A History of Political Correctness
phillymag.com
phillymag.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#Early-to-...
Religions change. It used to be about class; now it's about race. No sane person gives it a thought except when they are materially associated with the lunatics who get offended by racial thoughtcrimes.
For example, I studied econometrics, and one regression that is often run is regressing CRIME (a dummy variable for whether someone has committed a crime) on a number of right hand side variables, include BLACK, a dummy variable for being Black. Now it is a well known fact that no matter how many right hand side variables you include, the coefficient on BLACK will always be significant and positive. That is, even after accounting for income, education, etc., Black people commit more crime.
Now we are allowed to say this in class, because it is already understood that by getting this far into a PhD, you have proven yourself not to be an evil racist. For example, everyone knows that the positive coefficient on BLACK must be a result of complex social interactions and not genetics.
But ordinary people aren't so sophisticated, so they are not allowed to even know that the coefficient on BLACK is significant. They would certainly be accused of racism for stating the true fact that Blacks commit more crime even after accounting for these other variables. And I assure you that none of us PhD's would come to their defense when they were accused of this. After all, that person might actually be a racist.
So thoughtcrime is thinking bad things about race, which can include true things if you're not in the inner circle of people who are allowed to discuss such matters openly.
Has this ever happened?
Finally, in "Bowling for Columbine" Michael Moore accuses Charlton Heston of racism when Heston suggests that US crime rates are higher not because of guns, but because of "demographics". (I'm not sure that Heston is 100% right here because race only accounts for some of the differences between crime in the US and other countries, and using race as a right hand side variable in cross-country comparisons doesn't have as much validity)
That's really the root of the problem, I think. People take data like, "blacks scored X percent lower on the John Doe IQ test (1987 edition)" and in turn say "black people are less intelligent". Then when you criticize it, they tell you not to shoot the messenger and they're just reporting what the data says.
This kind of shortcut is pretty common, of course. "People with net worth below X have a higher rate of conviction" becomes "poor people commit more crimes" and nobody really bats an eye. But that doesn't mean it's correct, it just means that people generally don't care.
Do this in the context of race, though, and suddenly people do care. And why shouldn't they? There's a long history of abuse in this area. IQ tests have long been biased toward the culture (and thus, almost inevitably, its majority race) of those who create the tests. People have then taken the results from these tests, concluded that their disfavored race is inherently inferior in some way, and used that to justify all kinds of bad treatment. And of course this is not a solved problem, not by a long shot. Truly unbiased IQ tests are an open problem, and then there's a whole extra layer of exactly what IQ is, why it's worth measuring, and what it leaves out.
By all means, discuss the data. But don't use the data to reach an unsupported conclusion that sounds kind of like data, proclaim it as fact, and then complain about "political correctness" when you get shut down. And think very, very carefully about what exactly the data says, versus what you think it implies, before making factual statements.
As a statistician, it seems like the obvious issue is that if the US is obviously different from other countries (having a large minority population that disproportionally commits crimes), then its crime rates cannot be compared with other nations without taking this into account.
You have precisely demonstrated the bias that I referred to earlier. You assume that Heston is saying something that he is not (that Blacks are more prone to crime, genetically, rather than the simple fact that they commit more crime), because Heston is not qualified to speak on these issues.
Unless you have some other reason to believe this about Heston, in which case please elaborate.
First, my personal experience when discussing crime in America is that "demographics" is always a code word for "black people are inferior and it's unfortunate that we have so many of them". Although looking up the actual quote, it was "mixed ethnicity." I think that would fall into the same category.
Second, Heston was at the time a conservative Republican and gun nut, both groups which heavily lean towards subtle racism.
Finally, Heston himself has a history of subtle racism. In his autobiography, he states his dislike of the term "Native American" and claims that he himself is one because he was born here. He made statements about a "culture war" in which WASPs are being oppressed, which I find to be racist as it completely ignores the massive advantages that white people still have in American society, and generally tends to be slightly-veiled pining for the good old days when minorities knew their place. He said, "Why is 'Hispanic Pride' or 'Black Pride' a good thing, while 'White Pride' conjures shaven heads and white hoods?" Either he was very, very, very stupid and doesn't understand why generations of KKKers murdering minorities in the name of "White Pride" might give that term a certain stigma, or he thinks that minorities should just ignore systematic oppression and let white people keep on enjoying their advantageous position.
I claimed that ordinary people were not allowed to reference certain facts, because they had not proven that they would interpret these facts in the right way. E.g. an ordinary person cannot say that Black people commit more crime, because they cannot be relied on to believe that the cause of this is not, for example, genetic.
You on the other hand think that it is reasonable to extrapolate from things people say (e.g. crime rates are due to the America's "mixed ethnicity") from things that you imagine that they think, provided that you know that person is a conservative.
In both cases, the problem with this reasoning is that we think better of people who have wrong opinions, which sets up some perverse incentives. While the particular facts that a person chooses to focus on do indeed say a lot about their political beliefs, we should only discourage people from saying things that are wrong.
"I had a distinguished colleague - Stuart Nagel - whose tale is worth telling. He taught public policy and one day explained that black businesses in Kenya were uncompetitive against Indian-run enterprises since blacks where too generous in granting credit to friends and family. He had been invited by the government of Kenya to study the situation and suggested better business training for black Kenyans. The topic was indisputably part of the course and thus totally protected by AAUP academic speech guidelines. Stuart was also extremely liberal on all racial issues.
Nevertheless, to condense a long story, an anonymous letter from irritated black students complained of Nagel's "racism" and included the preposterous change of "workplace violence." After a protracted and bungled internal university investigation, two federal trials (I testified at one), he was stripped of his teaching responsibilities and coerced into retirement. Interestingly, having been charged as "racist," his departmental colleagues, save two conservatives, abandoned him. A few years later, partially as a result of this emotionally and financially draining incident ($100,000 out-of-pocket for legal fees), he committed suicide. I can only speculate that he believed that years spent being a "good liberal" (including service in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division) would insulate him from being denounced as a "racist." Nor would he have anticipated that the university would spend the hundreds of thousands in legal fees to punish a famous tenured faculty member who "offended" two students. Nagel's sad saga undoubtedly provided useful lessons to many others. Stupidity can really be dangerous, even in a university. Better keep quiet."
[1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-s...
The same one who was dumped by National Review when they determined he was too racist. The one who has written about that favorite topic of racists, the difference between IQ of whites and other races. What a great source for solid information.
Race is a human construct. That's not to say that there aren't real differences, but merely that it's a categorization based on fairly arbitrary things. Now it turns out that skin color and such in some cases correlates with other, less visible things. But it's not what the determination is based on.
For example, the President of the United States is racially black. Genetically, he has equal influence from the "white" side, but racially he is not generally considered to be "half white".
For an example from the other direction, consider that Africa contains more human genetic diversity than the rest of the world put together. We would generally expect to find there both the very dumbest and the very smartest of humans, at least for the genetic components of intelligence. It makes no sense to place that whole group into a single "black" race when the people in that group vary so enormously from each other.
We can certainly talk about genetic differences in intelligence between different population groups. But "race" is not a good way to come up with the groups to examine.
"I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances....
I also don't think that there are no cultural differences or that cultural differences are not likely the most important sources of disparate test scores.... I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects.....
In conclusion, I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true. Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case.
Please don't pull a Larry Summers on me."
They did pull a Larry Summers on her. The message got forwarded to the Dean, who successfully re-educated her. Here is the statement that the student later put out:
"I am deeply sorry for the pain caused by my email. I never intended to cause any harm, and I am heartbroken and devastated by the harm that has ensued. I would give anything to take it back.
I emphatically do not believe that African Americans are genetically inferior in any way. I understand why my words expressing even a doubt in that regard were and are offensive.
I would be grateful to have an opportunity to share my thoughts and to apologize to you in person.
Even beforehand, I want to extend an apology to you and to anyone else who has been hurt by my actions."
The Dean's statement is a masterpiece of double-think (emphasis mine):
"I am writing this morning to address an email message in which one of our students suggested that black people are genetically inferior to white people.
This sad and unfortunate incident prompts both reflection and reassertion of important community principles and ideals. We seek to encourage freedom of expression, but freedom of speech should be accompanied by responsibility. This is a community dedicated to intellectual pursuit and social justice. The circulation of one student's comment does not reflect the views of the school or the overwhelming majority of the members of this community.
As news of the email emerged yesterday, I met with the leaders of our Black Law Students Association to discuss how to address the hurt that this has brought to this community.... A troubling event and its reverberations can offer an opportunity to increase awareness, and to foster dialogue and understanding. The BLSA leadership brought this view to our meeting yesterday, and I share their wish to turn this moment into one that helps us make progress in a community dedicated to fairness and justice.
Here at Harvard Law School, we are committed to preventing degradation of any individual or group, including race-based insensitivity or hostility. The particular comment in question unfortunately resonates with old and hurtful misconceptions. As an educational institution, we are especially dedicated to exposing to the light of inquiry false views about individuals or groups.
I am heartened to see the apology written by the student who authored the email, and to see her acknowledgment of the offense and hurt that the comment engendered...."
[1] http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/11/the_slow_d...
After someone has been hounded to suicide for saying something unpopular, only crackpots will bother supporting them.
And Nagel's criticism was probably valid. Locals usually lend credit too readily to their friends, and outsiders can be more businesslike. Look at native Europeans vs ethnically Jewish bankers, or native Malaysians vs ethnically Chinese bankers. There's a book on it: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Outsiders-Transformation-Pub...
Nagel's argument wasn't anything to do with race, it just said that blacks, like whites and asians, lend too much to their friends.
I'd like to hear what the PC Police have to say about Nagel. Probably nothing - they probably know they fucked up, but by their standards it is better to say nothing than to say something which is bad for the cause.
An aside, his Handbook of Global Social Policy looks quite good (though I only saw the google reader preview). I can see why it annoys people, though - he focuses on finding compromise solutions.
Maybe Weissberg is lying about the fact that Nagel was taken to Federal court over a trumped-up charge of racism, but you'd think that people would actually deny it if that were the case.
Now, I'm not saying you should listen to Weissberg very often. He's obviously a completely wrong about just about everything. But that doesn't mean he's wrong about political correctness being a bad thing at times.
Are you being offensive if you call Weissberg a racist? I think it's a horrible thing to say about someone, but you should still have the right to say it. It's not a base insult, it's an assertion of a fact, and facts can and should be debated.
You can't directly measure how much crime is committed by people of different races, so any purported measure of this uses some other proxy, most likely convictions of crime.
Of course, relative rates of conviction for crime may not reflect relative rates of commission of crime. Particularly, they may be distorted by biases in (among other things):
* Crime reporting,
* Prosecution,
* Courts and juries
I assure you that the academics involved, all certified non-racists (and mostly non-economists if you don't trust them), are aware of this and either consider the bias to be small (in comparison with the effect being measured) or have corrected for it.
(Note that I haven't said anything about whether or not its "racist" -- that's your deal -- I'm just saying that characterizing it as a fact is unjustifiable.)
Is this a parody of logic? Your point is not clear, regardless.
However I am claiming, based on my knowledge of the field, that researchers have adequately dealt with this, and come to the conclusion that Black people really do commit more crime, after taking into account all observable economic and social effects.
Another replier has already mentioned that you can measure crimes that are less subject to bias in prosecution (like homicide.
If there was an easy way to explain the apparent excess of criminality in Black people by these means, I'm sure I would have read about it in the academic literature.
There are plenty of crimes that go unpunished, and therefore groups can end up under reported, as the crimes they commit are for various reason ignored.
As an example of intelligent people who let themselves believe comfortable things, think about Francis Galton, eminent statistician and despicable eugenicist.
I never discussed exactly what the causal effect was. Some people think Black people are genetically prone to crime. Others think that the history of slavery and its political and social repercussions can explain the crime gap.
But when you accuse people who are trying to establish the base facts of racism, you are hindering the discovery of the truth. Self-censorship in this regard is not helpful.
There are even more uncomfortable facts that are too extreme for Unz that are blogged about by only the most hardened thought criminals. For example, have you ever wondered if racial crime stats showed the same relative patterns in other nations, including those with no history of African slavery? By what mechanisms would racial crime rates show the same pattern in Switzerland and the United States? The answers are fascinating, but they won't get you tenure.
[1] http://www.ronunz.org/2013/07/20/race-and-crime-in-america/
Or something else. More importantly, what are we supposed to do with this alleged discovery. I can't say I like the possible "solutions"....
Today, strong encouragement of pro-social culture would be called "racist". But it would be better for all involved.
>> What attempts are you referring to?
Attempts to reform societies from ground up according to abstract "fairness" principles, such as Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Cultural Revolution in China, etc. They did not end well.
>>> Noel Ignatiev is still stationed as a professor at a university
Which means the only harm he could do is inflicted on his students, who should have known better than enrolling in his courses. Which is fine with me.
Your last line indicates that you already have a staked-out emotional attitude, so I'm more writing this for anyone watching than to actually try to have discourse with you.
etc. etc. If you would nitpick that I said "racist" but he says "racial oppression" - OK, I'm fine with changing it as "our whole structure of the society is racially oppressive", doesn't change the main point.
>>> where does he talk about what "society" should be like after
I don't think many Marxists every had clear vision of that, and it is certain it never came to look like they envisioned, however vaguely. The society Ignatiev strives for has no "white privilege", but it means as much as "communism" would mean for somebody in 1917 - a dream, no more. In any society where inequality exists one could attribute "privilege" to those who are better off, and you could call them "white". So I would have hard time describing the society where it is not possible - but I'm pretty certain it would have little to do with what we have now.
>>> so I'm more writing this for anyone watching than to actually try to have discourse with you.
I'm sorry my low esteem for Ignatiev offends you. You do not have to suffer the indignity of debating opposing opinion, of course. Ignoring unpleasant opinions is always an option.
I almost imminently said something like "thats horrible", thinking that he was implying that America managed to set up our own colonial rule under the guise of independence.
Personal anecdote: I started up a visitation group for the lonely elderly where I used to live because I felt that it must be pretty shitty to be old and alone. Wrote up a website, fixed up a nice pamphlet and organized everything with the municipality. All out of my own pocket.
The PC media interviewed me and they latched on to the fact that, in my personal explanation on the site, I had linked to a news story on a non-PC site that wrote about a municipality in another part of the country that had cut down on the elderly care budget so much that food rationing was implemented.
See, the PC media were far more horrified that I had linked to the site, than they were about the fact that homes for the elderly in a first-world country were even rationing food for the generation that had built the country.
Why should "Mexican" be offensive? It's refers to a nationality. Are you offended by "American" or "Japanese," and if not, why should you be offended by "Mexican?"
"Retard" was originally intended to be a clinical term referring derived from a word meaning "slow" or "delayed," which replaced previous terms such as idiot or imbecile. How much gentler can you get? If retard has become perjorative, it's because nobody wants to be what the word refers to, and there's not much you can do about that. If you successfully replace it with a nonsense word, say "quixmar," in ten years "quixmar" will be used as an insult in middle school, become offensive, and have to be replaced. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I can't find a good source on this, but I suspect you're wrong about "retard" being used clinically. The terms "mentally retarded", and "mental retardation", were and still are used in clinical settings to describe delayed development (though they're going out of fashion quickly). The use of "retard" (as a noun) is pejorative because of linguistics relating to the distinction between attribute and essence; the same reason "a group of black men" is fine, but "a group of blacks" is not.
Those were once clinical terms, but by the late 19th century they had become pejorative. So retardation was introduced, and worked for a while. Then it became a schoolyard insult, and was replaced by mentally disabled or mentally challenged.
If schoolchildren invent an insult out of "disabled", then I imagine a new term will be introduced. This doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea to replace "retarded", but it seems likely that there's no permanent solution.
What I doubt (lacking real evidence) is that the person-noun form "retard" -- think about phrases like "discharging a retard", "managing retard behavior", "a unit full of retards" -- was ever in widespread clinical use, as "idiot" or "imbecile" were in the past. The move to stop using those terms was not about just changing the word, but also recognizing mental disorders as something distinct from a person's inherent nature.
(Again, similar to the move from "negroes" to "black people". Either can be used pejoratively, but the former is arguably intrinsically offensive.)
Mistaking a Chilean for a Mexican is no more offensive than mistaking a German for a Swiss (or a Spaniard for a Portuguese). If you think it is, then I strongly suspect you are actively looking for opportunities to be offended, for your own reasons.
Try calling your average middle American a Russian (same difference, right?) and you might be in the ballpark.
Maybe this is the best we can hope for, that we get lulls in the coloration of terms and less prejudice to confront at each new cycle.
Not calling a black person a "nigger" may merely be a trivial moral fashion to you, perhaps, but language has been a very much non-trivial tool of fear and oppression for a long time. That's a fact.
For black people, it matters that a newspaper can't be taken seriously if it uses "nigger" as a descriptor. For women, it matters that men can't walk around at a hackathon calling them "baby" and "sweetie" like it's a Mad Men episode. Surely it's obvious why.
It's OK to disagree with that, but the burden of proof is on you. And linking to http://paulgraham.com/say.html doesn't cut it.
There is baby and there is bathwater in this discussion and it's decidedly not useful to conflate them, which is exactly what glib dismissals of the whole thing as "political correctness" do.
PC is, on the whole, a good thing. It's just ridiculous when taken to extremes, which is the bit everyone is focused on.
Unfortunately many people misuse that term when they mean "politeness" or similar. These people don't want to stop using the word retard wherever they want, and they want to be outraged when people point out that they're being assholes.
The "choice of words" argument reminds me of a teenager, upon swearing at his mother, protesting that he is "just using a word". Of course he gets grounded anyway, and in time most people learn to outgrow that pseudological pedantry. In reality we use words that mean things and express ideas, and the ideas expressed in words like the N-word are generally odious and useless. And I would hesitate to assume that avoiding referring to an entire category of people with a swear word, associated with centuries of stereotypes and oppression, is merely a "moral fashion". I didn't know that conveying the barest level of respect toward your fellow man was a "moral fashion".
Sure, people who knowingly inject offense into their speech and then cry 'free speech' are assholes. So too, though, are the people that cry foul at someone else innocently (if naively) expressing themselves.
Fashions will change, but Paul Graham is accidentally creating the impression that fashion is purely random. It is not. The word "retard" as a reference for the mentally handicapped is not going to come back into fashion; it has been obsoleted by a better understanding of both the processes of mental and developmental disability and of the role of the mentally handicapped in society.
Which is all for the better, because the verb "retard" is useful, and it would be great if fashion made it less clumsy sounding in normal speech.
As a counter example, I applaud the gay community for putting the brakes on the politically-correct-damning of the word "gay" which was on it's way to becoming an 'offensive' term. I suppose some still things it is, and of course some teenagers still use it with ill intent, but I think most agree that it's not 'bad' when used in a 'proper' manner.
I'd say that is precisely what they don't do. That's magical thinking (what sort of energy is this "charge"?) and I think it's the core of what's wrong with political correctness: people imagine that they're fixing reality by doing surgery on language, but they're not; they're fixing a reflection of reality, with "fixing" in the sense of "price-fixing". In other words it's photoshopping.
That's why intent matters: it actually exists, while the intrinsic power of bad words does not. Ignore intent and you end up in an absurd place.
In extreme cases this leads to personal harm being caused, but those are pretty rare. What bugs me more is how rigid people get when they try to correct others. That special blend of prissiness and condemnation is an anti-peanut-butter-cup, and it just makes me want to say "jehovah" over and over again like the dude in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks.
It also misses how language really works. Language changes as people change. We can't control it, and it's silly to pretend that we can. That's like King Canute who ordered the waves to stop (except Canute's whole point was that they wouldn't comply, even for a king).
The truth about all this is told by the great comedians who mine the contradictions between language and social norms. Is there one piece of great comedy defending the politically correct view of language? I'd love to see it.
p.s. Just to be clear, I don't mean that you try to censor other people—I've never noticed anything of the sort. It's clear that your interest in this topic is in wanting not to hurt others with words inadvertently. That's totally distinct from the language-police impulse and I admire it. But I disagree with your model, I think.
And words obviously have the power to frame issues. An inheritance tax is a sensible measure that increases government revenues at the point where money has its lowest marginal value to its owner, while also serving as a check on dynastic wealth. A death tax is an outrageous injustice by an overreaching government that surely seeks next to tax breathable air.
I think this seems dumb because you're intent on looking at attitude and language as a discrete causal relationship. But it's not; it's continuous and reciprocal. Some people condemn racism. The n-word is gradually shunned. The shunning of the word becomes another vector for the idea that racism should be condemned.
Surely, there are people who would like skip the "people change" step, and proceed directly to policing our consciousness through control of the language. But I'm always struck in articles like this one how silly the motivating examples are; a student with a complaint about the word "niggardly" in Chaucer? Come on, that's small-ball compared to institutional racism. Which, if you made it that far into this article, is the reason USDA had a (silly, I agree) $200k seminar with a speaker asking the audience to say "The Pilgrims Were The Original Illegal Aliens": USDA had, believe it or not, been an epicenter for modern institutional racism, recently forced to pay out almost $2bn in settlements to black farmers who had been denied aid.
Surely, you're not militating for the return of the word "retard". Are you sure we really disagree?
I'm not here to to argue that there's no such thing as "political correctness" --- though I dislike that term, which appears in modern usage to mostly be a tool for defending privilege. But all I chimed in here to say was that linguistic fashion isn't random.
Words condition our thoughts and feelings and behavior. So it's not just that people-change causes language-change; there's a feedback loop. But it's not a feedback loop we can control with anything as heavy-handed as ideology. To attempt to intervene that way is exceedingly crude. That's why it's associated with rigid thinking and pushy behavior.
In its milder forms that intervention is nannyism; in its more virulent forms it turns into persecution. Is it as evil as racism itself? The question seems ridiculous. If I have to answer, the answer is "obviously not", but really that whole line of thinking is a distraction. I don't accept that a repressive attitude towards language is of the least value in correcting injustice.
I could go on about this indefinitely so perhaps I'll stop here.
Of course, there's another way - making the euphemism so clunky and unnatural that nobody outside of professional context would be willing to use it. Thus things like "differently abled".
I'd also strongly contest the 'nothing to do with better understanding', given that we now have multiple ways to classify mental issues, where previously they were all lumped into huge, overbroad groups.
Edit: I guess I should elaborate. Developmental delay is an indicator of a problem. It's not meant to be a final diagnosis - where possible, a reason for the delay is sought out. 'Developmental delay', like 'mentally retarded' is a symptom - it's just in olden days it was left there; the root cause was rarely sought.
Yes, the term can be misleading, and I don't like it for that reason. But it's not 'feel-good' nor incorrect in fact. It's an accurate description of what is happening.
One day back in the 80s Blue Peter decided it was going to do something about discrimination against what were then known as "spastics" (I will use the term as it is historically correct). So they got someone on called Joey Deacon (see, I can still remember the name) to show that they were just normal people despite their physical condition.
It backfired spectacularly. The next day in the playground, "Joey" was the insult of choice. Now this may just be because kids are stupid and cruel but there is a lesson there: you can't do social engineering by clumsy attempts to manipulate language. It just doesn't work. So (for example) nowadays when we hear that a kid has ADHD, everyone just rolls their eyes and knows perfectly well that is just the PC way to say "bad parenting".
But my point is, PC doesn't really work. Everyone "knows" what is really meant by any of the PC terms.
You can read more about this here:
And by the way, wordsmith, it's "the fashions are in whom you're supposed to respect."
In fact it would be impossible to do what you suggest, because the ways in which people want to be respected could be (and often have been) incompatible. For example, what if two people with different religions both want to be treated as believers in the one true religion?
There are also plenty of individual cases we'd both find hard to swallow. Murderers who wanted to be regarded as upstanding people, and so on.
(And "who" in this case is much stronger. "Whom" introduces a jarringly pedantic note.)
And I nowhere compared the two cases you mention. (That was an extreme case of putting words into one's mouth even for HN.) You're acting as if I said for ∀x-P(x) when in fact it's pretty clear I said -∀xP(x).
I'm done with this conversation, incidentally. I find that threads in which I have to say "no, what I said was" to this extent are always irrecoverable.
But you could treat them as your equal until they do something to show they're not your equal, which is mostly what PC should be about.
Don't reduce people to a single defining characteristic, because that makes it easy to write them off.
For example, many people are great or okay at their professions - but not all of them. There are respectable and respected doctors, and there are those that just have a degree and a practice.
Quite a few people have made unacceptable moral choices in politics, business or personal issues - and it's okay to disrespect them because of that, and publicly despise and shame those choices, no matter how it hurts their feelings and dignity. Respect honors people by drawing a line, by distinguishing them from the others you don't respect.
Another thing I don't buy is that idea that if you use "the N word" you're reviving two hundreds years of slavery, oppression and racisms. Certainly, if someone is racist, he'll use the word with hate. But pronouncing two syllables out loud doesn't transform you in a racist.
I think that most people can discern when you use a word with hate and when you don't. But there's some power in banning in words, in becoming a self-appointed speech police and to attack people by the way they talk instead of the content of their thoughts. I consider more dangerous to make certain words a taboo.
There's an old saying in Spanish: the word "dog" doesn't bite.
Oh really?
Do we look at Abraham Lincoln was an "asshole" because he referred to "Negroes?" Or do we accept that he was a creature of the 1860s, and remember him for freeing these very "Negroes" who were held in slavery?
Lyndon Johnson referred to "equal rights for the American Negro." Do we regard him as an "asshole" for using the term "Negro?" Or do we instead look at the "equal rights" part of that phrase, and celebrate him for his work on the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Abraham Lincoln was most certainly racist and did view black people inferior to whites, there are multiple instances of documented statements where Lincoln said as much. Also, we do not attribute the end of slavery to Lincoln alone.
Exactly what incident are you referring to? If you want to claim that scientific thought is hindered by the PC police then you need to back it up with something. Otherwise you are just repeating allegations.
This right here is half the problem. The reason we have people who are offended by everything is because of people who refuse to permit anyone to be offended by anything. Ms. Hingston, their bullshit is an overreaction to your bullshit. If you refuse to acknowledge any difference between oversensitive conniptions and calling out genuine assholes, you really have no business speaking on the subject.
On a human, moral level if someone is offended by something I've said which I didn't intend to cause offence, I'll feel bad about that and apologise. I don't want that to happen.
But, on a legal/societal level, the above should not be grounds for losing your job, getting sued, etc.
This is certainly the American perspective on free speech - there is freedom of speech, there is no freedom to not be offended.
Unless, of course, your employer is knowingly or unknowingly inflicting a hostile environment on you.
It's simple, it's easy, it solves the problem.
Of course it's not the modern solution of publicly bullying your correspondent into a retraction while claiming the moral high ground but it works and it's less unpleasant.
And you've got the "bullying" backwards. It wasn't Ms. Livingston doing it. You should know by now that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a comforting lie we tell to children.
Which brings me to this gem:
Yes, of course there are students, and citizens, who
have genuine grievances. But we no longer distinguish
between them and those claiming harm where none exists.
[Edit: botched formatting.]
The point is that we are seeing too much PC, and it is corrupting the nature of public debate. All comments become subjective to the audience, rather than subjective to the speaker. The examples cited by the author all are encompassed in the quote
" I think it’s these very small things that reinforce cultural and racial stereotypes.. "
to which the author disagrees. You are correct, there is no appropriate scale to measure being offended, which is why unchecked (read: no scale to judge) PC results in kids being kicked out of school, a huge industry being built around PC counseling, etc. The author is not proposing removing PC altogether, just that it is being laughably abused to the detriment of everyone.
I'd be inclined to agree.
" I think it’s these very small things that reinforce
cultural and racial stereotypes.. "
As for too much PC, I think the problems are rather created by lazy thinking instead of PC. So in a way there is a industry which exploits PC, but the solution is not less PC, the solution is more critical thinking. ( And bad articles really do not help with that.)
This is the crux of the problem. Suppose you believe that Blacks tend to commit more crimes than Whites. This fact itself may be offensive to some people regardless of how you say it. However, this offense has no bearing on the truth value of the claim. Saying that you should "reconsider your opinion" here causes these offensive possibilities to be considered far less seriously, and causes people to speak them far less clearly.
This is not just some abstract problem. I have been to several conversations about race and discrimination. By far the best one started with the instructions "nothing that is said in this room leaves this room". Some very "offensive" things were said, even to the point where a couple of people had to walk out of the room for a few minutes. However, everyone I talked to (including those who walked out) said that it was one of the best such conversations they had attended.
>In the unlikely case that a opinion is both offensive and reasonable, you will have to live with people calling you insensitive.
The problem is that someone may rationally decide that it is in their best interest not to voice their opinion because of this, in which case we all loose.
The former is institutionalised politeness where we use less objectionable terms. We'll call black people blacks and not niggers or negroes, we'll call call inuit inuit and not eskimos, we'll call Native Americans Native Americans and not Red Indians, and so on.
But being offended is not about PC. Now, yes, PC terms ultimately derive from avoiding using derogatory phrases towards people. But someone suing someone else for being offended by their remark is not "Political Correctness gone mad", as the Daily Mail might say. It is likely just somebody's overreaction.
I think PC culture is a good thing. We take a tiny effort to use more neutral language and it makes a whole lot of difference for some groups of people.
As a colleague of mine put it: "Political correctness, as a concept, is a figment of right wingers, that usually accompanies ideas like agenda, or guilt. I think what we're referring to when speaking of sensitivity is something other than the typical "PC" concept. Inclusivity, and thoughtfulness are nearly unarguably good things.
I think most reactionaries, and lesser angry white guys typically dislike the increased sensitivity that goes along with this more inclusive attitude America has today. No one has a right not to be offended. No one should expect civil treatment 100% of the time; people aren't that thoughtful. Further, there's no responsibility to not harm or injure another's sense of well being through speech.
I'm free to be a racist ignoramus, and alienate anyone I choose to talk to in public, and it's a good thing. It's also a good thing that I will have to face consequences for socially unacceptable behavior. I'm mostly tired of trite apologies from people that lacked the backbone to stand behind their speech, for instance, Tracy Morgan, who repented quickly about his anti-gay stand up. I wish people had the foresight to realize the consequences, and if they decide to say something, they should have enough will to counter criticism as a valid personal opinion, which all types of heinous stuff are. It's heinousness is not the same as lacking in credibility, or serious intent."
FIRE is an explicitly right-wing org whose purpose is to deliberately conflate violation of free-speech rights (which only the government can do) with criticism and banning of certain kinds of speech by non-government people and institutions from their forums and spaces, when it is not illegal to do so. It's a bit like the ADF, whose purpose is to conflate criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism... it also reminds me of people who complain about CPS, but that's just me
I give up; what does CPS stand for in this context?
"The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had itself been an object of reports of unusual numbers of poisonings, death, rapes and pregnancies of children under its care since 2004."
"Texas Child Protective Services was hit with a rare if not unprecedented legal sanction for a "groundless cause of action" and ordered to pay $32,000 of the Spring family's attorney fees. Judge Schneider wrote in a 13-page order, "The offensive conduct by (CPS) has significantly interfered with the legitimate exercise of the traditional core functions of this court.""
Suuuure, the only reason people object is because they want to be able to beat their children. Yeah right.
The point is to be thoughtful about what you say and if someone else says they are offended to actually listen and apologise. Basic empathy and all that.
It’s all quite simple and not very hard to do.
Of course, offending bigots and haters is fine from your point of view. If you had any empathy (not the "basic" kind ) you knew how do we feel about this crap.
PS. I guess you down voted me to offend me? Tough cookies, I am actually not offended by that. "Basic empathy" though does indeed offend me.
Just to be clear, I do not accuse everyone who ever failed this of lacking basic empathy. People make mistakes and that’s just normal. I think in many situations pretty much all people do actually listen and apologise when someone else is offended. Pretty much everyone can recognise the value of doing just that.
Just to be clear, my goal was not to accuse others of lacking basic empathy. I apologise for not making that clear. I should have made it clearer. My goal was to explain the thinking behind what detractors call “political correctness”. It’s about respecting other people, their identity and what they want to be called. And that’s about it.
Of course, that respect is not unlimited. Especially the expression of political views that doesn’t grant others that same kind of respect is typically excluded from that respect. I think that’s perfectly sensible, maybe you disagree. (And just to be clear, this is not a call to limit political speech, at least not from me. This is about using free speech to harshly criticise other free speech.)
Anyways, I'd be fine with this if not for the arbitrary exclusions. I.e. it's okay to mock people, who believe the world is 5000 y.o for the reason that they are likely intolerant bigots (because such a belief automatically implies not following PC?) but on the other hand, mocking people who believe that a man can become a woman by claiming to be one is an extreme bigotry comparable only to enslavement of blacks (because everybody who believes this, apparently, is automatically PC?).
Obviously you need to do these exclusions because, without the witch hunts and angry mobs, PC would not be any fun and the participant would quickly become tired of apologizing to everybody. But, since you have divided people into "good" and "bad" you are now not fighting for respect, you are just another "us against them" angry group. And I am fine with that (i.e. I don't want a crusade against all the angry people to make the world a happy place). The hypocrisy though is funny.
I do not divide people. If creationists are persecuted for their beliefs I will stand right by their side. No questions asked. And that’s not so much the point. The problem I have with creationists is their belief in something demonstrably false and their attempts to push that false belief on other people, especially in schools. That doesn’t make me assume that they are also racist or stupid or any of those things. Yes, I will speak out loudly and harshly against creationists when their belief is harmful to other people. And I will roll my eyes when it’s something they believe merely in private. And that’s that.
In that context the comparison to trans* people makes no sense at all. There really isn’t much of an argument there. Respecting trans* people for who they are doesn’t harm anyone else. They are not trying to convince anyone of anything demonstrably false. And so, yeah, denying them that is extreme bigotry. It’s denying them their basic human dignity for just no reason at all.
The belief that the earth is 6000 years old and the belief that trans* people exist and that gender dysphoria is best treated by allowing trans* people to, well, transition are not exactly comparable.
Anyways, this was just an example of hypocrisy. When you claim to respect feelings it should not have mattered whose feelings you respect. Bringing in the "false" and "true" feelings just underlines the separation between the "good" and "bad" people.
You believe this is a viable defense, and yet don't believe a similar magic force couldn't turn a man dressed as a woman into a woman? You're willing to accept one argument that requires the universe and everything you know about it to be created in a flash instant, but not another argument that only requires the modification of a very small part of that same universe?
It sounds more like you have a priori made your decision and are looking for arguments to support it.
It's less about saying what you believe, and more about the weight of evidence you allow for each option. One option allows for the creation of the universe in an instant, the other brooks no supernatural interference.
For the record, male cross-dressers aren't necessarily 'trying to be a woman'. Some just like wearing clothes traditionally worn by women for look or comfort, others get a kick out of doing so because it breaks social norms. Look at Eddie Izzard, who frequently does standup as a cross-dresser, yet never suggests he's a woman nor that he wants to be one. The gay nightclub culture is also full of drag-queens who neither want to be women nor want to have sex with women, and aren't intending to be mistaken for a woman.
I think it's funny to equate cross-dressing with the trans people that the GP was talking about.
Do people who say that Bradley Manning is a woman call for some magic event that turned him into one or for clouded perception? Do you know?
From what I know they say he is a woman because he wants to be one. No magic. No perception distortion.
the people who concoct these kinds of straw-men, in my experience, are always troubled and hateful, especially in their self-hate. I wish you luck in your life, and hope your family is there to help you when the time comes.
For instance, telling a woman who's been raped by a man that she was asking for it and should stop complaining is both politically incorrect and an awful thing to do. Doing the same to a cis man is still awful, but since he's not a member of the relevant marginalized group it's actually politically incorrect to object to it under some circumstances. Likewise, telling anti-rape campaigners that they're only doing it to get revenge on the gender that raped them is politically correct if they're male victims and politically incorrect if they're female ones.
Similarly, if a woman who's been raped by a man is using her experiences to advocate for rape prevention campaigns aimed solely at men, it's an attack on her personal experiences and therefore politically incorrect to question the merits of her campaign. On the other hand, if a woman who's been raped by a woman is calling for campaigns that include women, even though she's a member of the right group that's not an appropriate use of her experiences and so she's fair game for everything up to and including deliberately triggering her PTSD to get her to shut up.
Decency and empathy barely enter into it.
Let's be clear, I'm not suggesting people shouldn't be nice where they can. I just think there ought to be a threshold before apologies are in order, and the fact someone is offended shouldn't be the only condition.
I suggest a three step procedure:
a) Someone says they are offended.
b) You agree with them and feel sorry.
c) If so, apologise.
I don't think it should go:
a) Someone says they are offended.
b) You disagree with them.
c) You apologise anyway.
... if you do the latter, my feeling is that trolls will soon control your behaviour and any interesting and unusual thought will become unsayable.
Are you aware of any research on this topic you can point me to?
I'm a writer, and frequently go to critique groups for opinions on my fiction. Recently, a certain type of critique has begun to appear which I've found very hard to deal with. It's essentially "what you wrote offended me in some way."
Up to now, my response has been, "Thank you, but regardless of your political stance, did you think it was good writing?" ... to which the answer is usually "it's bad writing because it offends me."
I find it frustrating, because my thoughts usually run in the "modern" type of discourse, and I tend to agree with Bill Hicks that you can't please everyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoCezQAF5AA
Anyway, thank you for giving me insight into what's going on. I don't know what I'll be able to do as a response, but I'll certainly put some effort into thinking about it.
1. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732358290...
Predictably, you can find the actual DOJ letter to Montana quickly with Google, where you'll immediately discover that the letter is the result of a cooperative process following a rash of sexual assaults on campus, and was not in fact a new nationwide speech code for universities.
Thank you for telling me. I was wondering what those letters WSJ in domain name and those "Wall Street Journal" headers on the site mean... and now I know!
>>> and was not in fact a new nationwide speech code for universities.
The letter itself is not. However, it is intended to be used as a template policy for other places, and it significantly reduces the bar that needs to be cleared before speech can be punished - in part by removing any objective component - and introduces possibility of students being punished before the investigation is even completed. How speech codes could do anything about assault - which, by any sane definition, must involve physical action beyond speech - is completely incomprehensible. Even if change of the rules were necessary to prevent assault - which is doubtful as assault is already illegal so old rules should work just fine - speech limits have nothing to do with assault.
"What can be done? One option to embrace the PC party line at every opportunity since those who object (i.e., conservatives, Christian fundamentalists) stoically forbear this nonsense and lack the supporting indignation infrastructure. But, for those disinclined to fake it, the only viable option is to avoid anything that might be mangled into offensiveness. Purging the course is hardly fool-proof, but it is relatively undemanding, almost morally painless and students rarely notice the difference.
Let me offer a first-hand example. I once taught the basic American government lecture course and Constitution lecture covered the three-fifths compromise - the Article I, Section 2 provision that counted "other persons" (i.e., slaves and untaxed Indians - blacks are never mentioned by name ) as three-fifths of a person for purposes of House representation. I explained that Southerners wanted to treat slaves as a whole person since this would sharply boost their representation while abolitionist New Englanders proposed counting slaves as zero. Unfortunately, this three-fifths provision has now been interpreted by some black activists (including an African American colleague who stated her misinformed opinion in a public law school lecture) as "proof" of America's racist origins. Black students have probably encountered this historical mistruth elsewhere (Jesse Jackson once endorsed it) and it does appear superficially plausible.
Rather than risk being accused of covering up racism or telling lies, I dropped the topic altogether. I similarly removed all discussion of slavery so students thus never learned that the while the Constitution did not outlaw slavery, it did permit a ban on importing slaves after 1808 and this was, indeed, done - which, in turn, made those slaves already in America exceedingly costly and thus at times too valuable to risk at dangerous labor (I further skipped how the ever-plentiful Irish were instead hired for life-threatening jobs)."
Meanwhile, left-wing students steeped in Political Correctness regularly attempt to shut down and silence speakers that offend them. Recently students at Brown University shouted down a former NYC police commissioner[2] that came to speak at the campus, calling him a "racist" in response to NYC's very successful stop-and-frisk policy designed to get illegal guns off the street. It used to be said that the antidote to bad speech was more speech. Now, the PC lynch mob is feeling its power, since its members know that university administrators will not discipline progressives.
[1] http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2007/09/the_hidden...
[2] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/362874/how-now-brown-ko...
Really? I've seen much more of this from Zionist organizations, even on my own campus. Do you denounce the phenomenon of Zionist PC, where every criticism of Irsaeli government policy is offensive and anti-Semitic? Where professors lose their jobs for supporting BDS campaigns? That sure sounds like a load of PC "lynch-mobbing" to me. I wonder why I never hear anyone call it that.
"A host of left-leaning groups banded together to protest the event, starting with a dance party in the Pit and a banner-making session.
The protest worked in disrupting his speech. Seconds after Tancredo started discussing his opposition to the DREAM Act, a classroom window shattered, broken by a rock-throwing protester outside.
"That's it," he said, walking briskly into the hallway with Matheson, through the the acrid scent of pepper spray that still hung in the air, and out Bingham Hall's back door. A student, carrying a cardboard sign that read "NO HATE SPEECH AT UNC," bolted after Tancredo and Matheson, screaming profanity and insults."
The students that participated in the protest had the nuanced modern progressive views towards freedom of speech[2]:
"Despite Tancredo's well-known racist views, the university administrations are defending Tancredo's scheduled appearance at UNC under the guise of ‘freedom of speech.’ But as a statement from SDS at UNC-Chapel Hill makes clear: "[People] like Tancredo do not speak in a vacuum; they support and mobilize racist and unjust actions against groups they oppose.” The statement continues, “We refuse to be silent or participate in meaningless dialogues while right-wing leaders sweep through our country and attempt to steal our human rights."
[1] http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/at-unc-student-protesters-c...
[2]http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/4/24/protests-planned-raci...
How does this relate to "political correctness"? Isn't this just a political position, one potentially affecting the lives of the students? I'll ask what I've asked others: are Zionist organizations like ADL pro-"political correctness" when it comes to criticism of Zionism?
Its really clear you have very little background on stop and frisk and crime in NYC in general. For the last few decades, violent crime has been a decline in NYC, predating stop and frisk. Stop and frisk has not been demonstrated to be a key factor in that decline. Stop and frisk has been shown to be 2 things: ineffective and racist. Non white people get stopped at extremely high rates and actual stop and frisk stops that uncover an illegal weapon is very low. Ray Kelly was a key proponent of stop and frisk and in suppressing and attempting to hide the statistical data about stop and frisk that clearly shows it is a racist policy that seeks to harass black and hispanic people in NYC.
> It used to be said that the antidote to bad speech was more speech. Now, the PC lynch mob is feeling its power, since its members know that university administrators will not discipline progressives.
People are under no obligation to let Ray Kelly speak when the police force he oversaw actively attacked and dismantled your community, and sent to prison or killed your neighbors and family.
I'm not a big fan of the government prescribing what to teach to the children, but if you have government-run schools, that's what you get. As government intervention goes, I don't think something like: "The legislature finds and declares that public school pupils should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people." (this is mentioned as one of the laws that for some reason prevents "ethnic studies" from being taught) is the worst example of it. I have hard time figuring out why one would object to such premise and insist that pupils in government schools should be taught racial hate or resentment.
Did you see the results the ethnic studies track had? Huge success.
"I have hard time figuring out why one would object to such premise and insist that pupils in government schools should be taught racial hate or resentment."
But teaching the real history of the US isn't resentment; the act of teaching these books, which may use less mainstream language, is being conflated with teaching resentment against white people and teaching only to latin@ people, at the expense of white people (it's right there in the lawsuit) -- in other words, "PC". It's a complicated issue and the website isn't the most well-designed, I admit. Not the best example; Zionism is a better one.
1. http://www.tusd.k12.az.us/contents/depart/mexicanam/index.as...
>>> But teaching the real history of the US isn't resentment
If by "real history" one means teaching students that they are eternally oppressed by powers beyond their control, what else but resentment that can breed?
>>> Not the best example; Zionism is a better one.
What this has to do with Zionism? Zionism is a movement that proclaims existence of Jewish state, namely Israel, and the desire of Jews to live there. Such existence is a fact, and will remain the fact in foreseeable future. Nothing here has any connection to the topic as far as I can see.
Take terms like "imbecile", "Idiot" and "retarded". They were medical terms applied using more or less objective measurements. What happened then? They became un-PC and were replaced by "intellectual disability". How much time before the "dis-" is considered offensive? Maybe we should use sometime abstract like "green thinker" and "orange thinker"? But it doesn't matter what term we chose, it'll be associated to something negative and it'll become an insult for the general population.
Do you want to live in a world where you have to say that the umpire has "visual impediments" for fears to offend to blind people? No, "impediments" is too strong, maybe "visually challenged"? No, too negative. "Almost all the senses of the umpire are up to the level of a person of his age, with the possible exception of one that, although its absence doesn't demerit him at all as a human being, maybe would suggest that he'll be better in another line of work, like piano tuner."
These words now have an everyday use. They are no longer used medically because medical science advances and we have much better understanding.
> They were medical terms applied using more or less objective measurements.
They were medical terms used to detain people in hospital, or to deny them medical treatment, or to keep them in prison, or to deny them rights to fair trial or to justice if they were abused or murdered.
> They became un-PC and were replaced by "intellectual disability".
No. They became outmoded and less useful because times change.
> Do you want to live in a world where you have to say that the umpire has "visual impediments"
I don't want to live in a world where it's acceptable to kill someone who has a low IQ just because they have a low IQ. I don't want to live in a world where someone with a low IQ is denied medical treatment. I don't want to live in a world where someone with a low IQ is raped with no consequence. I don't want to live in a world of lazy stupid designers who can't make a website accessible to all. I don't want to live in a hateful, hurtful, world where ignorant bigots can spew their bile and get offended when people tells them they're being an arsehole.
Any reasonable people will criticize someone who bullies others who are in a weaker position. It's the bullying what is to condemn, not their particular use of words.
But using those words leads to a culture where these things are more possible.
Ann calls Bob a retard.
i) Bob has a learning disability. Ann is either a bully, and should be condemned. Or Ann is using outmoded terminology, and she should appreciate the help she's given when people give her better information.
ii) Bob doesn't have a learning disability. Ann is a friend and they're having fun. What they do between themselves is up to them, but they're using hate speech casually, and they should at least consider the effect that use has on people who have learning disabilities.
iii) Bob doesn't have a learning disability. Ann isn't a friend, and she's using it as an insult. Ann needs to realise that her use of the term as an insult is contributing the continued abuse of people with learning disabilities. By using the word we diminish people with LD as less-than-people.
Part of the confusion is cultural difference. It's normal use in US to say "That's retarded!" and it's not at all offensive to most people. But it's really offensive to people from other countries.