The Achilles heel of the Left

March 9, 2005 12:48 AM

Is political correctness the enemy from within? (via A&L Daily) Lillian Rubin writes, "...the consolidation of power by the political right in recent years has convinced me that by insisting on political correctness, we not only played a part in impoverishing the national discourse but, in doing so, we also marginalized ourselves politically and lost what should have been our natural constituency."
posted by mono blanco (194 comments total)

I don't much care about the background - any question asking if political correctness is the enemy gets a resounding YES! from me. The single biggest scourge of our times may well turn out to be that we have turned ourselves inside out in trying not to offend the most minor of minorities and, in doing so, have completely alienated most of the population.
posted by dg at 12:55 AM on March 9, 2005

First reaction: GAAAH! Formatting!

Response to dg: Shall we define PC before we go any further down the road of divisive absolutism?
posted by squirrel at 12:58 AM on March 9, 2005

On Republicans: I don't take a backseat to anyone in my anger at the right, especially the radical religious right and its neocon partners. Their ideological inflexibility, the way they manipulate the facts to fit their preconceptions and sell their falsehoods to the American public
...
On Democrats: Not that there wasn't truth in our side of the argument; it just wasn't the whole truth. ... And still others told me I should "push the delete button" on my computer before going public with my doubts about the efficacy of bilingual programs, even though these were also the concerns voiced by many of the Latino and Asian families I interviewed.
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 1:19 AM on March 9, 2005

Here's a representative snippet that cuts to the heart of his argument for those who, like me, have had a hard time wading through his blatherly academic prose:

On race, too, we failed to speak out at crucial moments and to face up to self-evident truths. For decades the left has argued that the antisocial behavior of significant numbers of African American youth (dropping out of school, getting pregnant, gang behavior, drugs) is a direct result of the painful realities under which they live and the hopelessness and helplessness their plight generates. Once again, we're not wrong, but we're not wholly right either.

No doubt the prospects of African American youth have been seriously affected by the massive neglect of our public schools, very high levels of unemployment, crushing poverty, police practices that criminalize behavior that's treated like a boyish prank in white suburbs, and a long history of prejudice and discrimination. But as William Julius Wilson, a Harvard scholar who can't by any stretch be called an apologist for the right, argues, there are also behavioral causes of black poverty-decisions and choices that are not the inevitable result of social constraints but of an amalgam of culture and personal behavior that is destructive to both the individual and the community. To believe otherwise is to strip an entire population of any agency and to treat them as if they were as helpless to influence the direction of their lives as leaves tossed about in a hurricane. Well meaning, perhaps, but ultimately condescending.

The upshot: the progressive left has been intellectually dishonest with itself to a degree that has lost it credibility with centrists, and thereby given ammunition to the hard right.

I don't think this can be denied, but I'm open to arguments to the contrary.

As a middle-class white male, graduate school presented daily challenges, both externally and internally imposed, regarding the politics of race, gender, class and sexual orientation. While I'm aware that in the superstructure of American society, I am positioned to benefit from power imbalances along several axes, grad school was nevertheless unnecessarily rife with obstacles designed to hinder me on the basis of my color, class and etc.

That said, I see the progressive movement, and even what is derisively referred to as PC, as a national, even global movement in consciousness raising. By and large, it is a good thing. I refuse to call progressivism a bad thing out of hand merely because some of its adherents apply it with too broad a brush. A movement as large as this, that has such powerful and organized opposition, is bound to get some things wrong. It's easy to argue that "black vs. african american" and so forth aren't doing damage to the credibility of the left, but correcting that over-application of such a large movement must be a matter of fine tuning.
posted by squirrel at 1:33 AM on March 9, 2005

thedevildancedlightly, are you proposing to have caught the author is some contradiction simply because he points out that both the right and the left have been dishonest? Hardly a groundbreaking discovery, that. I suppose it's worth a few points for those who play zero-sum politics a la Rush Limbaugh. Was that a "slam dunk," or did I miss your point?
posted by squirrel at 1:40 AM on March 9, 2005

squirrel

I was hardly trying to "catch" him with anything. His whole thesis is that being PC has a horrible effect that isn't too dissimiar from the manipulation of the truth that he claims the right practices. I was trying to cut through the long, poorly formatted article and bring out a good set of contrasts.

So, no. And I also disagree with you that politics are zero-sum... I believe pretty strongly that partisanship is negative-sum. "Scorched earth" comes to mind.
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 1:58 AM on March 9, 2005

squirrel - Serious question: why did you jump (leap?) to the conclusion that I was against you? Might that tendency to jump to conclusions that people are opposed influence your perception of bias in the media and world?

I simply offered two contrasting passages and from that you suddenly decided what my point was.
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 2:01 AM on March 9, 2005

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, squirrels gotta leap. Thanks for clarifying your point, thedevildancedlightly.
posted by squirrel at 2:08 AM on March 9, 2005

Chickens. Home. Roost.

Are their any rules to the academic blame game? If so, please post. Also, I've been reading way too many resumes as of late. So teh formatting and teh spellingk really turned me off. Is the format of delivery a direct reflection of the contents value? Hmmm.

If a $100 note had "wuhn hunnered" spelled on it, would it still be worth $100?

Apologies in advance.
posted by jsavimbi at 2:23 AM on March 9, 2005

If anyone wants to see what happens to a group of well-meaning, intelligent, motivated people after too many years of political correctness, just visit Antioch College. A once-proud institution that boasts the likes of Corretta Scott King, Mark Strand, Stephen Jay Gould and John Flansburgh as alumni is now teetering on the edge of bakruptcy, largely because the college has taken political correctness to unprecedented levels of absurdity and contradiction.
posted by eustacescrubb at 2:41 AM on March 9, 2005

Shall we define PC before we go any further down the road of divisive absolutism?

Actually, I'm not sure that we can. It has already been used above to describe both non-discriminatory language and affirmative action programmes. The only thing harder to pin down than the aetiology of PC is the definition of PC...

The short definition, it seems to me, is that if one wishes to do something or say something but does not, the force that prevents one can be identified as "political correctness". One can then extend that to the idea that any belief that is self-evidently "right", but which is for some reason not being espoused by anyone else, is being stifled by the aforementioned political correctness.

Rubin has decided that her political views do not fit with those of her liberal friends, but wishes still to consider herself a liberal. Rather than accept the idea of a heterodox liberal consensus, it is easier and more convenient to assume that the "common-sense" positions she espouses would be accepted by everyone, were it not for the terrfiying, if nebulous, armies of PC. This is not a new or controversial position.
posted by tannhauser at 2:47 AM on March 9, 2005

I think this article is saying that anyone who strongly believes their point of view/politics shouldn't fear or try to censor their opposition. I definitely agree with that.

The short definition, it seems to me, is that if one wishes to do something or say something but does not, the force that prevents one can be identified as "political correctness". One can then extend that to the idea that any belief that is self-evidently "right", but which is for some reason not being espoused by anyone else, is being stifled by the aforementioned political correctness.

tannhauser, I think this is too broad a description. Somebody may have their views stifled for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps a more specific definition (imho, of course!): to me politcal correctness is where you admonish somebody's point of view if it is perceived to criticise designated victim groups, whether the criticism is legitimate or not.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 3:11 AM on March 9, 2005

squirrel: the author is a female , not a male as you guessed. That and the fact she's a psycologist and sociologisty
explains to me her rather prosaic writing style. I think that, because of her field of expertise, she's much more used
to talking then writing. But what makes the article look academic to you ? I ask because I still don't get why prosaic
is often related to academic..I may be wrong, but some bias toward universities and "elites" may be generated by a writing
style that (simply) is no longer appreciated in a world in which we need 48 hours a day.

Here's the "money quote" : We must learn to listen as well, to develop a third ear so that we can hear beneath their rage
to the anguish it's covering up. Only then will we find our way into the hearts and minds of those Americans who have been
seduced and exploited by the radical right into "strangling their own life chances."

I think that's part of a correct approach. Quite simply if you see how the propaganda against "liberal" was built you see that
is pure, unadulterated hate..pretty much _like_ the way it was built against Jews who were considered the source of almost every
problem on earth by the Nazi propaganda and offered as a very convenient object of contempt.

How comes part of the right, who is often pretty quick to blame extremism in left, doesn't blame extremism in right as well or with
at least equal vigor, thus showing enormous hypocrisy ? How comes part of right actually secretely enjoys the propaganda produced by the most vociferous far right while dismissing it as "just crazy talking" yet secretely thinks "that'll teach em lib'ruls ?" Also how comes some people automatically placed themselves in the "lib'rul" side ..not noticing that the word "democratic" and "liberal" are not equal ?

That's part of understanding the psycology behind how a sizable portion of U.S. have been derailed into thinking

1. lib'rul are the scourge of universe !@#
2. being patriotic means you don't question and challenge government EVER
3. that we are in state of war, so no questions are asked in a state of war
4. that there's a perpetual war against terrorism, therefore you should never question the government forever

That's interesting NOT ONLY for americans of any political color, but also to europeans who lives in countries in which media
are highly concentrated in very few hands. MASS media reach million of people and are the best at slowly but steadly influencing
people opinions, preferences and choices...including that of _betting_ their own future.
posted by elpapacito at 3:25 AM on March 9, 2005

"But there's a kind of contempt underlying the passion of Frank's words, a dismissive shrug..." and so forth.

It all pretty much falls into a "well, duh" category for me, but it is good to see people slowly coming to accept the blindingly obvious truth that contempt doesn't play well outside the choir.

In a counterintuitive way, I think the much ballyhooed rise-of-the-blogs and suchlike is going to help the situation--but not by improving discourse (not going to happen as long as it's humans providing it). But mostly by The Right achieving public parity with The Left in the amount of naked contempt in their talk.

It might turn out to be a cure-worse-than-the-disease, though, if enough percentage of the electorate realizes that both sides view them through equal, if differently-shaped, contemptuous lenses.
posted by Drastic at 4:32 AM on March 9, 2005

To be honest, I have thus far only read it very, very quickly and cheated a bit by reading the passage squirrel kindly reproduced.

There is more than an element of truth in this – the American Left seems not to have learned the lessons of Clintonesque triangulation (as admittedly unpleasant as some of those lessons are) and has been intellectually dishonest about many things in an effort to avoid giving offence to anyone (and ammunition to bigots).

PC is a slippery label, more often hurled in abuse than anything else but I think can best be defined as I kind of language designed to avoid any sort of offence to any group, which is also designed to repudiate real and perceived past prejudice. This can end up being linguistically absurd (thus all the ‘vertically challenged’ meaning short jokes). A perverse consequence of this is the often patronising idea that individuals are not in any way responsible for their station and to say otherwise is ‘blaming the victim’ as a converse to the equally perverse idea that they are wholly responsible and to say otherwise is ‘blaming society’.

Problems tend to be multicausal, as should be efforts to address them. I am familiar with William Julius Wilson’s work and the fact that much of it was ignored by ‘progressives’ in America is unfortunate. When Bill Cosby made some similar points in a coarser style he was attacked. Policies and ideas that combine a commitment to equal opportunity and individual responsibility would be an easier sell – and might even make a difference.

The ‘PC’ tendency where commentators seemed to ‘blame society’ for problems deeply offends the common sense and experience of much of the American working class electorate. This is one of the countless mistakes of the Democrats since the 60s – if Joe Sixpack thinks that they are a bunch of tree huggers in league with the Village People and scary women who don’t shave their armpits who want to corrupt his children and let all the bad people out of jail he will run screaming into the hands of theocratic fascists. More often than not, he has.

Some of these points were made in Thomas Frank’s excellent ‘What’s the matter with Kansas?’, though his conclusions seemed to be that (somewhat like the Labour Party in the 1980s – oh dear) playing the same old music louder and switching to populist economic policies would win back this lost constituency, which persists in voting against its interests on the basis of virulent (and futile – this was one of Frank’s best points) opposition to many aspects of social liberalism.

I don’t know what the answer is – but people who did not vote for Kerry are certainly not going to vote for anyone like Howard Dean.
posted by The Salaryman at 4:36 AM on March 9, 2005

It's always seemed to me that being pc in speech is just being polite. It's just calling people what they want to be called. I've always failed to see what's so terrible about that. Now, it can sometime be hard to guess what term people prefer (e.g. native american vs. indian) but if you get it wrong you just excuse yourself and keep talking.

Now, I'll admit there are some idiots who jump on mistakes and get in people's faces about it, but I think it's a mistake to blame the ideology for the idiots. It's a bit like blaming Christ for the Crusades.
posted by Kattullus at 4:39 AM on March 9, 2005

The loss of intellectual credibility of the American left is also a muticausal phenomenon. Fox 'news' combined with the woolly thinking described here plus reactionary tendencies in much of the electorate equals a rout. Its time for something new, before it is too late and everyone is watching Murdochvision in their Hummers on the way to the compulsory prayer meeting. With the AC on 'Max'.
posted by The Salaryman at 4:56 AM on March 9, 2005

It's always seemed to me that being pc in speech is just being polite. It's just calling people what they want to be called.

I think one of the things that has engendered some distaste and bitterness against the PC name game is the changing rules and the rigidity with which they are enforced. It stops looking like politeness after awhile. The average guy may really want to be polite, but then gets criticized for getting it wrong, or worse accused of being prejudiced for getting it wrong.
posted by caddis at 5:03 AM on March 9, 2005

Katullus- I yield to no one in defense of good manners, but the problem is not simply that idiots get in one's face. Most of the anger with PCdom arises from the hay making that it encourages. It's the institutionalized passing out of shoulder chips and the encouraging of people to wear them, rewarding them emotionally, academically, financially for taking offense where none might be on offer. And where, more particularly, those rewards come at the expense of people who thought they were playing by the rules.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:03 AM on March 9, 2005

It's always seemed to me that being pc in speech is just being polite. It's just calling people what they want to be called. I've always failed to see what's so terrible about that.
What is so terrible about it is that, no matter what politically correct term people use to describe someone or a group of someones or whatever, it is almost always simply a case of paying lip service to the concept of treating everyone equitably and has no intrinsic value whatsoever. It matters not a bit what you call someone - it is how you treat them and the respect you pay them that matters. Almost always, political correctness is simply faking that respect.
posted by dg at 5:05 AM on March 9, 2005

PC is a slippery label, more often hurled in abuse than anything else

Now, here's an interesting one. Is it actually ever used as anything other than a term of abuse? I'm not seeing any examples. Have you ever thought to yourself, or heard somebody else say "what a marvellous show of political correctness there. Good work, team!"?

Further, has anyone actually found a proper definition of political correctness, that is one without imho appended to it? Only, we seem to be coming across this:

This can end up being linguistically absurd (thus all the ‘vertically challenged’ meaning short jokes

Now, the "'vertically challenged' meaning short jokes" are jokes, right? That is, they seek to parody political correctness. As such, why are they being used here to exemplify the process of "ending up being linguistically absurd". Is there an example of "ending up being linguistically absurd" that is not taken from a joke made by somebody from the right wing seeking to parody or denigrate a set of political tendencies they group under the umbrella term "political correctness"? Eustacescrubb above declares that Antioch College has been driven to the edge of bankruptcy by political correctness, but without actually explaining what the financial costs of political correctness are, or how they have manifested in Antioch College... the posts after Kattullus' seem to know exactly what political correctness is, at least from its effects, but they aren't telling. Shoulder chips, faked respect... this is all terribly evocative, but not particularly definitive. Could somebody point poor innocent me to a decent reference work not produced by the right wing on political correctness and its discontents?
posted by tannhauser at 5:11 AM on March 9, 2005

It's a bit like blaming Christ for the Crusades.

Why shouldn't you? God's supposed to be omniscient, he knew how it'd end up.
posted by biffa at 5:14 AM on March 9, 2005

biffa: tsk tsk , did you forget about free will ? Even if so-called God is omniscent he's not omni-imposing his will. Indeed he said both Adam and Eve not to eat the goddamned apple, they had the freedom of choice and she decided to get the apple...he ate of the apple too.

So one could blame the Christ for Crusades ? Nawp as they were only made in the name of God Jesus or Whatnot and in violation of Thou shalt not Kill commandment. But I don't read anywhere that Thou shalt not make infidels lifes miserable so that they commit suicide, it's their sin not yours....or maybe I'm missing some important commandment.

Of course then, why did God create a not perfect man who sins if he's perfect and omniscent ? Just to punish him of course for he's a sadic bastard..that kind of person that first hits you then says "eheh, just jokin"
posted by elpapacito at 5:33 AM on March 9, 2005

Most of the anger with PCdom arises from the hay making that it encourages. It's the institutionalized passing out of shoulder chips and the encouraging of people to wear them, rewarding them emotionally, academically, financially for taking offense where none might be on offer. And where, more particularly, those rewards come at the expense of people who thought they were playing by the rules.

Well said IndigoJones.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 6:00 AM on March 9, 2005

It's nice to see that after all these years, there is still no shortage of people ready to blame "political correctness" for the state of the world.

The old anti-PC diatribes have been making the rounds for some 20 years now, usually in response to some moron out in the sticks pushing the political-correctness envelope too far in one isolated but well-publicized instance. Often the matter at hand is absolutely insignificant, but talking heads -- usually on the right -- never fails to make a lot of noise about it.

I see the situation of "political correctness" as very much analogous to that of "no-tolerance" regulations. There are phenomenally stupid examples of "no-tolerance" policies being brainlessly enforced regularly (e.g. student getting suspended from school for taking an aspirin). That being said, no one is blaming the "zero-tolerance" concept in the way that "political correctness" is being blamed. Why is that? It's simply that "zero-tolerance" is a tool of the right, while "political correctness" is associated with the left. And frankly, the left just doesn't even bother trying to defend itself these days -- nor, frankly, has it shown much verve since 1992. I don't know how the left can hope to win contests when it has shown itself repeatedly to be all too content with just lying down and giving up.

Unless the left can wake up and be a little more combative, then it deserves to be in the opposition...
posted by clevershark at 6:08 AM on March 9, 2005

As Milton argued in Paradise Lost:

they themselves decreed
Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault (III, 116-118)

Of course taken to its logical conclusion, it also highlights the absurdity of "praising God" for one's innate "gifts" while accepting shortcomings as own's own fault. It's all part and parcel: either it's all God's fault or it isn't. Foreknowledge and omnipotence can be such a drag when you're creating beings endowed with free will.

As for politics, the problem with the Left is too much vitrol and rhetoric, and too little practical action. Whether you like the Fox/Rush crowd or not, they've done a hell of a better job of translating talk into votes and subsequently turning votes into policies than the Left has. Of course they're much better lubricated money-wise as well and have often acted with stunningly questionable ethics, but hey, you can't deny that they've played a much better game of politics than their opposition has. Each side has earned its place in the political pecking order, and the United States has the government we deserve.
posted by DaShiv at 6:14 AM on March 9, 2005

DaShiv: ouch; but yes. But ouch.
posted by squirrel at 6:35 AM on March 9, 2005

I liked the article. It says a lot of things I've been thinking and trying to say for a while.
posted by jonmc at 6:47 AM on March 9, 2005

The original point of what is now called political correctness, which came out of the feminist and black consciousness movements as well as others, was AS AN ORGANIZING TOOL: that is, that we were supposed to be culturally sensitive so as not to alienate people, and so as to build coalitions and get comfortable enough with each other so we could speak frank realities to each other. This is still an admirable goal.

Eustace Scrubb: Tell me about it. Sad alumna here. :(
posted by By The Grace of God at 7:00 AM on March 9, 2005

What clevershark said -- the "Political Correctness" charge was overblown in the 1980's, in the 90's, and is still today. Compare the openess of progressive blogs to places like Freerepublic. Bill Cosby gets a mixed response from "the left" when he challenges the perceived tenets of "the left." When is the last time you saw someone on "the right" speak out against the party line?

The Dems have the DLC. What is the moderate equivalent for the Republicans?
posted by Cassford at 7:02 AM on March 9, 2005

I gotta agree with clevershark strongly on this one. It seems to me that the whole concept of what is or is not PC is quite nebulous. Is it being polite or is it passively enforced newspeak? All too often I hear the "PC" label used to derisively slough off pertinet points, it's intellectually lazy. As a term itself I don't thin PC means anything more than "liberal idea" today.
posted by ozomatli at 7:06 AM on March 9, 2005

clevershark,
I don't think she's blaming pc for the state of the world, just the state of the left. As thedevildancedlightly illustrated with his two excerpts, PC has made us liars, and we hate and criticize the right for being liars.

I've had a growing concern that we on the left have embraced political correctness as our fundamentalism in the face of the christian right. This essay explores that really well. Having come from a strong christian background, i know that it's all about holding your tongue because of certain rules. That's why i left that community. I couldn't ask important questions or voice important problems because it was AGAINST GOD'S WILL.

Political correctness has made it just has difficult to discuss things with many of my liberal friends and acquaintances. Here in Massachusetts, I could get labeled an asshole in many circles for mentioning that i'm against a lot of affirmative action efforts, or partial-birth abortion, or believe homosexuality is more mental than physical (even tho I think they should be able to marry).

Voicing such opinions would not divide the left further, but open up useful discourse and force us to find solutions, maybe even eventually healing the many unspoken divides between groups on the left (black vs gay, christians vs abortion, blue-collar vs college, parents vs legalization, etc.)

so yeah, [this is pretty damn ok]
posted by es_de_bah at 7:08 AM on March 9, 2005

I'll weigh in enough to say that any racial group has a right to not be called pejorative names like Redskin or Wop. However, I hate euphemism in all its forms, whether conservative, like "catastrophic success" or liberal PC, like "differently-abled," or "handi-capable." These sorts of couching of truths serve to insult the intelligence of the listener and much as assuage the emotions of the subject. Also, the time wasted even thinking about and discussing this claptrap detracts from the limited time we have each day to deal with actual issues of actual substance, like the actual poverty of the "disadvantaged classes."
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:12 AM on March 9, 2005

(and, again to clevershark, I think we all think zero-tolerance rules are bullshit too, and they only really get enforced in schools out in the sticks, usually to much merthful media coverage...)
posted by es_de_bah at 7:13 AM on March 9, 2005

Compare the openess of progressive blogs to places like Freerepublic. Bill Cosby gets a mixed response from "the left" when he challenges the perceived tenets of "the left." When is the last time you saw someone on "the right" speak out against the party line?

I think centering the debate of this peice around neurotic linguistic correctness (aggravating though it may some times be) is to miss it's main point: that the left often seems to veiw much of the populace through a contmptuous lens, as someone said above. The right does, too, but at least their smart enough to hide it.

The other part of the problem is that much of the progressive left in the US seems to take any criticism, even from within, as fascistic attacks or some kind of betrayal, which can be incredibly maddening.

Even though several people have tried to connect the alienation of the working/lower-middle class from the left to the social upheavals of the 60's, it's actually been 60's protest veterans, who have (often privately) articulated the same frustrations I've mentioned above.

I actually think the roots of the rightward swing are in the seventies, when many of the 60's ideals curdled, and the country was emroiled in rising crime, poverty, racial tension, rampant hard drug use, and an economy in the toilet.* First, the country turned to Jimmy Carter, a good man who was just plain unlucky. Then came the hostage crisis, which inflamed even more resentment. And straight into Reagan's arms the country ran.

It's a quick and dirty analysis, but I think there's something to it.

*granted, i was but a wee sprog in those days, but I remember the cultural landscape...Patty Hearst, Jonestown and the like were the earliest news stories I remember.
posted by jonmc at 7:14 AM on March 9, 2005

es_de_bah

Your post almost makes the point exactly. What exactly does PC have to do with any of what you said? PC is a strawman, a ridulous strawman built to enclose any disagreeable action taken by someone on the left.

Embracing PC as fundamentalism? How is that possible if no one can even define it?
posted by ozomatli at 7:19 AM on March 9, 2005

ozomatili, Funtimentalist christianity is just as much a straw man. It has only a passing, selective interest in the bible. Just like the PC models created by intelligensia, "fundimental" christian beliefs are created/restructured with each new current event. think stem-cell research.
straw men still lead.
straw men still burn.
posted by es_de_bah at 7:24 AM on March 9, 2005

IMHO, it's intellectual fashion:

It's trendy among many I know to be cynical about anything vaguely progressive, such as the "PC" issues of language and minority rights, mocking them like they might mock someone who wore an obviously 80's hairdo.

For example, even though they are mostly liberals, the knee-jerk reaction to Lawrence Summers speech at Harvard (you know, the one about women's math & science ability) was to mock Summers' critics for their unrealistic ideals. An extremely well educated woman with a daughter going to one of the world's leading engineering schools argued with me that woman are different and likely naturally less able in math and science. 'We tried equality in the 70s'.

It's intellectual fashion du jour, no different than clothing or technology or other trendiness. It's an attempt to look smart or sophisticated or whatever, just like clothes make you look attractive, or hip or professional or whatever. It's intellectual lifestyle. Unfortunately, while clothing fashion is mostly arbitrary and inconsequential, intellectual fashion trends capriciously determine the fate of billions.
posted by guanxi at 7:26 AM on March 9, 2005

es_de_bah

I don't want to come off as an ass, but I cannot really understand what you are saying.

I agree that dimissively writing someone off as a fundamental christian is stupid a wrong.
But the tenets of fundamental christianity can be defined in a literal reading of the bible.

Who are these intelligensia? Are they like the Illuminati? Give me a PC model, please I just want to know if we are both on the same page as to what PC means.

I have no idea what you mean by stem-cell research or your last two lines,
posted by ozomatli at 7:32 AM on March 9, 2005

As part of my work with Campus Progress we hosted an event at Howard University about the future of the black vote. Both Armstrong Williams and Al Sharpton attended and both discussed their issues and criticisms with not just the current application, but the current interpretations of Affirmative Action. So having listened to two of the most prominent black spokesmen for progressive and conservative issues about one of the most significant issues affecting minorites, that people are saying they feel "hindered by PC" to talk about it makes me wonder what the hell they're talking about.

If people were hindered by "political correctness" even a tenth of the amount of times people actually complain about being hindered by "political correctness," there might actually be a problem with it in society.

Until then, "fighting back" against an arbitrary term that 99.99% of the people alive on this planet only use when talking about how much they dislike it is as solely self-satisfying as statements like "keep it up, and (insert party here) will never win," "I don't own a television," and other pretentious crap from people so bored that they actually need to find things in society to be outraged about.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:44 AM on March 9, 2005

es_de_bah: I think the point is that one can say "this is what fundamentalist Christianity believes. These are books written by fundamentalist Christians about the tenets and beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity. These are ten things Fundamentalist Christianity approves of, and ten things FC disapproves of. " That man may be made of straw, but you'd still know if you drove into it. Nobody has managed that with political correctness so far, and yet it is being treated as if it has already been done. Lots of people want to say what they dislike about it without any clear idea of what it _is_.
posted by tannhauser at 7:50 AM on March 9, 2005

the bible advocates slavery and the stoning of disobedient children, while prohibits eating shellfish and mixing sheep and cattle. jesus makes several anti-war and anti-poverty/pro-welfare statements.
'fundimental' christianity is, if nothing else, selective.

it's a huge stretch to say the Bible prohibits stem-cell research if you're going to argue for the war and the death penalty. It's an example of "fundimental" christian thought that is "fundimentally" socially and politcally constructed to create a public outcry...a strawbaby for the strawman...

"intelligensia" (silly word, choice, sorry) - n. them-there high-falutin college-educated writers, teacehrs, and scholars that make up the liberal media and education system...they, collectively, create and reinforce what is considered "acceptable" to say in public...or what is politically correct.
posted by es_de_bah at 7:52 AM on March 9, 2005

The main effect that political correctness has had is to make people decide to censor themselves instead of being honest about their beliefs. Who enforces it? Ourselves.

So while it's easy to blame everything on some obscure concept, one must remember that any "silencing" being done here is self-administered. Will embracing certain viewpoints make you unpopular? Sure. So what?

Do you think John Kerry got beaten because he stood up and said "Yes, I'm a liberal"? Hell no. He got beaten precisely because he did everything he could not to own up to that label (ostensibly because his pollsters felt it would be "unpopular"). Faced with a choice between someone with strong views and someone with apparently no views, the choice seems a no-brainer.
posted by clevershark at 8:02 AM on March 9, 2005

es de bah: it's "fundamental." If you're going to overuse the word, please spell it correctly. Otherwise, I'll fire a nucular missile at you.
posted by jonmc at 8:04 AM on March 9, 2005

es_de_bah: You still haven't defined it. Are you suggesting that there is a guidebook or pamphlet published by the intelligentsia every year telling us what is and is not politically correct, of the type one often finds produced by various fundamentalist Christians? Could you point me towards a copy?
posted by tannhauser at 8:06 AM on March 9, 2005

Are you suggesting that there is a guidebook or pamphlet published by the intelligentsia every year telling us what is and is not politically correct,

Well, the equivalents would be the Village Voice, or any of the free alt.weeklies, which do offer pre-chewed opinions of what's currently OK to believe and what will place you outside the clubhouse.

Like, I said, the right does this, too. But the frustrating thing is that the left dosen't like to admit it.
posted by jonmc at 8:09 AM on March 9, 2005

Rubin is a very interesting person to be making this critique, since so much of her very noteworthy work has been an examination of the kinds of marginal cultures that have often been overlooked. What's interesting about this discussion is that, like all of the critique of PC from the right, it virtually ignores the reasons that PC was and is a necessary construction. It may be unfortunate, and PC may have outlived some of its usefulness, but it was always about including in discussion excluded groups. Racism and sexism are far too frequently simply ignored if discussion of them is not mandated (if only by intellectual fashion).

The right reaction against PC was successful precisely because of the fear and anxiety of the people (mostly white men, mostly working and middle class) who were most threatened (in material ways) by the inclusion of the formerly excluded groups. Rubin indicates this at the beginning of her essay.

Something interesting that Rubin does not address, but that comes up a couple of times here, is a reaction against PC thinking that extends beyond the traditionally dismissive right to young well-educated people on the left. I saw it myself at grad school all the time, people who said that they cared about racism/sexism/classism, but were unwilling to talk about it, and certainly did not want to discuss their own privilege in regard to these categories.

Squirrel provides a fine example when he writes 'grad school was nevertheless unnecessarily rife with obstacles designed to hinder me on the basis of my color, class and etc," as if those obstacles had anything to do with the kinds of material barriers that people in oppressed minorities have to face. I'm not trying to pick on Squirrel, quite the opposite. I'm suggesting that somewhere along the line PC began to alienate the very people who had fought for the inclusion of PC topics on the agenda. It devolved into something primarily about language, so that otherwise well-meaning people could seriously compare the indignity of being accused of being an oppressor in class with the indignity of being denied a house because of being Black. This, then, becomes part of the problem that Rubin is discussing, where national conversations become about style rather than substance. What matters is what we're calling African Americans these days, instead of where all the jobs have gone. Every time the left falls for that trap, or rather brings it on itself, we lose another voter.
posted by OmieWise at 8:22 AM on March 9, 2005

HEY! I'm a psychologist, and I am offended at the premise that we are so used to talking that we can't write. I am also offended at the notions that we want to hug people at random, ask how you feel about that, and wear ugly clothes. In fact, I'm offended at every single stereotype there is of shrinks. I am not German. I do not have a couch in my office. Well, I do, but I don't tell my patients to lie down on it. I do not smoke cigars. I am not a dork with poor social skills. I demand that psychologists be painted in a better light! BY GOD, I WANT SOME PC ACTION DIRECTED MY WAY!
/sarcasm
posted by ScaryShrink at 8:31 AM on March 9, 2005

Shrinks are too damned sarcastic.
posted by jonmc at 8:33 AM on March 9, 2005

the left often seems to view much of the populace through a contemptuous lens, as someone said above. The right does, too, but at least their smart enough to hide it.

I just re-skimmed it, and she does make this point in her reaction to Frank's book. But it seemed like a minor part of it. She seemed to mainly be saying that "the left" is telling the truth on the issues, but that the truth is unpalatable to wide swaths of America because of the way in which the left speaks and the way the left polices debate.

"The left" and "the Democrats" are two different entities. Perhaps what she says is true of the far-left, but it sure isn't true of the Democrats. Can you think of any well-known Democrat other than Kucinich who uses anything approaching the PC language ascribed?

As for contempt -- how contemptuous is her conclusion that the poor sheep have been "seduced and exploited" by the radical right?

I think the so-called faith gap is a much better explanation of what is going on in American politics. We are living in an era of renewed religiosity and the Republicans and the right are more associated with religious faith than the left and the Democrats.
posted by Cassford at 8:36 AM on March 9, 2005

No shit Lillian.

The progressive left is, well, whiney. (And the right is smugly self-satisfied.)

When the left didn't fell as threated by the right as today, the left squandered resources on basically trying to legislate a right not to be offended. That this stifled the very diversity the left claimed it treasured, and trampled on free speech, and in some cases impoverished or imprisoned people of goodwill, the left didn't much care about.

I'm thinking specifically of university speech codes here, but I'm also thinking of Ake Green, and the anti-gay Christian protesters facing 47 years in prison for saying painfully rude things at a Gay Pride Day. As to the impoverishment or imprisonment, look at the enforcement of environmental regulations, and specifically the people prosecuted for "destroying wetlands" and imprisoned for importing the wrong kind of fish.

Indeed, we can see examples here: look at the prickly, almost "I'm waiting to be offended by you insensitive blockheads" attitude in the recent post about the transgenes 4th grader. Note the offense taken to a post headline, not for anything offensive, but because the post doesn't fall all over itself declaring that transsexuality is just great!, and the implication that America is backward compared to Sweden. The same poster, a little later, explains that even if you don't know it you're slurring people (akin to the black left claiming that all whites, whether consciously or not, are racists), and that transsexuals are such special people, then have emotions you're too (it's implied) stupid to understand.

I myself strongly support gay rights and gay marriage and I lived in a gay neighborhood for 11 years. I've gone to gay rugby games and gays bars with gay friends. But one day at a coffeehouse, a girl asks me which bathroom is the women's, and I tell her, that each one is used by either sex -- and that it being in the gay area of town, anything goes. I'm promptly upbraided by an offended homo who overhears this, who tells me! this is our! part of town now! and you'd better not! talk that way! What the fuck? I'm working to secure your right to live unharrassed, and you harass me for making an offhand joke you don't like? What happened to my rights?

That's a question a lot of moderates and conservatives are asking. And no wonder. Affirmative Action is discrimination, pure and simple, the justification being that harming whites today makes up for harming blacks for three hundred years. Ok, but no one on the Left will admit that it's discrimination. Instead you hear a lots of high-minded talk about "diversity", but no one is fooled -- except possibly the Left, which thinks this doesn't create enormous resentment. That's not right, homosexual who

And the Clinton years showed that the ideological left would whore itself out to DLC Democrats: in 1993 when Bob Packwood was accused of sexually harassing women, NOW gave him hell. And indeed, that link is Google's first link on the former Republican senator.

But when Bill Clinton was accused of sexually harassing a state employee while governor, and of using his state police security detail to procure women, NOW gritted is teeth, stared at the ceiling and thought of England Roe v. Wade.

Why did Gore lose in 2000? Because the serious lefties were disgusted by the DLC, and the moderate voters were disgusted by a eight years of a President who seemed to have as his priorities: 1) getting away with shit 2) getting some 3) himself 4) the DLC 5) the Democratic Party, and, at some distance down the list, America.

Let me be very clear: I wasn't a Gore supporter in 2000. I was secretly relieved when Bush won. It wasn't until Ashcroft and Guantanamo that I began to take notice.

And much of that was because the left had become a parody of itself, attacking earnestly not questions of social justice or civil rights or civil liberties, but instead questions like the pronouns to use so as not to offend bi-sexual neo-pagan lesbian transsexuals, while the Democrat Party had become a patronage and power machine that gave us a legion of bright but essentially amoral power-seekers, a negative image of the bright but amoral power-seekers in the corporate world.

For years, the left has become increasingly irrelevant by essentially telling the common man he's an offensive ignorant dumbass, and he should prostrate himself before the temple of The Left to atone for his sins and learn a new Catechism of gender-neutrality, non-binary sexuality, and disgust at his own whiteness and maleness.
And some of these causes by the Left are rooted in real issues -- but all too often those real issues are used as a way to extort or emotionally blackmail or to get the upper hand in an argument: "you offended me, so I win! Now give me my reparations!".
posted by orthogonality at 8:38 AM on March 9, 2005

I have a theory that "political correctness" is a combination of words that have no definition, and are only said because they make a sound.
posted by mcsweetie at 8:41 AM on March 9, 2005

And much of that was because the left had become a parody of itself, attacking earnestly not questions of social justice or civil rights or civil liberties, but instead questions like the pronouns to use so as not to offend bi-sexual neo-pagan lesbian transsexuals, while the Democrat Party had become a patronage and power machine that gave us a legion of bright but essentially amoral power-seekers,

What do you mean "become," dude? 'twas always thus.
posted by jonmc at 8:48 AM on March 9, 2005

Nice rant Ortho. Do you think your brush is wide and conservative enough, or is there some way you could fit more (perceived) evils of the Left into a future post?
posted by OmieWise at 8:49 AM on March 9, 2005

My $.02 builds on this:
to me politcal correctness is where you admonish somebody's point of view if it is perceived to criticise designated victim groups, whether the criticism is legitimate or not.

To me, politcal correctness is where you admonish somebody's point of view or terminology if it could, under any circumstance, be perceived by anyone (no matter how uptight) to criticise designated victim groups, whether the criticism is legitimate or not.

Or, to put it more simply - dogmatically placing a higher value on protecting the self-esteem of members of certain groups than is placed on objectively seeking the truth.
posted by bashos_frog at 8:51 AM on March 9, 2005

OmieWise: thanks for proving the point I was trying to make in this comment's second (non-italicized) paragraph. Question a few factoids and all of a sudden he's Karl Rove. I've heard that routine so often, and it's getting really old.
posted by jonmc at 8:54 AM on March 9, 2005

PC started from a great place of course: elimination of the n-word and all that implies from common discourse.

Now decades later, like a lot of things it's been taken to absurdist extremes. It's come to mean: intellectualism, academia, and thought control emphasizing group concerns over individual responsibility and theoretical nonsense over common sense.

Is it the enemy within? Extremism is the enemy within both the left and right and the country overall.

Democratic party: get a clue. Move away from some of your more lefty policies and toward the center and you can run the world.

Republican party: get a clue. You won by a narrow margin and are vulnerable, trying to take the country hard right will be a mistake, pull back toward the center.
posted by scheptech at 8:57 AM on March 9, 2005

Good Lord, orthogonality, that is some screed. Good stuff, though.
posted by caddis at 9:01 AM on March 9, 2005

jonmc-Come on. I never called him Karl Rove, I did respond to the tone of his post, which equated PC with everything from environmentalism to political imprisonment. If my comment proved your point, perhaps you need a thicker skin.
posted by OmieWise at 9:04 AM on March 9, 2005

That's a question a lot of moderates and conservatives are asking. And no wonder. Affirmative Action is discrimination, pure and simple, the justification being that harming whites today makes up for harming blacks for three hundred years. Ok, but no one on the Left will admit that it's discrimination.

Thankfully, it's because no one like you will admit they have no fucking clue what Affirmative Action actually is, and instead rely on such statements as "it's racist" and -hey!- it's "PC run amok" -welcome to the great 99.99%!- to justify hating it. Seriously- have you read a single document on AA? Studied a single policy? Or in the middle of your declaration that "the left" just calls everyone stupid and ignorant, you just decided to say what you heard repeatedly on some cable talk show?

Please see previous post about the boring, droning sound that emits from statements about how the left needs to be nicer to everyone. Meanwhile, The Right spends its days talking about how places with a race track are the only "real" states in the country. When you start bitching about how pathetic people who call it "the Left Coast" are, wake me.

And by the way, thanks for hating the overall concept of respecting other people's values because- as it always seems to be in tantrums like that- you had a bad personal experience with someone one time.

As far as "extreme lefty policies" goes for the Democrats- could I PLEASE have a fucking example for once? What's "extreme left" in the Democratic Party? The minimum wage? Labor unions? Our pro-life Senate Leader? The midget from Ohio who didn't win a single primary? I love how people act as though Howard Dean, a moderate who hasn't even DONE anything yet- symbolizes the liberalism of the Democrats- it's a perfect metaphor for people's hatred of "political correctness" based on hypothetical situations and nothing more.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:06 AM on March 9, 2005

OmieWise writes " Nice rant Ortho. Do you think your brush is wide and conservative enough, or is there some way you could fit more (perceived) evils of the Left into a future post?"

Fuck, boy, I'm no conservative.

I spent a month in Ohio volunteering for Kerry. My first FPP post here was deleted after being attacked by conservative posters as a rehash of "shrill anti-war groupthink mentality", and my second FPP detailed world-wide condemnation of American hypocrisy on human rights in the light of Abu Ghraib, comparing American tolerance of torture to the average German's complicity in Nazi crimes against humanity.

But I'm also not going to put my fingers in my ears and pretend that the Left does not wrong.

So now that you've taken the time to dismiss my arguments with ad hominem criticism, maybe you'll have time to go back and actually address the issues that I raised?
posted by orthogonality at 9:08 AM on March 9, 2005

Just wanted to pop in with a: good comments, orthogonality.
posted by sonofsamiam at 9:15 AM on March 9, 2005

jonmc-Come on. I never called him Karl Rove,

I used hyperbole to make a point. But the point remains, to a lot of self-styled leftists (especailly young ones, who someone once described as practicing "infantile leftism."), to question or disagree with anything they say, is to be branded a neo-con, or if their feeling particulary jaunty, a fascist. I've seen it here, and IRL over and over, and it alienates tons of people who would otherwise be on your side.

Meanwhile, The Right spends its days talking about how places with a race track are the only "real" states in the country.

Like New York and Vermont?

The constant euating of "uncool" tastes (like NASCAR, heavy metal, country music, etc) and bad politics needs to stop, too. I thought the left was supposed to anti-snobbishness.
posted by jonmc at 9:15 AM on March 9, 2005

Unthinking conservatives --> closed minds that quote the Bible without analysis

Unthinking liberals --> closed minds that defer to some PC "we don't talk about that" censorship

I don't think this is a left issue, or a right issue. It's simply that most people (or at least most Americans; I don't know about other countries) would rather just check a box saying "I'm a conservative, so I like guns, hate abortion, and support abstinence education" or "I'm a liberal, so I support affirmative action, abortion rights, and gay marriage" rather than thinking through the individual issues. "Not thinking" isn't confined to one side or the other, and all these anti-PC rants seem to me to be the Right's equivalent of the Left's anti-Bible-thumpers rants.

What I do agree with, though, is the idea that sticking to some PC script can diminish the very conversations political correctness was supposed to allow us to have. But to some extent I wonder if that's just part of the proces -- I look at the gay marriage push, and I know that many many many gay rights activists are stridently *against* marriage, that there's a huge debate within the community about whether gays should be pursuing some hetero ideal, and yet that debate has been stifled in order to achieve some greater goals for the group as a whole. It seems like a "Quash debate now, get rights, open up debate again when it's not going to damage our cause" tactic, and I think it's going to be effective.

And truthfully, it's a tactic I wish women's rights groups would adopt.
posted by occhiblu at 9:16 AM on March 9, 2005

have no . . . clue what Affirmative Action actually is, and instead rely on such statements as "it's racist"

I do not believe he said it was racist. That was your term. If you do have a clue, f***ing or otherwise, then please enlighten us as to what you believe Affirmative Action actually is.
posted by caddis at 9:17 AM on March 9, 2005

Like New York and Vermont?

Heh. I remember when Bush visited those tracks, just like the ones in... oh. Oh, wait.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:20 AM on March 9, 2005

So... still lots of "to me, political correctness is...", covering a variety of areas. Let's look at:

but instead questions like the pronouns to use so as not to offend bi-sexual neo-pagan lesbian transsexuals

Has orthogonality ever been party to such a discussion? I would hazard a guess that no, orthogonality has not. That is, once again a parodic representation is being represented as a historical fact. It's interesting.

The closest we have come so far to a publication offering any sort of codified definition of what political correctness might stand for as an ideology has been "the Village Voice and other alt.weeklies". Regrettably, as a resident of Briton I don't have easy access to those, so could somebody tell me the contents of the articles on what is politically correct this month that they contain?
posted by tannhauser at 9:20 AM on March 9, 2005

PC in a nutshell:
the left squandered resources on basically trying to legislate a right not to be offended

I too thought it was good comment, although I don't necessarily agree with it 100%.
posted by bashos_frog at 9:21 AM on March 9, 2005

Like, I said, the right does this, too. But the frustrating thing is that the left dosen't like to admit it.
posted by jonmc at 11:09 AM EST on March 9

Uhh... that's doesn't like to admit it. Just want to be fair since you did the same to a person above.

And on the comment itself, that's what we have you and Joe Liebermann and O'Reilly on the left for jonmc! And a grand public service it is too always admitting the faults of your leftist brethren. Keeps the left honest. Too bad the righties don't have such apologists, huh?

Some would argue it's better to just flat out lie and deny one's faults rather than prevaricate. Others would say a person shouldn't confuse absolutism with correctness or open-mindness with intellectual dishonesty.
posted by nofundy at 9:21 AM on March 9, 2005

And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't a couple of prominent NASCAR drivers Dems? Wallace, maybe?
posted by jonmc at 9:22 AM on March 9, 2005

You mean this Wallace?
posted by aaronetc at 9:26 AM on March 9, 2005

Like what, Ortho?

The talk about Ake Green, a man convicted in Sweden of hate speech, who then had his conviction overturned?

The unsupported trolling about Affirmative Action being racist? (Please see XQUZYPHYR's comment).

The equating of environmental regulations with rampant disregard for the public good (despite the fact that they protect the public good)? I particularly liked the part where you cast aspersions on environmental laws with scare quotes around the phrase "destroying wetlands," as if wetlands are not actually destroyed.

There was no ad hominem attack in my response, I responded to the tone of your supposed critique. I'm not sure if you're liberal or conservative, although I know you were glad that Bush defeated Gore, but I know that your comment tries too hard to dismiss too many liberal concerns as if they were all bad and all arose from the same base. There are some good points of discussion, particularly those about how to situate and think about Clinton and the DLC and its relation to the Left.

On preview-caddis, when the discrimination is about race then it is racism. Ortho identifies his concerns with AA as about race.
posted by OmieWise at 9:27 AM on March 9, 2005

Many tense problems, and I don't mean problems with tension, in my comment. Please excused them. Thanks in advance.
posted by OmieWise at 9:28 AM on March 9, 2005

You mean this Wallace?

Guess it was somebody else. Jeff Gordon?
posted by jonmc at 9:30 AM on March 9, 2005

for tannhauser:

Differently-abled: This term was coined by the US Democratic National Committee in the early 1980s as a more acceptable term than handicapped

I could look up the etymology of other terms, but if the DNC is spending even 5 minutes thinking up phrases like this, it is wasting time that could be better spent protecting our rights instead of our feelings.
posted by bashos_frog at 9:30 AM on March 9, 2005

PC started out as things the left didn't talk about. Over time it evolved into a way of thinking that prevented the left from discourse about issues that needed addressing.

Now it has morphed into an effect that prevents the left from even thinking about certain topics. In a sense, it is the fundamentalism of the left and it is alienating most of the New Deal electoral base that gave the Democratic Party a real voice on the national political scene.

The corporate conservatives recognized it for what it is and used it to steal the middle class, conventional voters and subvert their new found allegiance to serve the economic interests of the wealthy elite. Witness the new Bankruptcy Act that is on the verge of final passage by the House.

The discourse needs to start now, not when our troops start moving on Iran.
posted by mygoditsbob at 9:43 AM on March 9, 2005

That is part of the problem Omiewise, when you fail to recognize a distinction between racial discrimination and racism. Such attitudes works to stifle debate, especially given what a loaded word racism is in our society. What you are essentially saying, whether you meant to or not, is that to question affirmative action is to be racist. No one wants to be labelled a racist, end of debate. Then you wonder why so many in the middle get fed up with the left?
posted by caddis at 9:44 AM on March 9, 2005

Affirmative Action is discrimination, pure and simple, the justification being that harming whites today makes up for harming blacks for three hundred years.

You are talking about reparations, not Affirmative Action. I don't want to derail the thread, but you are mistaking a "Welcome" sign for a "Keep Out" banner.

The Clinton and Packwood cases were very different. Packwood was accused of sexual harassment by 29 women who worked with him before NOW issued a press release. As far as I know, none of those women was being pushed to make their allegations by a political group. On the other hand, one of Paula Jones' attorneys was Ann Coulter and the intent, stated by Coulter later, was to "bring down the president."

Basically, the right has been very good at doing what ortho is doing in this post -- conflating. Medical malpractice lawsuits are the same as the woman with the hot coffee in her lap. Affirmative Action is the same as racial discrimination. Packwood is Clinton.

As for your experience with the touchy gay person, haven't you ever been told off by a touchy "patriotic" person? I've received it from both ends of the spectrum. The left hasn't cornered the market on crankiness.
posted by Cassford at 9:47 AM on March 9, 2005

Guess it was somebody else. Jeff Gordon?

And you're just straining further from the point, which is that despite its application to Blue States, Team Bush only related to NASCAR as a Red-state culture, and thusly only campaigned at NASCAR events in Red States to solidify that stereotype. In the midst of the complaints about "the Left" stereotyping people, the Right is the side that desperately wants to take cultural conventions that are becoming universal, claim them as their own by calling them "Real America" and villifying Democrats for being against it. Clearly I had no idea what states NASCAR has tracks in, but I knew what states the teevee said they were in- to claim that they're in states that were blatantly ignored by a campaign desperate to imply they don't exist there to begin with is a cop-out. We know damn well that "NASCAR dad" didn't mean Vermont.

But that's sort of the point that stems to the whole hypocrisy of this argument. There are tons of conservatives in East and West Coast states, just as there are tons of Progressive NASCAR fans (and, apparently, drivers). Progressives want openness and diversity in culture, and suggest fairness that the Right has bastardized into the non-existent concept of "PC" to destroy that request for mutual respect.

The only side demanding that there are borders within culture, and then declaring a "culture war" based on those values, are conservatives.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:47 AM on March 9, 2005

Squirrel: 'grad school was nevertheless unnecessarily rife with obstacles designed to hinder me on the basis of my color, class and etc,

Republicans see opportunities, Democrats see obstacles. I'm not suggesting either is right (look..I'm being politically correct) but it's a trend of thought in the parties for sure. I find it resonates right within this thread...ofcourse ParisParamus has yet to chime in.

I guess what is so troublesome about the whole PC issue is the larger picture of how it detracts from reality. We've reached a point where every black is now an African American regardless of their country of origin. So what about the white Africans in this country? You'd almost feel completely stupid to call one an African American.

There are no rules to PC, just 'feel good' tendencies. There is no substance to it, just 'good intentions'. When African Americans decide they are now offended by being called just that, we will all bend and willow as we learn the newest buzz word to appease them (I'm speaking of the white African Americans of course - they are so damned annoying).

Politicians have used PC to devalue their parties into a vast black holes of idealism (or should it be African American holes - hmm...now that's not too offensive). A republican today is almost a 180° turn from only 20 years ago. But via PC their faithful still see them as the party of small government, and small business. Smoke and mirrors politics.

And XQUZYPHYR

"So having listened to two of the most prominent black spokesmen for progressive and conservative issues..ack, ack, ack." Al 'they get the trickle...and we get the down' Sharpton and Armstrong 'show me the money' Williams - two of the most prominent black spokesmen?

Wow, how fucking sad to hear you say that. Al Sharpton and Williams represent everything that sucks about their respective parties.
posted by j.p. Hung at 9:48 AM on March 9, 2005

Or, to put it more simply - [definition of PC] - dogmatically placing a higher value on protecting the self-esteem of members of certain groups than is placed on objectively seeking the truth.

I would second that one bashos_frog.

The main effect that political correctness has had is to make people decide to censor themselves instead of being honest about their beliefs. Who enforces it? Ourselves.

I disagree clevershark. Political correctness is far more insidious and ubiquitous than simply editing our own words. (The following is about my experiences in the UK):-

- It's in the policies of local council. A school band wasn't allowed to play "When I'm 64" by the Beatles because there was one pupil in the audience who was a Jehavoah's Witness and they don't celebrate birthdays (so I guess the thinking was that the person would be offended by the song). School kids as young as 3 celebrate Chinese New Year (all kids in the nursery) but Hot Cross buns are banned because they promote Christianity. These are all just random examples.

- Affirmative action - gender and race quotas for university placements and job placements (official policy for many local councils)

Political correctness isn't just restricted to language - it's also part of decision making and government policy.
posted by FieldingGoodney at 9:59 AM on March 9, 2005

I didn't say they were the best, j.p. But they're certainly among the most prominent. Can you name others with more influence right now?
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 9:59 AM on March 9, 2005

That is part of the problem Omiewise, when you fail to recognize a distinction between racial discrimination and racism. ... No one wants to be labelled a racist, end of debate.

Caddis-Respectfully, I think you are misreading. No one is calling Ortho a racist, nor has anyone suggested that questioning AA is racist. Both XQUZYPHYR and I have pointed out that Ortho said that Affirmative Action is racist, because it was discrimination based on race. No one is attempting to stifle debate on this point. Please reread the posts if you doubt me.

Ortho's comment was unfortunate not because it was racist, but because the consensus that he claims against AA does not exist. If everyone was so sure it was discrimination, not only would it not be a topic of conversation, it would not be a topic of court cases and legislation. In addition, Ortho's insistance that it is a liberal issue fails to account for AA's expansion during Nixon's presidency, and George Bush Senior's signing of the 1991 Civil Rights Bill which included explicit support for affirmative action.

However, I am not sure what difference there is between racism and racial discrimination? My understanding of racism has always been that it is prejudice coupled with the power to discriminate. Perhaps you mean that there is a difference between prejudice and racial discrimination/racism?
posted by OmieWise at 10:00 AM on March 9, 2005

So if the consensus is that polical correctness is bad, is the opposite good? Can anyone define the opposite of PC?
posted by ozomatli at 10:11 AM on March 9, 2005

XQUZYPHYR writes "Thankfully, it's because no one like you will admit they have no fucking clue what Affirmative Action actually is, and instead rely on such statements as 'it's racist' and -hey!- it's 'PC run amok' -welcome to the great 99.99%!- to justify hating it. Seriously- have you read a single document on AA? Studied a single policy? Or in the middle of your declaration that 'the left' just calls everyone stupid and ignorant, you just decided to say what you heard repeatedly on some cable talk show?"

First, when you have a policy that allows once race easier access to certain benefits (jobs, acceptance to college) than another race has, that's by definition, discrimination. And "discrimination" was the word I used, not "racist".

I choose that word carefully, and I purposely didn't go into my personal feelings about Affirmative Action in my previous post, because I didn't want to digress.

I also said that "the left has become increasingly irrelevant by essentially telling the common man he's an offensive ignorant dumbass". I thank you for proving my point by telling me I "have no fucking clue". You go on to ask if I'm merely parroting what I "repeatedly on some cable talk show?" And write (emphasis mine)

Please see previous post about the boring, droning sound that emits from statements about how the left needs to be nicer to everyone. Meanwhile, The Right spends its days talking about how places with a race track are the only "real" states in the country. When you start bitching about how pathetic people who call it "the Left Coast" are, wake me.

And by the way, thanks for hating the overall concept of respecting other people's values because- as it always seems to be in tantrums like that- you had a bad personal experience with someone one time....

Now let me tell you a little story, oh Hero of The Left. As I mentioned, I spent a month in Ohio, pulling 18 hour days at the state Kerry headquarters. Another fellow (I think he was paid staff, not a volunteer like me, but, whatever) named Terry was in charge of distributing "chum" -- campaign promotional materials -- and it being a democratic campaign, that meant Terry did a bunch of back-breaking work hauling boxes to and from trucks, hour ater hour, day after day.

I got off on the wrong foot with Terry, probably because he was usually pretty tired an frazzled by his workload, so I was rather touched when on November third, when we were all miserable having lost, Terry told me, "you're not a real friendly guy, but you're the hardest working guy I've ever seen." This was touching, because Terry had worked far harder than I -- I'd just spent long hours behind a computer; he'd actually been hauling heavy shit, and his hours had been nearly as long as mine.

That same day, Terry, a thirty-something blue-collar black guy with I think a union background, told me what thought we, the Democratic party needed to do to win the next Presidential election: dump Affirmative Action, and abortion rights.

I hope Terry was wrong about that, because I don't want to be in that Democratic Party.

Now I know Terry doesn't have your college education and your exquisite sensitivity to what's offensive, or your ability to tell people they don't have a fucking clue. Terry doesn't know from The Left, he's no capital-I "Intellectual", "all" he knows is what it's like to be a lower-middle-class working (and not behind a desk at a non-profit, but the kind of work that gives you calluses) Democrat in a swing state, trying to make a life for himself and his kids as health care costs go up and union jobs disappear overseas.

But Terry may, unfortunately, be right. If "heros" like you continue to treat criticism of the Left like the Soviets treated "deviationists", continue to tel everyone who disagrees with you that they're ignorant and stupid, and continue arguing for PC frivolities rather than real issues that affect real people -- that is, people who aren't in grad school getting an MLA -- well, you may alienate enough voters that the only way for the Party to win would-be to follow Terry's advice.

Oh, by the way: when Terry and I were putting in our 18 hour days with no weekends off in Ohio, working to defeat Bush -- what were you doing? Posting to MetaFilter?
posted by orthogonality at 10:17 AM on March 9, 2005

And you're just straining further from the point, which is that despite its application to Blue States, Team Bush only related to NASCAR as a Red-state culture, and thusly only campaigned at NASCAR events in Red States to solidify that stereotype.

I'm not straining anything, I was trying to remember. Absolutely true, the Bush team pushes the NASCAR Dad stereotype to court Middle America, but there's no reason we on the left have to buy into it, as we do when some of us use "NASCAR," as shorthand for "ignorant hick." When we do that we merely reinforce stereotypes and alienate people.

That's my point, which can stand right alongside yours. I'm not denying that the right is at fault in a lot of this, but that dosen't recuse us from examining our own part in things.

The only side demanding that there are borders within culture, and then declaring a "culture war" based on those values, are conservatives.

They may have started it, but we go for it hook, line and sinker. Look at all the red vs. blue, metro vs. retro BS that's been flailed around here and elsewehere over the past couple years. A lot of people on both sides of the ideological fence would have you belive that the country is strictly divided into the glib stereotypes of born-again Everybody Loves Raymond-watching, NASCAR watching Toby Keith listening conservatives on one side and chardonnay-sipping, k.d. lang-listening, NPR-loving vegans in volkswagens on the other, when any examination of the body politic that goes beyond superficialities would reveal a far more complex picture.
posted by jonmc at 10:22 AM on March 9, 2005

Are we at the point now where calling someone "college educated" or an "Intellectual" is an insult?

theoretical nonsense over common sense.



Holy cow, this phrase irritates me to no end. It is devoid of content at best and blatently false at worse. Common sense is always triumphed by theory, thats what a theory is. Common sense is something your gut tells you, knowledge without empirical evidence. A theory is based on empirical evidence.

posted by ozomatli at 10:28 AM on March 9, 2005

I thought I'd suggest that folks take a look at this Spiked Online essay about the problems with (essentiall) PC and its role in opening the door for Creationism in our schools. I just posted it to the front page, but I think that it's an object lesson of some of the things we've been talking about here, and a very interesting take on the evolution vs. creationism grudge match.
posted by OmieWise at 10:28 AM on March 9, 2005

Ortho-

First, when you have a policy that allows once race easier access to certain benefits (jobs, acceptance to college) than another race has, that's by definition, discrimination.

This may or may not be the case, but it is not an adequate or sufficient description of Affirmative Action. Part of the trouble I had with your tone in the first post, repeated in this latest one, is that your unsupported opinions, which seem very conservative to this reader, fail to account for the reality of things like AA. That makes them seem very much like (unconsidered) GOP boilerplate. Your invocation of the hardworking, and Black, Terry, does nothing to bolster the opinions you hold. It seems like you're making a "Some of my best friends are Black" argument for why your position is the right one. You also did that with the "I lived in a gay neighborhood" comment, and it failed to advance your argument there as well.

If you're interested in the very complex philosophical and legal history of AA, check out the Stanford Encyclo of Philosophy article here.

If you would like a quick and dirty set of responses to the kind of gut-level objections you seem to have to AA, see this article on The Ten Myths of AA here.

I'm not, by the way, suggesting that either of those links means that AA is ok, or good public policy, or not evil; but I do think that any of the points raised in them can be debated in a way which your attenuated opinion just can't.
(I'm also not suggesting that you don't have legitimate arguments against AA up your sleeve, but if you do, you have not shown them yet.)
posted by OmieWise at 10:39 AM on March 9, 2005

It's funny how serious this PC issue has become recently, because I remember the term being used (among lefties in the sixties) precisely as a self-deprecating humorous term making fun of our tendency to be too linguisticually polite (crippled: bad; handicapped: OK; differently-abled: PC, hence, ridiculous).

We also made fun of the fact that we were supposed to think of, say, lesbian Native Americans as being superior to us white guys. We knew it was silly at the time. So how did it become so serious and such a liablity to the left.

Lillian Rubin's article was more about the left's inability to be honest about things in general when speaking to others (when we actually speak to them!).
posted by kozad at 10:39 AM on March 9, 2005

Rubin's anecdote about her book was great -- that it wasn't about actually calling people what they call themselves and representing their viewpoints, but about calling people what the left intelligentsia imagined to be most proper, and ascribing them the viewpoint that the left intelligentsia.

I've done plenty of pro bono work in low income communities and I'd say that 90% of the people I've met or worked with from those communities are right-wing Republicans at heart. Derision for alternative family structures, contempt for welfare recipients, loathing of taxes, certainty that the government can't solve social problems, and absolute conviction that crime is the result of personal weakness and immorality and not the result of discrimination or inequality.
posted by MattD at 10:43 AM on March 9, 2005

Derision for alternative family structures, contempt for welfare recipients, loathing of taxes, certainty that the government can't solve social problems, and absolute conviction that crime is the result of personal weakness and immorality and not the result of discrimination or inequality.
Derision for gay couples?
Contempt for people on welfare?
Absolute certainty that ALL crime is a result of weak people?

Is that a conservative stance? Or just an angry one?
posted by ozomatli at 10:51 AM on March 9, 2005

Derision for alternative family structures, contempt for welfare recipients, loathing of taxes, certainty that the government can't solve social problems, and absolute conviction that crime is the result of personal weakness and immorality and not the result of discrimination or inequality.

Aside from the first item, what makes you so sure those are "right-wing Republican positions." Most people of all political stripes that I know don't like taxes much, or at the very least wish someone else (the rich, the poor, corporations, whoever) would pay more instead of them, and most liberals I know have no great love of criminals, they just disagree with conservatives on what's truly "criminal," and realize that nothing happens in a vacuum. Same goes for the government solving social problems. Anyone with a lick of sense realizes that many root causes of social pathologies (dysfunctional families, family violence, addiction, etc) are more psychological than political in nature, and thus will always be with us to some degree. Many of us liberals just think that maybe the government should play a safety net role in helping to insure that the effects of those things don't cripple society.

You're not as conservative as you think.
posted by jonmc at 10:53 AM on March 9, 2005

A theory is based on empirical evidence.
In many fields such as physics and economics, bad theories are often taken seriously just because the math works out nicely.
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:54 AM on March 9, 2005

OmieWise writes "Your invocation of the hardworking, and Black, Terry, does nothing to bolster the opinions you hold. It seems like you're making a 'Some of my best friends are Black' argument for why your position is the right one. You also did that with the 'I lived in a gay neighborhood' comment, and it failed to advance your argument there as well."

You just don't read that well, do you?

I "invoked" Terry because of what he had to say.

As it happens, on the campaign I worked with a lot of black people, and, gosh! even a few Jews. And a lot of white people too. And some Asians. I didn't trot any of those people out, because it was Terry's opinion, not his race I wanted to discuss.

I described his background not to show off my legions of black friends, but to show that Terry is pretty close to being an average middle American, and far closer to that then turgid theorists of the "intellectual" Left.

Of course, you can't see that -- and in your reply you don't even mention Terry's opinion, that the Democratic Party, to succeed, should abandoned affirmative action and reproductive rights.

Was it because as soon as I mentioned a black man, you just automatically assumed that black people are only used in arguments as props to exonerate the person making the argument of racism? Maybe that's why you mention black people, to show just how progressive you are.

I mentioned Terry because I thought his opinion deserved discussion.

If you can only see black people as some sort of lucky rabbit's foot on your charm bracelet of liberal tokenism, a token that gives you +2 protection against charges of racism, that's really not my problem.
posted by orthogonality at 11:01 AM on March 9, 2005

I would love an example sonofsamiam.

There have been incorrect theories thats for sure, but a REAL theory, not just a guess, is based on empirical evidence and offers a model to explain the observed results. If new evidence comes along and breaks that model the theory is adjusted.

It would be disingenous to say Newtonian Mechanics are incorrect because for the most part they offer a completely reasonable explanation for observed events.

It just gets my panties in a bunch to hear people write something off as "theoretical" as if it has nothing to do with the real world. Saying something is common sense gives no insight as to what is really happening, it's a lazy way out of thinking about something.
posted by ozomatli at 11:04 AM on March 9, 2005

Orhto,
give me a break. You mentioned Terry because his opinion coincided with yours, and his race seemed to bolster your opinion. If it was his opinion and not his race that mattered, why did you tell us he was Black?

If you can only see black people as some sort of lucky rabbit's foot on your charm bracelet of liberal tokenism, a token that gives you +2 protection against charges of racism, that's really not my problem

This is my favorite part of what you've written all day.
posted by OmieWise at 11:06 AM on March 9, 2005

Oh, by the way: when Terry and I were putting in our 18 hour days with no weekends off in Ohio, working to defeat Bush -- what were you doing? Posting to MetaFilter?

Amongst other things; it's a great site. Just before I read this comment from a guy who said something like "So now that you've taken the time to dismiss my arguments with ad hominem criticism, maybe you'll have time to go back and actually address the issues that I raised?"

Man, you'd hate that guy.

And for the record, I work for the Center for American Progress. Feel free to decide what factor that apparently makes you better than me at will. Just try not to spit as much foam when delivering your conclusions next time.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 11:09 AM on March 9, 2005

If you can only see black people as some sort of lucky rabbit's foot on your charm bracelet of liberal tokenism, a token that gives you +2 protection against charges of racism, that's really not my problem

This is a dead-on target criticism of a lot of liberals attitudes on race. Black people are often related to as moral props or Tiny Tim figures, poor suffering darkies who need help their Great White Saviors. How about relating to them as human beings instead, maybe?

Feel free to decide what factor that apparently makes you better than me at will.

There's a phrase for this kind of argument, it's "moral narcissism." Let's make this discussion an argument about who's purer than thou.
posted by jonmc at 11:12 AM on March 9, 2005

> Is political correctness the enemy from within?

Based on this thread so far, filled to the brim with vitriol and personal attacks between people who ostensibly count themselves as members of the same ideological team, I'd have to say yes. We bicker endlessly amongst ourselves while BushCo rolls onward to another legislative "triumph" like the bankruptcy bill being universally lambasted a few threads over.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:32 AM on March 9, 2005

OmieWise writes "Orhto, give me a break. You mentioned Terry because his opinion coincided with yours, and his race seemed to bolster your opinion. If it was his opinion and not his race that mattered, why did you tell us he was Black?"


Son, learn to read.

I explicitly said that I disagreed with Terry, and that I did not want to be part of a Democratic party that abandoned Affirmative Action and reproductive rights, as Terry suggested. His opinion did not coincide with mine.

And why'd I mention Terry was blue-collar? Or union? Or middle-class?

As far as Affirmative Action, it's a policy designed to favor people of one race, to make up for pasted disfavor. Favoring one race over another is discrimination. so is favoring men over women, or Armenians over Turks, or straights over gays.

If we can't admit that and either defend Affirmative Action or abandon it on those terms, we deserve to be laughed at for our inability to be candid with the America people and with ourselves.

Also, it's "orthogonality", not "Orhto". Learn to read more carefully and learn to write more carefully.
posted by orthogonality at 12:01 PM on March 9, 2005

Jonmc, I'm assuming you to mean light-skinned "liberals." I also disagree with your caricature, depending on what you mean by "liberal."

People with darker skin in this country are suffering disproportionately, are they not? They continue to deal with racism both overt and covert. Are things better than in 1963? Yes -- thanks to those white liberal do-gooders you seem to despise who stepped up and joined their darker-skinned friends' calls for progress. Is there still room for progress? Yes, indeed.

I don't think it is at all coincidental that the PC issue seems to be settling on race. Along with religiousity, racial composition is the other big difference between those who vote Dem vs. GOP.

On preview: card cheat, maybe so, maybe so.
posted by Cassford at 12:01 PM on March 9, 2005

Interesting how this turned into a "what the Dems have to do to win" thread.

But I think abolishing the PC mindset is the least of it. It's all in the framing. Hell, if liberals were able to frame issues like conservatives, proponents of gay marriage would be up there at every f*cking rally reciting the Declaration of Independence - "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" - while the American flags fluttered in the background.

Indeed, we and Rubin can bitch about Thomas Frank's contempt, but the main point he's making, which sticks, is it's less what you do than how you do it.
posted by kgasmart at 12:09 PM on March 9, 2005

Well, hrm.

I'm really skeptical of the whole idea of PC. There is an art to coalition building which means that sometimes you engage in discussion about language, words, and norms in the hope that everyone gets along well enough to work together. When people on the left do it, we call it PC. We don't call it PC when the Eagle Forum and the Christian Coalition demand and get certain consessions and edits to the language of the Republican platform, or when key party members jumped to criticize Cheney's rather ambiguous public acceptance of his daughter's lesbianism. Expressing that there are two sides to the story behind the conflict in Israel is PC, but demanding the placement of consevative advocates in universities is "balance." To a large degree, I think that most of the time "PC" is invoked, it's to say, "how dare you use your strict speech code rather than my speech code."
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:16 PM on March 9, 2005

Yes -- thanks to those white liberal do-gooders you seem to despise who stepped up and joined their darker-skinned friends' calls for progress. Is there still room for progress?

I don't despise them. I just think that oftentimes they're blinkered about how they approach things. It just seems that too many self described "liberals," (and believe it or not, I still consider myself a liberal) can't seem to envision black people as anything other than helpless victims or magical badass potency figures (or in a related fashion, tokens of "hipness"*), or as moral props, to show the world how "different," they are from those "other," white people. These are different caricatures of blacks from what racists proffer, but they're still caricatures.

Like I said, black people are just that, people. Nothing more, nothing less.

*it's especially annoying to hear white people using "white," as a synonym for "blandness
posted by jonmc at 12:19 PM on March 9, 2005