the culture part of it comes in. When I see stuff on the media, I think ahead to elections. I have no problem with PC culture on a personal level, but I absolutely don't want that to extend to the governmental or workplace levels. I applaud people for courageously being who they are instead of trying to present a false, but more socially familiar persona. However, that doesn't mean it should be illegal or against office policy to not follow personal requests, even if it takes a lot of courage to make them.

That is why I push back on PC culture. I think it all stems from holding freedom of speech to be inalienable. I want to interact with you in a respectful manner, but I don't want to be forced to.

This approach seems absurd when applied to many equality laws that were controversial at the time but are no longer.

For example, what if someone forced you legally to allow women to attend your school, or African-Americans to use your water fountain (which they generally do in various ways)?

It appears you'd intentionally bar them because before you'd have had basic human decency if they asked you nicely, but now the law got involved you're going to become institutionally racist and sexist just to make a point about freedom?

But presumably you didn't and don't do that kind of thing, so why threaten to do it in this case?

One of my first gigs out of college was to build a thesaurus for a government agency that would go through their documents and update outdated and politically incorrect terms with a newer and less offensive alternative. It was interesting to see how language evolved over time.

Sounds like you worked in a literal 1984 scenario

Quote from Neil Gaiman:

http://urbanbohemian.com/2015/08/07/neil-gaiman-on-political...

I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour of their skin. And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with ‘political correctness’. That’s just treating other people with respect.”

Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people with respect”, and it made me smile.

You should try it. It’s peculiarly enlightening.

I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking “Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!”

Great comment. This is easy stuff:

* If someone from a marginalized (or tbh, any other) group says, "Please call me XYZ", do it

* If you use the wrong term, briefly apologize and use the right one instead.

That's all you gotta do.

Wrong, you should do the opposite, because they want to control how you think, and you have a duty to keep your thought independent.

Who exactly is "they" here?

>Wrong, you should do the opposite, because they want to control how you think, and you have a duty to keep your thought independent.

But... "doing the opposite" as some kind of "duty" because you believe marginalized groups want to control your thoughts is the antithesis of having "independent" thought.

Please tell me this place has just broken my ability to detect irony.

Hm. Where's the line with this? Would you call your partner what they asked you to call them, or avoid something they say they don't like? What about relatives, friends and neighbours?

> Three quarters of African Americans oppose political correctness. This means that they are only four percentage points less likely than whites

Why does the author use "African Americans" and then "whites"? I prefer "European American", thank you.

Cool, I'll call you a European American. It's that easy.

This doesn't pass a very basic sniff test. All marginalized groups need is to be called some specific terms? This is entirely a question of terminology rather than a fight by marginalized people to achieve specific, better outcomes?

That view is so convenient that I have a hard time believing that it's right.

edited to remove a typo

I was specifically addressing the anxiety that people are feeling about "saying the wrong thing" and offending someone, it's certainly not all that needs to be done to end marginalization, but many of the other things such as preventing housing and employment discrimination aren't on individuals to fix, it's on the government to enforce

> All marginalized groups need is to be called some specific terms? This is entirely a question of terminology rather than a fight by marginalized people to achieve specific, better outcomes?

Calling someone by the terms they prefer is a baseline for common courtesy, from which those better outcomes can follow. Nowhere is it claimed that this is "all marginalized groups need," rather that it's simply the least you can, and should, do.

>That view is so convenient that I have a hard time believing that it's right.

It isn't right, because you're purposely misrepresenting it an attempt to discredit it through a false dichotomy.

Also I don't understand what's "convenient" about it. Are we supposed to infer an ulterior motive on the part of people who want to be called by a certain pronoun?

All you gotta do is call me Your Royal Highness.

Political correctness is far more than "treating people with respect". It includes truths you're not allowed to say, and claims you're not allowed to question, no matter how respectfully.

Except that example is a bit trivial. How about a harder example. Is it "disrespectful" to say that one of the reasons there are fewer women in engineering is because engineering simply doesn't interest women?

This is something that can't be "wondered about" out loud in some circles, including HN. I've seen threads get removed even when the comments on it seemed somewhat in good faith.

Don't stop there. Think about why women are less likely to be interested in it. Think why that might be true in the culture you come from but is not true in other countries. Don't stop at proximate causes and try to find root causes.

It definitely can be discussed. The key is that you had to temper your assertion that the discussion was only 'somewhat' in good faith.

Usually the discussions around these things aren't in good faith. Sometimes they're actually in poor faith from BOTH sides. Interpret this as 'people are fallible and bad at discoursing respectfully' rather than 'people don't want to discuss these sensitive topics'

> Is it "disrespectful" to say that one of the reasons there are fewer women in engineering is because engineering simply doesn't interest women?

No, some women finding engineering fields not to be a fitting career choice, in and of itself, is not controversial. But such arguments never exist in a vacuum, or without context. They typically lean into the premise that women are uninterested in engineering due to "innate differences between gender," claiming that women can't grasp mathematics or logical thought as well as men, or else implying that the women who are in these fields are only there due to gender politics. The conclusion we're meant to reach being that not only is the gender imbalance in engineering fields justified, it should be even greater than it is.

The "inconvenient truths" people claim PC culture won't let them express are usually pseudo-scientific or naturalistic arguments that attempt to defend and justify existing forms of prejudice, and that's what becomes disrespectful. There are no such "truths" that don't diminish, harm or dehumanize some group.

It seems that "political correctness" is only applied to liberal causes. Conservatives have their own politically sacred issues, yet there is no pejorative use of "PC" about these issues. Why is that?

For example, I find flag fetishism and reciting the pledge of allegiance to be creepy. Wearing flag lapel pins is an effortless show of patriotism. Ascribing heroism to every member of the US armed forces is ridiculous. It would be political suicide for liberal politicians to express such opinions, but the reverse is certainly not true -- conservatives get bonus points from their base for dismissing liberal causes as being PC posturing.

Americans strongly dislike what they perceive as PC culture, but most of us participate in it in some form. In other words, we don't like that others have a list of things we can't say, but we all have a list of things others can't say.

The fight is purported to be PC vs politically incorrect, but the truth is everyone has their own little version of political correctness. People rant about free speech but they would never allow someone to burn a flag. They rail against political correctness but they lose their minds when a football player says something they don't like. Et cetera.

Or to put it yet another way, the fight is over which ways of curtailing speech are acceptable to classify as "political correctness" and which are not.

> but the truth is everyone has their own little version of political correctness

Personally - I'm ok with you saying whatever you want. Any word, in any context. If I don't like it that's my problem. You can burn a flag too. I don't care.

I think what you're describing is not that every person has their own little version of political correctness, but that every group has their own subgroup of people who have an instinct to police speech. I'm personally fine with whatever speech you want to use (with the exceptions that are enshrined in U.S. law; no inciting violence, etc.), but I may choose not to interact with you. And I suspect that a sizable chunk of the population actually feels this way.

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