Politeness Vs. Political Correctness

By Rod Dreher • December 11, 2012, 7:33 AM

An Evans-Manning to Glaivester, who, in the “Tyranny Of The Offence-Takers” thread, and with admirable economy of words, makes an important distinction between politeness and political correctness. He’s responding to Geoff G.’s position that what people deride as p.c. is really just politeness, e.g., telling an annoying relative that you’re glad to see them. Glaivester responds:

The difference is that politeness is merely formal. Political correctness requires that you internalize the lie. Politeness is telling an ugly woman that she is attractive. Political correctness is encouraging her to try for a modeling job and then picketing the modeling agency if they don’t hire her.

It’s all well and good to be polite in social situations. But when discussing actual policies, politeness must not get in the way of clear thinking.

Posted in Culture war, Manners, Morals, Political Correctness. Tagged Evans-Manning, politeness, political correctness.

49 Responses to Politeness Vs. Political Correctness

Floridan says:

December 11, 2012 at 8:15 am

Glaivester provides a false distinction (and one that is of his own making). Political correctness is , for the most part, reactive in nature.

About 90% of the complaints about political correctness are based on no longer being able to use hateful or demeaning words to attack your opponent.

The problem with many who grouse about political correctness is that they want to be disrespectful and still be respected by more than a narrow constituency. Those who don’t give a fig about being politically correct (think Rush Limbaugh) are not interested in what those outside the true believers think.
Geoff Guth says:

December 11, 2012 at 8:28 am

Sorry, but this is bs. Complaints about political correctness almost always come up when someone expressing casual racism or some other form of prejudice, often in the form of a joke, gets pushback. It’s characterized by humor that would have been socially acceptable in decades gone by and now no longer is.

Yes, there are some hysterical people on the left who’ll object to any criticism of a minority group. But that itself is a minority position. I see the biggest outcries over political correctness usually when some minor Republican functionary gets caught passing around joke emails involving Obama and fried chicken and watermelon. That’s hardly elevated and serious political discourse.

Heck, one of the biggest targets of the pc police is Rush Limbaugh, who freely admits to being an entertainer and whose appeal, outside of his politics, lies in large part in his willingness to be deliberately offensive to liberal groups.

That’s a simple lack of manners, period.
Scott says:

December 11, 2012 at 8:53 am

A lot of people throw out the term political correctness to cover up their own loutishness. In everyday society, 90% of political correctness is basically call good manners.
Niall says:

December 11, 2012 at 9:11 am

There is *something* to this notion that PC is really just another term for good manners – and after all, conservatives are supposed to like good manners. Some of those who object to PC really do seem aggrieved that they can no longer use grossly offensive language. No genuine conservative can want to see the return of e.g. casual verbal assaults on women and minorities.

But there is a whole other kind of objection to political correctness that deserves to be treated with more thought.
The fact is that PC is not simply about good manners. Manners are about putting people at their ease, about oiling the wheels of everyday interaction between individuals. The kind of political correctness to which conservatives object is different.

What we refer to by PC is a fiercely ideological project that seeks to place hugely disproportionate restrictions on speech and thought and stifle individual reflection, thereby stifling honest debate.

This is not the kind of PC that wants to see “disabled” replaced by “differently abled” or the kind that agonises (often at considerable length and nearly always at considerable expense to the taxpayer) about how best to describe groups of people whose skins aren’t pink.

This is the kind of PC that smears as racist or xenophobic any but the most anodyne and conventional expression of opinion on immigration or multiculturalism; the kind that portrays as bigotry dissenting views on sexuality; the kind that describes traditional, or even slightly traditional, views of gender roles as “sexist” or “chauvinist”.

[Note From Rod: Yes. This! -- RD]
Matt says:

December 11, 2012 at 9:41 am

“About 90% of the complaints about political correctness are based on no longer being able to use hateful or demeaning words to attack your opponent.”

“In everyday society, 90% of political correctness is basically call good manners.”

Clearly 90% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Beyng says:

December 11, 2012 at 9:50 am

Floridan, Geoff, and Scott:

No, no, and no. What a self-righteous account of political correctness and its opponents: “Anyone who opposes excessive political correctness is just a closet racist/sexist/bigot/lout!”

Again, no. Have you set foot in the modern academy lately? Political correctness isn’t merely “another word” for basic courtesy. Rather, PC represents a rigid (but often unspoken) and dogmatic orthodoxy; it proscribes not only certain obviously offensive terms but also entire topics, thoughts, and ways of thinking. If PC were merely a way of getting people to stop saying “nigger,” I would be on board. But it’s not.

Perhaps the simplest and most concise way to frame the distinction is as follows: It is possible to be both politically incorrect and polite. Example: As a political scientist, I would almost certainly fail to receive academic employment, much less tenure, if I dedicated my career to examining–in a statistically rigorous way–the potential normative and instrumental problems with, say, affirmative action policies or official state multiculturalism. These are politically incorrect realms of inquiry, but there is nothing in the least impolite about a journal article demonstrating that affirmative action might have produced undesirable outcomes. And just try to make an apology for paleoconservatism in a top political science department. Or claim that you voted for Romney. Seriously, just try.

Of course, it’s also possible to be both politically incorrect and impolite, but that is not a given. And of course, an embrace of political incorrectness (whatever that might mean) has downsides, as free speech always does. But the notion that the last two decades of ever-ratcheting political correctness have been merely an attempt to expunge our vocabulary of callous language is more than ridiculous–and I have to assume disingenuous. It’s much more than this, and anyone who favors academic freedom, for example, ought to be staunchly opposed to the very idea of something like political correctness. Just think about the term, for God’s sake! Those who are the most liberally minded should be the most militant opponents of the notion!
Sharon Astyk says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:01 am

PC runs on a spectrum, and much of it IS about politeness – calling people what they prefer to be called, rather than what you prefer to call them; not being actively rude and exclusionary by making jokes that are mean; etc…. It also has elements of limiting what you can say about a number of issues publically.

One of the chronic problems is the inability of people on BOTH sides of this issue to distinguish between the two – the person who sees their free speech as being impinged upon when they are merely being a jerk and calls it PCism is just as guilty as the person who shuts down a good argument by the offense response. The problem with the term “PC” is that it is so broad as to be largely meaningless, encompassing a host of legitimate issues (the right of people to define themselves) with others (the right of people to talk about ideas that are unpopular and offend some.) So that’s where the confusion practically lies.

Speaking as someone who has a (slight) majority female audience and who is a woman, I find the offense thing annoying as hell, and it is most often women who use it. It is a power tool, meant to address a power differential (and occasionally appropriate as such), but much when you have a hammer, many things look like nails, when you find that to be an effective rhetorical strategy and have never had any useful training in rhetoric or analysis, it becomes a default (or when you simply find it more effective than rhetoric or analysis). My observation is that a majority of people in the world simply don’t know how to argue well enough to use those other tools – so they resort to less useful ones that shut down discussion. Offense-taking, however, is only one of them – condescension, verbal abuse and a whole host of others are just as egregious and just as commonplace. Nor are they wholly limited to the left – Rod is offended by the term homophobia, and makes that very clear.

It would be helpful to define terms and break up some of the rhetoric in this discussion. PCism is a problem when it closes off avenues of truth, but it is also the case that dominant discourses close off those avenues as well – it is not the case that PCism is the only thing that shuts down conversations we need to have, plenty of other tools do as well.

Sharon
Floridan says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:04 am

Niall: This is the kind of PC that smears as racist or xenophobic any but the most anodyne and conventional expression of opinion on immigration or multiculturalism; the kind that portrays as bigotry dissenting views on sexuality; the kind that describes traditional, or even slightly traditional, views of gender roles as “sexist” or “chauvinist”.

Although I think this is way overblown, and when it does occur it is usually instigated by some fringe individual or group, I would think the better tactic is to argue why a particular position taken on immigration, SSM or race are not racist or bigoted rather than trying to discount objections with the term “political correctness.”

Those who use the charge “political correctness” as a means of deflecting opposing arguments often are trying to be both provocative and safe.
pacopond says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:09 am

Good comment, Niall.

As someone who does not describe myself as a conservative (though I have sentiments and sensibilities that are conservative) I think you’ve hit on it in the last paragraph. Sanctimonious liberal PC thinking annoys me because it is simply unfair to people who disagree with the orthodox line. (Sorry, Rod, I didn’t mean the o-word word provocatively.)

To call somebody a “retard” is rude and obnoxious. I’m all for challenging the offender. I sometimes wince when prissy PC types say we shouldn’t use the ostensibly neutral term “mental retardation,” but in the big pitcher it’s small beer.

But using the phobia words goes beyond the pale ails of mild PC and gets into character assassination and cuts off debate, leaving one side gloating smugly and the other side sullenly sulking.
pinkjohn says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:12 am

Oh blah blah blah. I get so tired of this whole discussion of PC.

It bares reminding both sides of the debate that this mode came about as an effort to be more inclusive, and to examine our assumptions in our dialogues. It has indeed devolved into a “thought-police” situation but outside of the academy rarely stifles anyone from saying what they think and feel. Those who get challenged can be somewhat oversensitive and feel “silenced” when called on their biases. If it were more of an invitation to examine those biases and assumptions than a demand to STFU then there would be less of a problem.

I thought this was just a leftie thing until reading Rod’s previous blog. In one post he referred to Andrew Sullivan’s husband. Oh my, the traditionalist enforcers came out of the wood work to say that he should not refer to a same-sex couple in this way, that words matter, that he undermined traditional marriage in doing so. This, when everyone already knows how Rod feels about SSM, and was merely being respectful of Andrew and his husband, and of the way they refer to themselves.
Floridan says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:27 am

Beyng: . . . affirmative action policies or official state multiculturalism. These are politically incorrect realms of inquiry, but there is nothing in the least impolite about a journal article demonstrating that affirmative action might have produced undesirable outcomes. And just try to make an apology for paleoconservatism in a top political science department. Or claim that you voted for Romney. Seriously, just try.

The proof that this is just a favored conservative myth is born out by a simple Google search for academic articles against affirmative action, or a visit to sites such as The Volokh Conspiracy, authored by academics from a variety of universities, that almost daily post on evils of affirmative action. Clearly most academics probably favor AA, but those who do not are hardly hounded out of the university.
Franklin Evans says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:34 am

Out of long acquaintance online with Geoff, and claiming a similar familiarity with Floridan — and a very strong respect for both as rational intellectuals — I submit that Glaivester is pointing in exactly the correct direction. Where he falls short is in addressing your objections.

The abstract “courtesy”, which encompasses politeness, deference, arbitrary notions of respect, was and is a social construct. It requires awareness of the mechanism of conveyance, both to the next generation and to immigrants. It defines an orthodoxy strictly on a social level so long as the methods of reinforcement are expressed strictly by social practices.

Our friend sdb provides the list of differentiation in the previous thread. In a social construct, discourtesy does not in and of itself result in being fired, taken to court or otherwise sanctioned under a law.

A discourteous child is told to leave the classroom (for example) until he or she can muster a sincere apology, not expelled from the school. Political correctness made expulsion not just thinkable, but actually used.

There is a balance point, and only social constructs are capable of finding it and refinding it in a dynamically changing world. Political correctness doesn’t adapt, it prohibits under arbitrary sanctions, and refuses to treat people as individuals worthy of an effort to understand… a “bit” of irony that for me makes any insistence on PC both hypocritical and contemptuous.

I never condone discourtesy. I never condone some faceless authority deciding what courtesy is and expecting individuals to apply it without thinking. Example (paraphrasing someone else): What do you do when your puppy makes a mess on the living room floor? Do you take it outside and beat it with a stick? No, you teach it self-control and the rudimentary ability to communicate at need.

The primary and critical reason I abhor political correctness is that it removes the requirement to think.
Beyng says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:38 am

Floridan:

If you don’t buy the affirmative action example–apparently considering The Volokh Conspiracy to be a valid academic press–how about this one: try publishing articles that express normative concerns with gay marriage. I assure you success isn’t achieved very often.

And try getting tenure if your departmental colleagues know you to be a paleoconservative with “views” on the propriety of gay marriage.

Look, I’ve sat on hiring committees and heard these words, as the CV in question is thrown into the trash bin: “I don’t like Christians, and I don’t like conservatives.” These sentiments (in this particular case) were a result of political correctness, not politeness. There is a difference.

[Note from Rod: A Christian journalist friend who works at senior levels in a major national newsroom -- I'm talking top of the top -- reports the same thing in discussions with her colleagues about news and planning coverage. She lives in the closet, and is afraid of how she would be treated in the workplace if her colleagues discovered that she was a believing, practicing Christian. I have never worked in a newsroom setting that was that bad, but I have absolutely no difficulty believing this. The bubblethink is so thorough in certain workplaces that they cannot imagine that their views aren't normative -- and HR departments massively reinforce this.

True story: a journalist I know was talking about a Pakistani mob burning down the Danish embassy over Mohammed cartoons, and remarked that the embassy-burning mob was a pack of "savages." Makes sense to me; a violent mob is by definition a pack of savages. But a black co-worker went to his boss and threatened to file a "hostile workplace environment" complaint with HR over the remark. The accused journalist said -- plausibly to me -- that there was nothing remotely racial about his remark, that he was commenting on the barbarism of the violent mob. But he also knew that he wouldn't stand a chance with HR, and could lose his job, so he abased himself, and made a point of never saying anything else around that particular employee that could get him reported to HR. I've been in situations like that before in newsrooms, and I can tell you from personal experience that the ideology of diversity, whatever its intentions, is often deployed to police discourse in newsrooms -- exactly the kind of place where a robust exchange of perspectives is required to ensure the proper functioning of the enterprise. So too with academia. -- RD.]
Turmarion says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:49 am

I’m more or less with pinkjohn on this. I also think that about the only place this really a big issue is in humanities departments. Thank God I was a math major–PC doesn’t exist in STEM fields, since math, the laws of physics, and such just are.
Hector_St_Clare says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:57 am

Political correctness annoys the hell out of me, indeed.

When people act like savages, I’m in favour of calling them savages.
Rod Dreher says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:04 am

Nor are they wholly limited to the left – Rod is offended by the term homophobia, and makes that very clear.

To be clear, I am not really “offended” by the term homophobia so much as I am deeply irritated by it, though maybe that’s a distinction without much of a difference. I’m irritated by it because it is deployed as a way of policing discourse by dismissing all objections to homosexuality or gay civil rights as motivated by irrational fears. I concede that some, and maybe most, aversion to homosexuality comes from a place of fear. But it is also possible that objections come not out of fear, but from other reasons. One of my oldest friends is gay, Catholic, and chaste. He is not in the least afraid of homosexuals or homosexuality. He believes rather that his religion is true. Is he a homophobe? I am not afraid of homosexuals. For heaven’s sake, I’ve had gay housemates. I am no more “afraid” of gays than I am afraid of unmarried straights who are sexually active with their partners. My convictions about SSM come from my religion, and from a philosophical conception of the purpose of marriage.

I might be wrong about homosexuality and SSM, but I assure you it’s not because I’m afraid of gays. The “homophobia” word, like “Islamophobia,” is Orwellian. I used to get into it in Dallas with Muslim Brotherhood types who deployed the Islamphobia accusation to avoid having to take seriously and to answer legitimate questions about their beliefs and actions. For example, I’ve sat in editorial board meetings in which I’ve asked Muslim leaders to explain their stated belief that homosexuals should be executed and that husbands have a right to beat their wives. I was told that it was Islamophobic to ask the question, and that I ought to be more concerned with living in peace.
M_Young says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:23 am

Oops

” I would think the better tactic is to argue why a particular position taken on immigration, SSM or race are not racist or bigoted rather than trying to discount objections with the term “political correctness.””

When did you stop beating your ~~wife~~ partner?
Charles Cosimano says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:26 am

One the real joys of being politically incorrect is the look on the face of someone who challenges you when you say, “Why do you think I would care about that?”
Scott in PA says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:40 am

PC doesn’t exist in STEM fields, since math, the laws of physics, and such just are.

“Steven Earl Jones is an American physicist. For the majority of his career, Jones was known primarily for his work on muon-catalyzed fusion. In the fall of 2006, amid controversy surrounding his work on the collapse of the World Trade Center (Jones claimed to have evidence that showed the buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition during the September 11 attacks), he was relieved of his teaching duties at Brigham Young University and placed on paid leave.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones
Franklin Evans says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:41 am

I am a citizen of the United States of America. I fully embrace the definition of patriotism that includes identifying as a member of “the people” from whom all power and authority derives. I view the Bill of Rights as a statement of liberty and obligation simultaneously. In the end, I believe that the screen writer Aaron Sorkin said it best, from “The American President” (emphasis added):

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say: You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.

Freedom of speech explicitly excludes drowning out the speech of others. It says nothing about any right to not to be offended, to require of others silence in your presence on any subject.

The moment you require the sanction of law against my speech*, the defining characteristic of political correctness, you violate my right and fail your obligation.

* Yes, there is a short list of exceptions. No, I reject the notion that they have any bearing on this particular discussion. Sorry (but not much).
Mark in LA says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:51 am

Of course political correctness is about politeness.

Does an anybody remember when Tom Tancredo was invited to speak at universities? Well I do, and these polite overgrown kindergardetners thought they had every right to scream and shout about all the racists and xenophobes attending before even one word was said. They politely forced their way up on stage and destroyed equipment so that the talk couldn’t go on. They also had a polite group of administrators who didn’t think the students needed to be held accountable for their actions.
Mike says:

December 11, 2012 at 12:11 pm

“Political correctness,” like “affirmative action,” is a term with no agreed-upon meaning. I never understand what people are talking about since things labeled PC seem to just be examples of being polite. If someone wants to be called “differently-abled” instead of “disabled” or “handicapped” or “retard,” why is that a tyranny on free speech that requires a big PC to be stamped on it?

Strictly speaking, affirmative action requires some government action and therefore is very rare in the U.S. Now, if “affirmative action” includes the voluntary acts of private employers and private schools to enhance diversity, that’s not really “affirmative action.”
Sharon Astyk says:

December 11, 2012 at 12:15 pm

Fair enough, Rod, re: offense vs. irritation. But you are fixating on words whose derivations do not fully convey their current popular meaning all the time. It is true that homophobia in its *linguistic origins* implies fear of gay people. It is also true that in popular usage, it just means “hostility to gay people and/or gay civil rights.” Much in the way that someone who says someone else’s behavior is “schizo” is not in fact imputing a clinical diagnosis, but using a term that originated medically in a popular way, homophobia does not mean in mainstream culture what you suggest it does. It contains elements of that valence, but they are not the dominant ones.

I don’t think homophobia is an especially accurate term, but then again, I think most popular language isn’t particularly accurate, and that ultimately we don’t get to control the way popular culture takes over language and shifts it away from its original point of origin. That’s a collective project. Moreover, I don’t think most people think “Oh, he’s a homophobe because of his deep-seated fear of gay people…” they think “he’s a homophobe because he’s against gay civil equality and that’s the word that exists for that” – that is, they are not imputing fear, they are using a popular term in its contemporary popular sense.

We all have the right to be annoyed by language choices (my husband’s peeve is “Chai” for “Masala Chai tea” and mine is “megalopolis” for “A large developed area with a bunch of cities and suburbs.”), but I guess while I can see not appreciating the origins, that it strikes me as a kind of pc-ist attempt to change the language to erase origins that aren’t central to the word.
Geoff Guth says:

December 11, 2012 at 12:54 pm

Look, I’m perfectly prepared to admit that there are instances where the PC police run amok. But really, we’ve all been in situations where it’s better to keep your mouth shut.

Heck, that’s something I know at least as well as any conservative victim of the PC police. I’ve chosen to work in a few pretty conservative industries in my time. And I’ve felt plenty of social pressure not to advertise some of my political thoughts. And that’s fine…in general, I knew what I was getting into.

Which is why I find complaints from academics about the political bias in humanities departments amusing. I’ve spent some time in humanities departments myself, so I can pretty confidently say (1) you know darn well what the academy’s like if you’re a reasonably motivated undergraduate and (2) the overwhelming majority of academics will argue your politics vociferously but will still respect good, solid, well-researched work.

And that’s what really annoys me about most conservative academics who argue discrimination. In most cases, like the case of the guy in Texas, the work is shoddy, and they’re just upset that they aren’t shielded by a conservative echo chamber.

If there’s one thing that’s true of all academics, especially those in the humanities, it’s that they love to argue. If you’re good at that, they’ll love you regardless of politics.
lowinformationvoter says:

December 11, 2012 at 12:56 pm

“Freedom of speech explicitly excludes drowning out the speech of others. It says nothing about any right to not to be offended, to require of others silence in your presence on any subject.”

The problem with “P.C. Mania” is not about speech that occurs in the public sphere and thus falls under 1st amendment protection, but rather the speech that occurs within private institutions.

For example, my company, like many others, has mandatory EEO and other “sensitivity” training workshops for all employees that occur at least annually. Now , of course, you can argue that I can work anywhere so I shouldn’t complain, but the fact is that almost every company has bought into the P.C.-industrial victim complex. So, opposed to the gay lifestyle? You can air your opinion but don’t be expected to be employed much longer or employable again. Make comments about average I.Q. of certain racial/ethnicities being lower and how it should affect educational approaches? Dare not mention it in the private workplace…
Geoff Guth says:

December 11, 2012 at 12:59 pm

Franklin Evans, show me one instance where the law has been successfully invoked in this country to shut down anyone’s free speech.

As far as I am aware PC has only ever invoked social sanctions against speech it objects to. And frankly, that happens all the time with all kinds of speech. Always has, always will.
Geoff Guth says:

December 11, 2012 at 1:04 pm

On the -phobic objection, we are all aware that words can have multiple meanings, right?

I mean, if a chemist says that oil is hydrophobic, he doesn’t literally mean that the oil fears the water, does it?
steve says:

December 11, 2012 at 1:07 pm

” Political correctness is encouraging her to try for a modeling job and then picketing the modeling agency if they don’t hire her.”

This has never happened. It is a strawman argument.

Steve

[Note from Rod: It's not a "strawman argument," nor is it a claim that it has ever happened. It's an example to illustrate a point. -- RD]
Niall says:

December 11, 2012 at 1:10 pm

—I would think the better tactic is to argue why a particular position taken on immigration, SSM or race are not racist or bigoted rather than trying to discount objections with the term “political correctness.”—

I understand the sentiment behind this perspective, but it still feels a little Stalinist to me. As someone notes above, it smacks of “when did you stop beating your wife?” Why should the impetus be on me to prove that I’m not “racist” – whatever that means – or “bigoted” (a word that has joined “tolerance” and “hate” in the category of useful adjectives rendered useless by politicisation)? Why is the benefit of the doubt given to the accuser and not the defendant? That’s not how civilised systems of justice work.

I very rarely respond to progressive censoriousness with a knee-jerk “That’s just political correctness!” complaint.

This is partly because it’s true that it’s overdone and overused, like people who say “some of my best friends are transgender Norwegian Jewish wheelchair users!” It’s also because some people do use the whole “Oh, I don’t care about PC, me, I speak my mind” as an excuse to be a tiresome belligerent boor – just like people who claim to “not suffer fools gladly” generally mean “I’m an insensitive inconsiderate ass, and yet for some strange reason proud of it”.

It’s true too that there can be value in accepting people’s self-description, even if you don’t accept that personally. I for example am pro-life, and consider “pro-choice” to be a somewhat sophistic term. Yet I am willing to accept its use as a self-signifier when talking with opponents who are genuinely interested in dialogue about abortion, even if privately I feel like pro-abortion would be more apt.
Sharon Astyk says:

December 11, 2012 at 1:23 pm

Hmmm… I get your distinction between offense and irritation, and I do understand why you don’t like the term, Rod. At the same time, I would argue that homophobia, in a popular sense, has separated, as words often do, from its point of origin, and come to mean more than “fear of gay people” and now despite the word “phobia” in there has little to do with fear – it simply is the word for opposition to gay rights. What interests me is that focusing on its origins and trying to change it is PRECISELY what PC language shifts are about.

Note, I’m not saying that trying to change the language is always bad, or that focusing on the offensive roots and origins of a word is wrong, or that homophobia is a great word, just that it is pretty much EXACTLY what people are doing on the left when they focus on the offensive origins of language or a framing of an idea, vs the popular meaning. My point was that there are significant parallels on the right. If you’d prefer a different parallel, well, how about the “war on Christmas” which is similarly focused on expression and comes largely from the right.
sdb says:

December 11, 2012 at 1:31 pm

“PC doesn’t exist in STEM fields, since math, the laws of physics, and such just are.”

Yeah, never affects hiring decisions. That’s for sure.
Tyro says:

December 11, 2012 at 2:41 pm

Conservatives have a hard time these days. Basically, 2001-2009 are lost years for conservatives because of their taint of the Bush administration. Clinton is now the most popular living ex-president, so it seems like sour grapes to go back to any of the issues of the day from those years. What’s left? Replaying conservatives’ greatest hits from 1990-1992 or so, which was all about political correctness on campus, affirmative action, and, if Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is any indication, welfare.

Another possible explanation is that for Rod and his commenters, if they’re in their early 40s, the early 1990s was their peak political activism years, and their concerns are shaped by what the baby boomers were saying in the media about what the most important issues were at that time. In much the same way, you can find people in their 60s constantly arguing everything in terms of an anti-war perspective, since their political identity was so strongly formed by Vietnam.
Turmarion says:

December 11, 2012 at 2:47 pm

Scott, it was the BYU administrators who put Jones on leave (it didn’t say they fired him), not his department chair. In fact, the same articles says “Jones’ colleagues also defended Jones’ 9/11 work to varying degrees,” and that both the American Association of University Professors and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education supported him. The political considerations came from the administration, not Jones’ s colleagues.

STEM people are human, too, and I doubt that math and physics departments are 100% free of politics; but they have little room for PC.
reflectionephemeral says:

December 11, 2012 at 2:47 pm

What we refer to by PC is a fiercely ideological project that seeks to place hugely disproportionate restrictions on speech and thought and stifle individual reflection, thereby stifling honest debate.

This conversation had struck me as a bit too abstract and nonspecific to give much illumination; but now we have a bit more of a definition to go from.

In today’s political debates, that definition best fits, for lack of a better term, the religious right. From Molly Ball:

A participant in one focus group had been screened as a soft opponent of gay marriage, yet she spent half an hour sounding very supportive. She talked enthusiastically about her affection for the gay people in her daily life, including gay coworkers and a lesbian sister-in-law. “Finally, I said to her, ‘When we called you, you said you were undecided or leaning against [gay marriage]. Did we make a mistake?’” Simon recalled. “She looked at me and she stopped, and she said, ‘No, no, no.’ Then she started crying, and she said, ‘I want to be for this. But I’m afraid I’m going to burn in hell.’”

That sounds like evidence of a pretty successful project to stifle individual reflection, thereby stifling honest debate. Let us refrain from politically correct sparing of debate on the highly ideological project of religious Republicanism!

I’m not sure that it’s a loss that people in a newsroom don’t feel comfortable calling a mob of nonwhites “savages” anymore, but views differ.

If people are being rude about Christianity in newsrooms, that should obviously stop. I admit I was surprised by McKay Coppins’ story, in “A Mormon Reporter On The Romney Bus”, of news reporters making light of Mormon undergarments (in a witless and juvenile fashion, no less). So that kind of attitude might be more widespread than I realize.
Charles Cosimano says:

December 11, 2012 at 3:14 pm

The tactic that works is to never attempt to explain why an argument is not “bigoted” because no argument is going to work. The only thing that works is to respond by looking the person square in the eye and telling them that you do not care.

And if they know that you really do not care, they may not like you, but there is nothing they can do about it.
Franklin Evans says:

December 11, 2012 at 3:57 pm

Geoff, while I would have to qualify with “arguably” every hate-crime statute, I would as well have to qualify “in the works” where those statutes are being written (and passed in rare instances) to criminalize speech. “Hate-speech” is in institutions other than academic ones, codified and enforced.

I would include, again from my layperson’s POV, every civil suit brought by an individual or class against another individual or class concerning the defendants’ published or spoken words.

Allow me to reiterate: While one cannot argue it is the force of law, any consequence of speech deemed a violation of political correctness that results in the loss of a job, denial of access to an institution or to any public space is tantamount to the force of law. If a group clamors for the punishment of some person for that person’s speech, that is not social, that is mob justice. Any employer or institution that buckles to that has no excuse, not even the reason of injury to their PR image. I readily concede that my (and sdb’s) claims are anecdotal, but I firmly believe that the corroborating data is out there to be collected. I would also submit that a good reason why we don’t hear more such stories in the general milieu is that people are scared to either open their mouths or to fight the consequences. PC is winning.
Glaivester says:

December 11, 2012 at 4:23 pm

Geoff Guth:

Oh, I ‘m not saying that conservatives don’t have their own examples of political correctness. In fact, battling conservative P.C. is part of why The American Conservative started. Particularly over the Bush administration, there was an attempt to define conservatism largely in terms of one’s support for fighting in the Middle East, and being considered “unpatriotic” or “on the terrorists’ side” functioned much as being thought of as “racist” and “bigoted” do for some on the left.

As for “homophobic” I think the real problem is that “homophobia” is essentially a propaganda term used to attack those with less-than-accepting views of same-sex sex. Now, it’s fine to use these sorts of terms in an opinion piece disagreeing with such an attitude, but “homophobia” is not an appropriate term for a hard news article; it would be like using the term “pervert” any time the article referred to GLBTQ.

What’s left? Replaying conservatives’ greatest hits from 1990-1992 or so, which was all about political correctness on campus, affirmative action, and, if Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is any indication, welfare.

Actually, political correctness, and affirmative action are becoming concerns not out of nostalgia, but out of the realization that we are reaching a tipping point where whites will no longer be the majority, and where white unilateral disarmament on race-consciousness would be suicidal for whites.

As for welfare, we are rapidly moving toward a tipping point where the majority of Americans do not pay much in taxes, but receive a lot of government services. That would mean that, outside of long-term thinking, the incentives would be to vote for a living rather than to work for a living.

In essence, the issues that were brought up in 1990-1992 are the same issues that are important now. Also, in the case of welfare, the economics are the same as they were in the early 90s, so the same issues come up; and the same is true of illegal immigration to the extent that it has an impact on employment.
J says:

December 11, 2012 at 7:10 pm

At the same time, I would argue that homophobia, in a popular sense, has separated, as words often do, from its point of origin, and come to mean more than “fear of gay people” and now despite the word “phobia” in there has little to do with fear – it simply is the word for opposition to gay rights.

The word has attained a widespread second, albeit derivative/oblique, meaning along the lines of “fear of an environment in which gay people are behaving secure and socially assertive/demanding”. This definition seems to outweigh the original definition in public discourse these days.
JonF says:

December 11, 2012 at 8:17 pm

Re: I mean, if a chemist says that oil is hydrophobic, he doesn’t literally mean that the oil fears the water, does it?

For that matter “hydrophobia” used to be used as a synonym for “rabies”, and is still used as such in several other languages (e.g., French). Yet animals or people infected with rabies do not fear water; they simply cannot swallow it as the disease paralyzes their nervous system.
Public_Defender says:

December 11, 2012 at 8:49 pm

“Political correctness” is just a slur conservatives use to mean “morality with which they disagree.”
Public_Defender says:

December 11, 2012 at 8:58 pm

The term “politically correct” does have one useful purpose–it’s a signal that the writer is merely ranting and not saying anything worth reading.
Pat says:

December 11, 2012 at 10:28 pm

Politeness, as I understand it, is a set of rules you learned when you were a child and memorizing the arbitrary rules of society. Political correctness is a new set of rules imposed upon you when you are an adult and expect to have a say in the rules of society, and for those rules to make sense.

I find the analogy of computer programs useful. Politeness is like the rules of the program you bought and installed on your computer. You didn’t make them up, but you don’t waste time resenting them because you need to memorize them for the program to work.

PC is like the unsolicited updates that appear out of nowhere asking you to stop your work, close half your programs and disable your antivirus so they can install themselves on your machine. You were perfectly happy with the original program, you don’t know what problem the updates are supposed to solve, they mess up your work flow and pester you all afternoon with repeated demands that you restart the machine, and I for one hate them like the devil. I usually refuse to install them until my work product has become obviously incompatible with everyone else’s and my workplace forces me to upgrade.

Likewise with PC, I am usually so late to adopt the updates that I offend someone who expects me to have them in place. The question is whether the offense gets in the way of my accomplishing something I find important. If it does, I should install the upgrade. Using it doesn’t mean I have to believe it or advocate for it, any more than I believe in the arrangement of items in the Microsoft Word menus. But likewise, my preference for the old ways of saying things often has no sounder basis than my preference for the old Word menus.
Glaivester says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:04 pm

The term “politically correct” does have one useful purpose–it’s a signal that the writer is merely ranting and not saying anything worth reading.

So you are saying that it serves the same function as terms like “white/male/straight privilege,” “institutional racism/sexism/heterosexism,” and “heteronormativity.”
Tyro says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:42 pm

You were perfectly happy with the original program

Maybe. But this was a program that everyone had to use, and for the longest time, it turned out that it didn’t work well for many of the people, but no one else was paying attention to their complaints until a critical mass forced the issue and said, “hey, this program runs really poorly for us without updates.”

It gets down to realizing that you can’t treat other people like they’re an object or a stereotype who exist for your amusement or pity. Everyone’s an individual whom you have to treat on his own terms, as you would want to be treated.

I just remember growing up in the 80s and the stuff we used to talk about and joke about among friends that would just not fly today, in part because our social worlds are less insular places. I think we’re better off, now, personally, but I understand how one might say, “hey, what we used to do was considered perfectly ok! Why did things have to change?”
Siarlys Jenkins says:

December 11, 2012 at 11:49 pm

Let’s take a comprehesive historical view here. “Politically correct” originated as communist party terminology. It meant, in total conformance with the current party line, today’s, not yesterday’s or tomorrow’s. It entered the American lexicon in the latter stages of the amateurish “New Left,” via those who decided they were “new communists” who could do the revolution right, this time. They were in fact the most clueless and juvenile social-democrats, but they did shut down a good deal of discussion by pronouncing certain perspectives taboo, and others axiomatic.

In doing so, they voluntarily offered themselves as straw men for a rising generation of demagogues, who began using the phrases “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” (sarcastically) in such a broad and opportunistic manner that today, Geoff G. and Glaivester are both quite accurate. It all depends on who is calling what “politically correct,” in what context, for what audience. Rude boors and corrupt political hacks do cry “politically incorrect” when called on their rudeness. People offering legitimate lines of inquiry do get shouted down by the self-appointed “politically correct.”

The proper response to either is the standard H.L. Mencken line, “Dear Sir, you may be right.”
Public_Defender says:

December 12, 2012 at 4:57 am

Glaivester,
I partially agree. A couple of the terms you mentioned are mostly tools of liberal rhetoric. The point is that some terms are signals that the speaker or writer is engaged in one-sided rhetoric. “Politically correct” is one of those terms.
Glaivester says:

December 12, 2012 at 8:55 am

It meant, in total conformance with the current party line, today’s, not yesterday’s or tomorrow’s.

Yes, this. This is what I object to when I object to “political correctness.” I’m not really terribly upset over people wanting to be called “African-American” or such (except when the terms are to be used in an inaccurate way or one that makes it difficult to ascertain meaning, e.g. describing a black person who is not from the Americas as “African-American,” and even then it is a minor annoyance).

My concern is the requirement that everyone toe the party line and that dissent is not answered but simply ridiculed (what Steve Sailer calls “point and sputter”).
sdb says:

December 12, 2012 at 9:51 am

“Political correctness” is just a slur conservatives use to mean “morality with which they disagree.”

Who new that critics of “Political correctness” like Bill Maher, George Carlin, and the guys from South Park where all conservatives…
Public_Defender says:

December 12, 2012 at 2:33 pm

sdb,
Ironic use doesn’t count.