9 ms·

On Political Correctness

60 points by malandrew 10y ago

dqv 10y ago
One of the biggest problems I've had discussing issues with people is that many claims go unsubstantiated. Asking someone to cite their claims is seen as an objection or a denial of the "truth". I think that sometimes people spend more time with retorts about telling you to "just google it" than just saying "I read this book and it's what helped shaped my opinion about this".
- thomastjeffery 10y ago
  The underlying problem is that people don't read books. They read other peoples' unsubstantiated opinions.
deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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glangdale 10y ago
I find the phrase "Political Correctness" to be hopelessly compromised. It's a real thing (the standard left-liberal 'circular firing squads' that form up almost everywhere, the pointless parsing of language looking fro something that might be offensive), but it's also heavily used as a all-purpose generic insult. There appears to be a alchemical transformation that results in people's minds, where "<Obnoxious Statement X>" on its own is obnoxious, but "I know it's politically incorrect to say so, but <Obnoxious Statement X>!" makes you a Free Speech Martyr and a real deep thinker.
- xiaoma 10y ago
  Free speech has never been about protecting popular ideas. It's the ideas that those in power find obnoxious that get censored. Though the particular ideas vary between modern America, communist Russia and medieval Spain, it's the threatening views of outsiders that are met with suppression or violence.
  - glangdale 10y ago
    You appear to have been moved (triggered, even) to say something about "free speech" and "obnoxiousness". Aside from the fact that post posts contain these words, I am at a loss to understand how it connects in any way to anything I wrote.
    - current_call 10y ago
      When you said, "There appears to be a alchemical transformation that results in people's minds, where "<Obnoxious Statement X>" on its own is obnoxious, but "I know it's politically incorrect to say so, but <Obnoxious Statement X>!" makes you a Free Speech Martyr and a real deep thinker.", you were implying that free speech shouldn't protect obnoxious ideas, but that's wrong. Free speech exists specifically to protect unpopular ideas.
      - glangdale 10y ago
        No, I was implying that people invoke "political correctness" in an effort to pretend to be Free Speech Martyrs when they are just being obnoxious. This is generally done in circumstances when neither version of the statement is in any real danger of being suppressed, but invoking "political correctness" gives a thrill of posturing as if you are in imminent danger of getting shut down by a cabal of "academic feminazis" or some such. Like the GP of your post, you have also clearly been 'triggered' to share your uncontroversial but irrelevant statements on free speech by keywords alone.
    - xiaoma 10y ago
      >"You appear to have been moved (triggered, even)..." This kind of uncharitable guessing at others' states of mind isn't very constructive. Focusing on one's impression of a speaker often makes it harder to parse their speech.
munchbunny 10y ago
In my experience with the particular type of situation in the article, stark disagreements come out of a difference in the "reality" that you inhabit. From one reality the claims you make seem perfectly reasonable. From another, they might sound ridiculous. The actual difficulty of the situation is reconciling the two realities, not the assertions themselves. I was just watching this recording of a debate from 1965: https://vimeo.com/18413741 https://vimeo.com/18413741 and James Baldwin's speech (starts around 14:30) on the different realities that a white and black person inhabit, and I think it's a good illustration of the issue. Not for lack of good intention, one person's idea of the reality of the problem is often different from another's, so no wonder these two people might have trouble understanding each other. Separately from that, I see a particular troubling pattern practiced most commonly by the people who believe in specific causes so ardently that you have to walk on eggshells: when you disagree with them, they attribute the worst possible intent to your disagreement, rather than seeing an opportunity to engage.
- owebmaster 10y ago
  > In my experience with the particular type of situation in the article, stark disagreements come out of a difference in the "reality" that you inhabit. From one reality the claims you make seem perfectly reasonable. From another, they might sound ridiculous. The actual difficulty of the situation is reconciling the two realities, not the assertions themselves. Scott Adams have been talking a lot about it lately. I'm wondering how much his influence has grow. It seems a lot. A truly master persuader.
xiaoma 10y ago
>"Unlike the campus protesters of the 1960s, today’s student activists are not expressing countercultural views. They are expressing the exact views of the culture in which they find themselves (a reason that administrators prove so ready to accede to their demands)."
lbarrett 10y ago
The important question about this perspective is, I think, this: How do you fight against harmful, unjust beliefs such as racism without making it socially uncomfortable for people to express them? The author says that racism is a big powerful force that should be fought but then argues only for weakening our social defenses against it. I recognize that this could seem like an attack, but I'm really not calling the author racist. What I want is to know, how can we have greater agreement that racism is bad, and more diversity of expression about racism, at the same time? It seems contradictory.
- mc32 10y ago
  One way I could see is talking about it abstractly --either examining breeds of an animal or imagine being an alien from outer space and talking about the different aspects. Although, admittedly in either case it may be an imperfect instrument because for example one can see how one kind of cat may be better at some thing (mouse catching) than others --but still, we can ask why if we wanted what's best for all cats, would we prefer one kind of cat over another. It's probably the same for religion. Use thought experiments rather than talking about things directly which could hurt someone who is not prepared to have an open discussion.
- moonshinefe 10y ago
  If your beliefs are correct, you should be able to have a rational debate against someone from the other side and prove your position is correct. If they won't rationally debate you, sinking to their level and shouting them down / using underhanded means to "win" just puts you on their level and gains sympathy for the other side & hurts your reputation. Unfortunately, I think that's the main issue that the author is getting at; it's gotten to the point where I can barely tell the far left from the far right anymore in terms of how irrational and sometimes violent they are. It's slogans, it's shouting down, it's even threats or actual violence. When you disregard civility and resort to those tactics, it's tribalism.
  - sewercake 10y ago
    While I agree with your sentiment, civility should be seen as the optimal method to make political decisions, not the only way. Blind admonition of tactics that don't fall into its camp can lead to a really limited understanding of politics.
doggydogs94 10y ago
I do not tell people who I voted for. I don't want to lose half of my friends.
- legostormtroopr 10y ago
  You voted for <them>? I could never be friends with someone who voted for <them>. How repugnant!
hurbledr 10y ago
When did not wanting to eat shitty banh mi become a case of political correctness gone too far? If I pay for a slice of prosciutto di parma and get ham from some farm in the US, shouldn't I rightfully be pissed off? It also seems to me that the so called "pc police" feature more prominently in peoples imaginations than they do in their actual lives. Any time I've seen someone called out (in real life) for issues of cultural sensitivity, it has been in a respectful and reasonable fashion, even if the situation has warranted a much harsher response (and occasionally it has). The situation online or in a college is a bit different, but at the end of the day I would consider it similar to talking to a stranger at a bar; if you talk some shit, expect to get shit talked. If you have a problem with that, you can go crying to the bouncer, but if they are at all good at their job, they will either nod and ignore you, or kick you out if you are out of line. I realize the analogy is a bit crude, but as other commenters have pointed out, most of these so called "pc police" are just trying to correct centuries of systemic racism, sexism, etc. by having a reasonable discussion. If they are a bit shrill sometimes, just be thankful that they aren't using the same tactics that were once used to keep them from speaking out.
- rimantas 10y ago
  Alas, PC police has no idea what racism and sexism are, and considers even the mention of race/gender as cases of those.
- current_call 10y ago
  Wow, a snarky straw man based off of the first sentence in the article. Then you make points that the author specifically refuted in the article without discussing what he wrote. It's like you tried to read it and gave up so you could regurgitate your opinion. You: The situation online or in a college is a bit different, but at the end of the day I would consider it similar to talking to a stranger at a bar; if you talk some shit, expect to get shit talked. If you have a problem with that, you can go crying to the bouncer, but if they are at all good at their job, they will either nod and ignore you, or kick you out if you are out of line. Him: A clarification, before I continue (since deliberate misconstrual is itself a tactic of the phenomenon in question). By political correctness, I do not mean the term as it has come to be employed on the right—that is, the expectation of adherence to the norms of basic decency, like refraining from derogatory epithets. I mean its older, intramural denotation: the persistent attempt to suppress the expression of unwelcome beliefs and ideas. See? He made a point of defining political correctness in the second(!) paragraph, but it didn't stop you from arguing with your own definition. He even anticipated you would use a different definition. You: I realize the analogy is a bit crude, but as other commenters have pointed out, most of these so called "pc police" are just trying to correct centuries of systemic racism, sexism, etc. by having a reasonable discussion. If they are a bit shrill sometimes, just be thankful that they aren't using the same tactics that were once used to keep them from speaking out. Him: Let me be clear. I recognize that both the culture of political correctness and the recent forms of campus agitation are responding to enormous, intractable national problems. There is systemic racism and individual bigotry in the United States, and colleges are not immune from either. There is systemic sexism and sexual assault in society at large, and campuses are no exception. The call for safe spaces and trigger warnings, the desire to eliminate micro-aggressions, the demand for the removal of offensive symbols and the suppression of offensive language: however foolish some of these might be as policy prescriptions (especially the first two), however absurd as they work themselves out on the ground, all originate in deeply legitimate concerns. See? He made a point to answer people that think political correctness is just fighting systematic bias, but you just zoomed right past it. He criticizes the methods used to fight systematic bias, not fighting systematic bias itself. How can any conversation on serious topics be worth having if people refuse to listen and respond? Nothing good can come of dumping the same preconceptions into the other persons eyes and ears.
agroot12 10y ago
Well, where is the PC police when you need it? Because that sentence triggered me: "That, by the way, is why liberal students (and liberals in general) are so bad at defending their own positions.". Edit: My comment was meant humorously, although I consider the main content of the article to be very thoughtful. And the above sentence, seemingly a soundbite from a right-wing talk show, has a nugget of truth in it: Once you stop debating the basic pillars of your society, you risk losing the defensive forces to protect them, e.g. against populism.
woodandsteel 10y ago
Great essay. As the author explains, we need to get people to have rational discourse when they disagree with each other on important social and political issues. I used to do workshops on this that worked fairly well. I used a simple method, namely mutual active listening. Two people who are on opposite sides of an issue agree that one will talk for a while, say five minutes, and the other will only listen and say back to them what they think they are saying. Then they exchange roles and the previous talker becomes the new listener, and vice-versa, for five minutes, and then switch again, and so on until each person feels like he or she has expressed their main ideas and been accurately understood. This process doesn't lead to total agreement, but invariably it produces a lot more agreement than the two parties had before they started out, and also friendlier, more respectful relations. So mutual active listening works, but the question is how you get people to agree to do it. I think the best sell is that most people, I think, feel misunderstood and misrepresented by people on the opposite side of various issues. I would tell them that the people on the opposite side also feel misunderstood and misrepresented by them, and the only way each side can come to feel accurately understood is if they both agree to do mutual listening with each other. I haven't tried this yet, but I think it would motivate a lot of people to try mutual active listening.

60 points by malandrew 10y ago

dqv 10y ago

One of the biggest problems I've had discussing issues with people is that many claims go unsubstantiated. Asking someone to cite their claims is seen as an objection or a denial of the "truth". I think that sometimes people spend more time with retorts about telling you to "just google it" than just saying "I read this book and it's what helped shaped my opinion about this".

thomastjeffery 10y ago
The underlying problem is that people don't read books. They read other peoples' unsubstantiated opinions.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

glangdale 10y ago

I find the phrase "Political Correctness" to be hopelessly compromised. It's a real thing (the standard left-liberal 'circular firing squads' that form up almost everywhere, the pointless parsing of language looking fro something that might be offensive), but it's also heavily used as a all-purpose generic insult. There appears to be a alchemical transformation that results in people's minds, where "<Obnoxious Statement X>" on its own is obnoxious, but "I know it's politically incorrect to say so, but <Obnoxious Statement X>!" makes you a Free Speech Martyr and a real deep thinker.

xiaoma 10y ago
Free speech has never been about protecting popular ideas. It's the ideas that those in power find obnoxious that get censored. Though the particular ideas vary between modern America, communist Russia and medieval Spain, it's the threatening views of outsiders that are met with suppression or violence.
- glangdale 10y ago
  You appear to have been moved (triggered, even) to say something about "free speech" and "obnoxiousness". Aside from the fact that post posts contain these words, I am at a loss to understand how it connects in any way to anything I wrote.
  - current_call 10y ago
    When you said, "There appears to be a alchemical transformation that results in people's minds, where "<Obnoxious Statement X>" on its own is obnoxious, but "I know it's politically incorrect to say so, but <Obnoxious Statement X>!" makes you a Free Speech Martyr and a real deep thinker.", you were implying that free speech shouldn't protect obnoxious ideas, but that's wrong. Free speech exists specifically to protect unpopular ideas.
    - glangdale 10y ago
      No, I was implying that people invoke "political correctness" in an effort to pretend to be Free Speech Martyrs when they are just being obnoxious. This is generally done in circumstances when neither version of the statement is in any real danger of being suppressed, but invoking "political correctness" gives a thrill of posturing as if you are in imminent danger of getting shut down by a cabal of "academic feminazis" or some such. Like the GP of your post, you have also clearly been 'triggered' to share your uncontroversial but irrelevant statements on free speech by keywords alone.
  - xiaoma 10y ago
    >"You appear to have been moved (triggered, even)..." This kind of uncharitable guessing at others' states of mind isn't very constructive. Focusing on one's impression of a speaker often makes it harder to parse their speech.

munchbunny 10y ago

In my experience with the particular type of situation in the article, stark disagreements come out of a difference in the "reality" that you inhabit. From one reality the claims you make seem perfectly reasonable. From another, they might sound ridiculous. The actual difficulty of the situation is reconciling the two realities, not the assertions themselves. I was just watching this recording of a debate from 1965: https://vimeo.com/18413741 https://vimeo.com/18413741 and James Baldwin's speech (starts around 14:30) on the different realities that a white and black person inhabit, and I think it's a good illustration of the issue. Not for lack of good intention, one person's idea of the reality of the problem is often different from another's, so no wonder these two people might have trouble understanding each other. Separately from that, I see a particular troubling pattern practiced most commonly by the people who believe in specific causes so ardently that you have to walk on eggshells: when you disagree with them, they attribute the worst possible intent to your disagreement, rather than seeing an opportunity to engage.

owebmaster 10y ago
> In my experience with the particular type of situation in the article, stark disagreements come out of a difference in the "reality" that you inhabit. From one reality the claims you make seem perfectly reasonable. From another, they might sound ridiculous. The actual difficulty of the situation is reconciling the two realities, not the assertions themselves. Scott Adams have been talking a lot about it lately. I'm wondering how much his influence has grow. It seems a lot. A truly master persuader.

xiaoma 10y ago

>"Unlike the campus protesters of the 1960s, today’s student activists are not expressing countercultural views. They are expressing the exact views of the culture in which they find themselves (a reason that administrators prove so ready to accede to their demands)."

lbarrett 10y ago

The important question about this perspective is, I think, this: How do you fight against harmful, unjust beliefs such as racism without making it socially uncomfortable for people to express them? The author says that racism is a big powerful force that should be fought but then argues only for weakening our social defenses against it. I recognize that this could seem like an attack, but I'm really not calling the author racist. What I want is to know, how can we have greater agreement that racism is bad, and more diversity of expression about racism, at the same time? It seems contradictory.

mc32 10y ago
One way I could see is talking about it abstractly --either examining breeds of an animal or imagine being an alien from outer space and talking about the different aspects. Although, admittedly in either case it may be an imperfect instrument because for example one can see how one kind of cat may be better at some thing (mouse catching) than others --but still, we can ask why if we wanted what's best for all cats, would we prefer one kind of cat over another. It's probably the same for religion. Use thought experiments rather than talking about things directly which could hurt someone who is not prepared to have an open discussion.
moonshinefe 10y ago
If your beliefs are correct, you should be able to have a rational debate against someone from the other side and prove your position is correct. If they won't rationally debate you, sinking to their level and shouting them down / using underhanded means to "win" just puts you on their level and gains sympathy for the other side & hurts your reputation. Unfortunately, I think that's the main issue that the author is getting at; it's gotten to the point where I can barely tell the far left from the far right anymore in terms of how irrational and sometimes violent they are. It's slogans, it's shouting down, it's even threats or actual violence. When you disregard civility and resort to those tactics, it's tribalism.
- sewercake 10y ago
  While I agree with your sentiment, civility should be seen as the optimal method to make political decisions, not the only way. Blind admonition of tactics that don't fall into its camp can lead to a really limited understanding of politics.

doggydogs94 10y ago

I do not tell people who I voted for. I don't want to lose half of my friends.

legostormtroopr 10y ago
You voted for <them>? I could never be friends with someone who voted for <them>. How repugnant!

hurbledr 10y ago

When did not wanting to eat shitty banh mi become a case of political correctness gone too far? If I pay for a slice of prosciutto di parma and get ham from some farm in the US, shouldn't I rightfully be pissed off? It also seems to me that the so called "pc police" feature more prominently in peoples imaginations than they do in their actual lives. Any time I've seen someone called out (in real life) for issues of cultural sensitivity, it has been in a respectful and reasonable fashion, even if the situation has warranted a much harsher response (and occasionally it has). The situation online or in a college is a bit different, but at the end of the day I would consider it similar to talking to a stranger at a bar; if you talk some shit, expect to get shit talked. If you have a problem with that, you can go crying to the bouncer, but if they are at all good at their job, they will either nod and ignore you, or kick you out if you are out of line. I realize the analogy is a bit crude, but as other commenters have pointed out, most of these so called "pc police" are just trying to correct centuries of systemic racism, sexism, etc. by having a reasonable discussion. If they are a bit shrill sometimes, just be thankful that they aren't using the same tactics that were once used to keep them from speaking out.

rimantas 10y ago
Alas, PC police has no idea what racism and sexism are, and considers even the mention of race/gender as cases of those.
current_call 10y ago
Wow, a snarky straw man based off of the first sentence in the article. Then you make points that the author specifically refuted in the article without discussing what he wrote. It's like you tried to read it and gave up so you could regurgitate your opinion. You: The situation online or in a college is a bit different, but at the end of the day I would consider it similar to talking to a stranger at a bar; if you talk some shit, expect to get shit talked. If you have a problem with that, you can go crying to the bouncer, but if they are at all good at their job, they will either nod and ignore you, or kick you out if you are out of line. Him: A clarification, before I continue (since deliberate misconstrual is itself a tactic of the phenomenon in question). By political correctness, I do not mean the term as it has come to be employed on the right—that is, the expectation of adherence to the norms of basic decency, like refraining from derogatory epithets. I mean its older, intramural denotation: the persistent attempt to suppress the expression of unwelcome beliefs and ideas. See? He made a point of defining political correctness in the second(!) paragraph, but it didn't stop you from arguing with your own definition. He even anticipated you would use a different definition. You: I realize the analogy is a bit crude, but as other commenters have pointed out, most of these so called "pc police" are just trying to correct centuries of systemic racism, sexism, etc. by having a reasonable discussion. If they are a bit shrill sometimes, just be thankful that they aren't using the same tactics that were once used to keep them from speaking out. Him: Let me be clear. I recognize that both the culture of political correctness and the recent forms of campus agitation are responding to enormous, intractable national problems. There is systemic racism and individual bigotry in the United States, and colleges are not immune from either. There is systemic sexism and sexual assault in society at large, and campuses are no exception. The call for safe spaces and trigger warnings, the desire to eliminate micro-aggressions, the demand for the removal of offensive symbols and the suppression of offensive language: however foolish some of these might be as policy prescriptions (especially the first two), however absurd as they work themselves out on the ground, all originate in deeply legitimate concerns. See? He made a point to answer people that think political correctness is just fighting systematic bias, but you just zoomed right past it. He criticizes the methods used to fight systematic bias, not fighting systematic bias itself. How can any conversation on serious topics be worth having if people refuse to listen and respond? Nothing good can come of dumping the same preconceptions into the other persons eyes and ears.

agroot12 10y ago

Well, where is the PC police when you need it? Because that sentence triggered me: "That, by the way, is why liberal students (and liberals in general) are so bad at defending their own positions.". Edit: My comment was meant humorously, although I consider the main content of the article to be very thoughtful. And the above sentence, seemingly a soundbite from a right-wing talk show, has a nugget of truth in it: Once you stop debating the basic pillars of your society, you risk losing the defensive forces to protect them, e.g. against populism.

woodandsteel 10y ago

Great essay. As the author explains, we need to get people to have rational discourse when they disagree with each other on important social and political issues. I used to do workshops on this that worked fairly well. I used a simple method, namely mutual active listening. Two people who are on opposite sides of an issue agree that one will talk for a while, say five minutes, and the other will only listen and say back to them what they think they are saying. Then they exchange roles and the previous talker becomes the new listener, and vice-versa, for five minutes, and then switch again, and so on until each person feels like he or she has expressed their main ideas and been accurately understood. This process doesn't lead to total agreement, but invariably it produces a lot more agreement than the two parties had before they started out, and also friendlier, more respectful relations. So mutual active listening works, but the question is how you get people to agree to do it. I think the best sell is that most people, I think, feel misunderstood and misrepresented by people on the opposite side of various issues. I would tell them that the people on the opposite side also feel misunderstood and misrepresented by them, and the only way each side can come to feel accurately understood is if they both agree to do mutual listening with each other. I haven't tried this yet, but I think it would motivate a lot of people to try mutual active listening.