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on political correctness
Oct. 27th, 2009 07:01 pmThere's a new Sporcle quiz up that asks you to name the official race categories on the US census. I aced it, btw - no mistaken guesses. This is because I a little familiar with them, not because I think they're sensible categories from any perspective. XD
Anyway, there were some comments about the categories, and one charming person going by Kotstitsyn_AK46 said:
You guys should stop being offended by everything. Political correctness is only making you people more bitter. It should still be acceptable to call people black, or indians, or retards. There is nothing offensive in those names, the only reason people find them offensive is because they find offense in the things they represent. Now that's racist.
I've got some problems with this statement. And I'm going to write them out because I've had people say to me in the past that they have a hard time explaining why "political correctness" is important and not a bad thing.
I wasn't going to start with this, but I have to: "There is nothing offensive in those names". Um. What? This one particularly focuses on retard, but also applies to faggot and various racial slurs. Yes, there is something offensive in those names. The problem with those words is that they are used both to identify a particular group of people, and as a general insult. The word retard is no longer "politically correct" to use as an insult for someone who is acting stupid, nor as a clinical term to describe someone with a developmental disability. It's no longer appropriate to use as the latter because it got such a negative association as an insult. But it's not appropriate to use as an insult because it's still very strongly associated with certain types of developmental disabilities, and it's not neutral or inoffensive to use a term that way.
For racial slurs and other "not politically correct" words, they're often deemed offensive because they have been used offensively in the past. Usually primarily offensively. If the word was used as an insult, it's going to be heard as an insult - even if the word technically just identifies you as a member of a particular group. And you don't get to decide what sounds hurtful or negative to a particular group. If someone is hurt by a term, you don't get to say "Oh, no, that word is fine." If it's just one acquaintance of yours who says something is hurtful, don't say it around them. If an entire community says a particular word is hurtful, just STOP SAYING IT.
The hurt is indeed tied up in the specific term. This is something that happens. Words themselves can have negative associations with them that prevent them from ever sounding neutral, particularly when used by someone outside the group (because that's where the negative associations arise).
So the above applies to varying degrees to all three of the words cited. But there's something else going on with the term "indian" (something else that's particularly obvious to me, and I have a lot of educating to do about Native Americans). It's just not really accurate. And I know, it's become the commonly used term and people know what you mean, but it's still not accurate.
For me, that's a big part of what political correctness (i'm resisting the urge to put it in quotes, cos it's a weird phrase) is about - part of it is not telling others what they should or shouldn't be hurt by, and part of it is using accurate terminology to describe the world instead of shortcuts (that have the potential to be harmful). At the very least, it's a good rule of thumb. And I've been told that people who are initially resistant to the idea because of all the stupid bad press it gets (which is mostly people complaining that they can't say things that hurt others, awesome. Hey, we have free speech - you can say it, you'll just sound like an ignorant asshole.) tend to react well to the idea that the goal is accuracy and precision of speech.
I was thinking about this earlier. And this might be an awkward metaphor but I'm going to run with it and see where it takes me. I'm a geek, right? And I self-identify as a geek and I like being a geek. What if someone said to me "OK, yeah, you do all this geeky stuff, but how about instead of calling you a geek, I call you a dancer!" I would be like "What the fuck, no! I'm not a dancer at all. That's not me. I'm proud to be who I am and you're trying to take that away from me. . . in addition to creating expectations that I can dance." It's like. . . denying your identity. The terms that we use for ourselves help shape our identities, particularly our identities as presented to the world.
If you're not Indian, maybe you just plain don't want to be called one, because that's not who you are! Asking someone to use a more specific or accurate term is not placing a huge burden on that person. It's madness to think that it does and I don't know why this is even an issue, but. . . Actually I kind of have this whole theory that it's related to how badly people react to being told they've messed up, especially when it comes to issues of race. So people feel like they'll be written off as racist if they make one slip (which is not hard to do) and won't be simply corrected and given another chance. Hmmm.
Anyway, if you know something hurts people, you shouldn't say it. And if you say something and finds out that it hurts people, you should stop saying it. Also, unless you know everyone you're speaking to on an intimate level, always assume that the person who will be the most hurt by what you're saying is present. (That last one I read somewhere and can't remember where. Whoops.)
What you should ACTUALLY read on this subject is The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of "Political Correctness", by Kai. It looks at what political correctness should technically mean and how the term is used in American political discourse.
Anyway, there were some comments about the categories, and one charming person going by Kotstitsyn_AK46 said:
You guys should stop being offended by everything. Political correctness is only making you people more bitter. It should still be acceptable to call people black, or indians, or retards. There is nothing offensive in those names, the only reason people find them offensive is because they find offense in the things they represent. Now that's racist.
I've got some problems with this statement. And I'm going to write them out because I've had people say to me in the past that they have a hard time explaining why "political correctness" is important and not a bad thing.
I wasn't going to start with this, but I have to: "There is nothing offensive in those names". Um. What? This one particularly focuses on retard, but also applies to faggot and various racial slurs. Yes, there is something offensive in those names. The problem with those words is that they are used both to identify a particular group of people, and as a general insult. The word retard is no longer "politically correct" to use as an insult for someone who is acting stupid, nor as a clinical term to describe someone with a developmental disability. It's no longer appropriate to use as the latter because it got such a negative association as an insult. But it's not appropriate to use as an insult because it's still very strongly associated with certain types of developmental disabilities, and it's not neutral or inoffensive to use a term that way.
For racial slurs and other "not politically correct" words, they're often deemed offensive because they have been used offensively in the past. Usually primarily offensively. If the word was used as an insult, it's going to be heard as an insult - even if the word technically just identifies you as a member of a particular group. And you don't get to decide what sounds hurtful or negative to a particular group. If someone is hurt by a term, you don't get to say "Oh, no, that word is fine." If it's just one acquaintance of yours who says something is hurtful, don't say it around them. If an entire community says a particular word is hurtful, just STOP SAYING IT.
The hurt is indeed tied up in the specific term. This is something that happens. Words themselves can have negative associations with them that prevent them from ever sounding neutral, particularly when used by someone outside the group (because that's where the negative associations arise).
So the above applies to varying degrees to all three of the words cited. But there's something else going on with the term "indian" (something else that's particularly obvious to me, and I have a lot of educating to do about Native Americans). It's just not really accurate. And I know, it's become the commonly used term and people know what you mean, but it's still not accurate.
For me, that's a big part of what political correctness (i'm resisting the urge to put it in quotes, cos it's a weird phrase) is about - part of it is not telling others what they should or shouldn't be hurt by, and part of it is using accurate terminology to describe the world instead of shortcuts (that have the potential to be harmful). At the very least, it's a good rule of thumb. And I've been told that people who are initially resistant to the idea because of all the stupid bad press it gets (which is mostly people complaining that they can't say things that hurt others, awesome. Hey, we have free speech - you can say it, you'll just sound like an ignorant asshole.) tend to react well to the idea that the goal is accuracy and precision of speech.
I was thinking about this earlier. And this might be an awkward metaphor but I'm going to run with it and see where it takes me. I'm a geek, right? And I self-identify as a geek and I like being a geek. What if someone said to me "OK, yeah, you do all this geeky stuff, but how about instead of calling you a geek, I call you a dancer!" I would be like "What the fuck, no! I'm not a dancer at all. That's not me. I'm proud to be who I am and you're trying to take that away from me. . . in addition to creating expectations that I can dance." It's like. . . denying your identity. The terms that we use for ourselves help shape our identities, particularly our identities as presented to the world.
If you're not Indian, maybe you just plain don't want to be called one, because that's not who you are! Asking someone to use a more specific or accurate term is not placing a huge burden on that person. It's madness to think that it does and I don't know why this is even an issue, but. . . Actually I kind of have this whole theory that it's related to how badly people react to being told they've messed up, especially when it comes to issues of race. So people feel like they'll be written off as racist if they make one slip (which is not hard to do) and won't be simply corrected and given another chance. Hmmm.
Anyway, if you know something hurts people, you shouldn't say it. And if you say something and finds out that it hurts people, you should stop saying it. Also, unless you know everyone you're speaking to on an intimate level, always assume that the person who will be the most hurt by what you're saying is present. (That last one I read somewhere and can't remember where. Whoops.)
What you should ACTUALLY read on this subject is The Greatest Cliché: The Unexamined Propaganda of "Political Correctness", by Kai. It looks at what political correctness should technically mean and how the term is used in American political discourse.
