This came up yesterday at work. A guy I work with says that PC should be abolished completely because it's not society's place to tell people how to think or what to say and that PC infringes on freedom of speech. I didn't say anything to him but it made me wonder if there are others who feel the same way. I believe that some PC has gone too far such as people getting offended over small things like being called "hearing impaired" over "auditorily (I'm not even sure how you would spell such a word!) challenged." I actually heard this conversation in the mall one day between a man and woman (I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but they were at the table next to me in the food court) and she was all bent out of shape because one of her friend's boyfriends had called her hearing impaired. So what do you think? Has Pc gone too far? If so, how do you think it can be stopped? Is there not enough PC in the world? Your thoughts please.
I tend to agree I tend to agree inpart. When I was co-authoring a book some years ago with two other academics, one of them insisted we could not use terms such as 'manpower management'. Of course, that's easily solved by using a term such as 'human resource management'. However, as time went on I becamse aware that one of my colleagues was so obsessed with PC that it was getting in the way of completing our book. We had to have a word with one another! It transpired that he was so fanatical about PC he saw the world in 'extremes'. He believed, for example that a 'grandfather clock' should not be so termed! I don't know what they are called in the US but the round, metal covered in the road that go over the holes that lead down to sewers are called 'manhole covers' in the UK. This guy even objected to the specific use of the word 'man' in manhole! This same person is part of a group in the UK that is bent on getting abolished degree designations 'bachelor' and 'master'! They are considered to be too gender-specific. The person I am thinking about here told me, when asked where he was born, that the city was Manchester. Fantastic! I asked him why he did not refer to the city as 'Personchester'! 'telfax'
I think these things are best examined case-by-case, taking each situation's circumstances into account. We've all seen and/or heard about extreme situations of PC. Still, I can't help think sometimes that in some situations, complaining about PC is actually complaining about not being allowed to be a bigot anymore.
I agree with Rich. And so does my deaf, blind Negro friend who used to be quite athletic until he became a gimp after falling into a manhole. Which happened because he got pissed off after his job title was changed from janitor to sanitation engineer. His bitch agrees as well. On a serious note, the PC issue was eloquently addressed a few years ago in the context of academics by Dinesh D'Sousa in his brilliant book Illiberal Education. D'Sousa managed to offend many of the liberals in academe (of which I am one, although I thoroughly enjoyed his book), to the extent that the feminist movement still calls him Distort D'Newsa. Unfortunately, they could not accuse him of white conservative prejudice since D'Sousa is a member of a U.s. minority community himself (Indian by birth). If you're in academe, this is a must-read.
The thing that I hate most about academic PC is its blatant hypocrisy. On one hand we are told that we must refrain from any speech or behavior that might conceivably give offence. But the same people that tell us this also pose as champions of free speech, who glory and exult in their own social-critical stances and in their "dangerous" and "progressive" pushing the envelope of traditional decorum. So, why is it laudable to offend some people and not others? In my opinion, when you scrape away all the high sounding moral posturing, it's raw politics. It is all about who gets the power to define the cultural agenda.
what is pc I think the concept of PC in general is OK. The idea that if you know someone is offended by a term, then don't use it, sounds reasonable. However, some people make the leap of thought that if they hear a term they don't like, that it was intentionally used to "hurt feelings". That assignment of motivation is often unfair. It is as though you are supposed to read someone's mind, to figure out what will offend them. There is an old joke about Lyndon Johnson. It goes in that southern drawl, "ah spent fourrr years learnin' ta say "neggrow" and then they go and change it to black!" Some who would be considered an "outsider" to a movement may have no intention of offending anyone, but not have the "in" terminology" to use. The terminology does change over the years. In my neck of the woods there is some debate about the word "canuck" to refer to french canadians. Yet there has been a "canuck" hockey team. I classify the work "canuck" with "frog" and "no-tippers" as words intended to be mean spirited. However, a person in Vancouver may support their hockey team without any thought of offending anyone. I think the idea that we should not intentionally insult each other is good. However, each of us as an individual may say, "I find the use of that word______ to be offensive, please don't use it" and that should be honored. It is interesting that some sports teams have names like vikings, cowboys, roughriders, seahawks, raiders, etc and there is no public outcry about the names being insulting. Seahwks were pirates, somewhat evil people. Yet teams with names like redskins, indians, seminoles, blackhawks, are considered by many to be insulting. I don't see an intention or motivation to "insult". But people feelings need to be respected. all the best!
Irat Canuck as a term for Canadian could never in my experience and opinion be offensive. In Vermont most of the Canadians you see are probably French-Canadian and they have a whole different cultural experience, which I can't pretend to understand. An interesting question was brought up in Canadian Parliament in response to eliminating gender specific language. Would the law require the French language to remove its masculine and feminine tenses? No it would not. Apparently political correctness is language specific.
