Comment by beerbajay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beerbajay | Hacker News Reader

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The Vox article[1] by Amanda Taub is substantially better than either the deBoer's or Chait's articles (an article, by the way, that deBoer seems to entirely miss the point of) in that it correctly identifies the term "political correctness" as _a thing people only ever complain about_; it's not a thing that "the left" wants.

> people pushed out and marginalized in left-wing circles because

> they didn’t use the proper set of social and class signals to

> satisfy the world of intersectional politics.

This definitely happens, but not as some sort of organized strategy by "the left". It happens because "the left" on college campuses is made up of young people who are angry about the racist/sexist/classist/etc culture in which they have grown up, but have not yet learned to be diplomatic with and empathetic to people who are less informed.

The goal isn't for people to avoid certain terms, the goal is for people to not be assholes.

[1] http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-d...

> This definitely happens, but not as some sort of organized strategy by "the left".

That's not true. It absolutely is an organized strategy by the left.

Anti-oppression activism is founded on social constructionist theories. These claim that bigotry and prejudice are subtly reproduced in society through language. So activists are scrupulous in cleansing their speech of any hint of prejudiced beliefs, no matter how minor, because they believe that if they can accomplish that, prejudice itself will disappear.

But people who aren't activists are also reproducing prejudice through their speech, so the problem becomes how can you get all of them to stop doing that too. The answer is to make it morally unacceptable. Minor phrases like "man up" turn into huge ethical lapses that are worthy of censure and shaming.

Not using those phrases become matters of empathy and not being an asshole towards unknown persons who are offended. But really, no one is offended, it's just a tactic for redefining linguistic norms.

That article was awful. She starts by claiming political correctness doesn't exist because we don't know what it means, so she defines it using a straw man definition and spends the rest of the article knocking it down.

Political correctness is responding to politically unpopular viewpoints with punishment and vitriol.

Her point seems to be that labeling things political correctness which are actually reasoned arguments is harmful to discourse. But even if some idiots are doing that, that still doesn't mean that "actual" political correctness (i.e. responding to politically unpopular viewpoints with punishment and vitriol instead of reasoned arguments) doesn't happen or isn't harmful to discourse.

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