If we were to live in a world where everyone spoke in "political correctness" would the world be better? Would we all be happy because no one is being offended, or would it drive humans insane not being able to express extreme emotions through language?

Politically Correct is a buzz word that tends to get a reaction out of people before they really think about what they are reacting too.

I always thought of it as being polite and not a jerk. AKA being diplomatic.

Does it always work? No.

Not everyone is good at diplomacy, they make mistakes and these mistakes find their way to sitcoms where an over weight husband tells his hot wife how fed up he is with the situation and the laugh track cheers.

In theory Political Correctness is based on an ideal of peaceful coexistence with others whose background, ethnicity, and views are different from your own.
In practice it becomes a thinly veiled pretext for out and out censorship. When people wish to be polite they will be but in a world where politically incorrect speech is banned people are not allowed to say anything, because in all honesty anything can be misconstrued as offensive.

Of course, you can never avoid offending everyone - but by the same token, there is virtue in trying to get along.

To be honest, when I hear someone say "political correctness" in a conversation, they are usually about to give themselves permission to be rude.

I am generally not impressed.

piraterpg
If we were to live in a world where everyone spoke in "political correctness" would the world be better? Would we all be happy because no one is being offended, or would it drive humans insane not being able to express extreme emotions through language?

I agree. Politeness is not bad, unless you need to cast aside decorum to make a point.

I believe people have mischaracterized common decency and gave it a easy to despise name to excuse themselves for mispeaking. Is it PC not to call someone a retard, or is it just polite. If you defend the right to use insensitive language, what are you really defending?

That said, somebody will always spoil the party by going to far, terms like gravitationally challenged for example, hell I'm fat, end of story. But don't for a second believe that you are championing common sense if you tell somebody that uses this term that they are a hippo.

PC is just an excuse to jettison politeness and ridicule those who are maybe trying too hard not to offend.

I agree with everyone so far.

I agree that in theory it sounds good. But when in Practice, it's often taken too far by moronic human beings who are trying too hard to offend.

And they end up making laws and rules that are ridiculous and serve no real purpose. Like how that one time they actually passed a law in some Californian schools. The law was that kids couldn't use the terms Mom, dad, or Parents. All out of "fear" that it might offend gays. Despite the fact that there are gay moms and dads who love being called those terms by kids.

"Political correctness" is an absurdity. Acting correctly (i.e. being polite, civil, not deliberately causing offence to others) is something we should all try to do anyway. Qualifying it with the word "political" shows it up for what it is - an attempt to censor (and censure) other people's behaviour and force them to conform to someone else's idea of what's right and wrong. It's an artificial idea of what really constitutes "correct" behaviour and allows cynical individuals to sue companies for imagined and fabricated slights.

I've always harboured a sneaking suspicion the concept was invented by lawyers as a means of increasing the number of cases they can pursue!
;-)

DAJB
I've always harboured a sneaking suspicion the concept was invented by lawyers as a means of increasing the number of cases they can pursue!
;-)

you might be on to something there...

DAJB
"Political correctness" is an absurdity. Acting correctly (i.e. being polite, civil, not deliberately causing offence to others) is something we should all try to do anyway. Qualifying it with the word "political" shows it up for what it is - an attempt to censor (and censure) other people's behaviour and force them to conform to someone else's idea of what's right and wrong. It's an artificial idea of what really constitutes "correct" behaviour and allows cynical individuals to sue companies for imagined and fabricated slights.

Heartily agreed on all counts.

DAJB
"Political correctness" is an absurdity. Acting correctly (i.e. being polite, civil, not deliberately causing offence to others) is something we should all try to do anyway. Qualifying it with the word "political" shows it up for what it is - an attempt to censor (and censure) other people's behaviour and force them to conform to someone else's idea of what's right and wrong. It's an artificial idea of what really constitutes "correct" behaviour and allows cynical individuals to sue companies for imagined and fabricated slights.

Here's the problem. Not everyone is taught to behave in a civil manner. And even though their actions should only hurt them, they hurt others as well. Like the racist teacher that uses the "N" word on his students. Or the guy that pinches all the women's butts in the office.

The problem is that "PC" is taken advantage of by false victims for their own gain.

It's a good concept on its face. There just needs to be a balance. The courts need need to stop being wusses and draw some lines in the sand.

Well, in all honesty, it seems to me that the term of "political correctness" is really politically INcorrect, since to be PC would to be recognizing differences between people, and more so, recognizing it to be a problem. True political correctness would be instead to be "politically incorrect" and blissfully ignorant of the reprocussions it might have, since, you know, we're all created equal and all that.

PCness can be a cop out used by some people.


For example, I watched this documentary called "The Lizards and the Jews" (search it in google vids).

David Icke claims there are 12 foot extradimensional lizards who are running the world. George Bush, Tony Blair, The British Royal Family, the Bildebergers, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, etc. are all reptoids according to David Icke.

And here is the ADL (anti-defamation league) making a big fuss about it.

Labelling David Icke as anti-semitic.

If Mr. Icke said that all jews are reptilians, he is definitely anti-semitic. But he didnt just say Jews. He pointed to specific Jewish families as well as others... including Robert Mugabe (a black man) of Zimbabwe and the Bushes (they're NOT Jew!!!).

Why did ADL call him an anti-semite if his 'reptilians' ARENT ALL JEWISH?

Political Correctness, or as George Orwell liked to call it "Thought Speech" is a bane onto free peoples.

Political Correctness, in a true sense, is a *media and politician thing*. It's a filter on what can and cannot be said. Generally speaking, it is unjust because in order to have an arbitrary standard, one "human group" has to have special favor over another "human group".

The term has come to be applied to all speech--I agree that people should just be polite, and then there's no need for "correctness".

We should make a distinction, though, between Political Correctness, which is essentially harmless, and Hate Crime Laws, which are dangerous and repressive. When you use a person's ethnicity to determine how the law is administered, it's just a pogrom taken in a new direction.

TitanOne
We should make a distinction, though, between Political Correctness, which is essentially harmless, and Hate Crime Laws, which are dangerous and repressive. When you use a person's ethnicity to determine how the law is administered, it's just a pogrom taken in a new direction.

That's very true. The law shouldn't be administered based on ethnicity. Which is not how hate crime laws work.

mapaghimagsik
The law shouldn't be administered based on ethnicity. Which is not how hate crime laws work.

Wait, then how do hate crimes work?

Hawk

mapaghimagsik
The law shouldn't be administered based on ethnicity. Which is not how hate crime laws work.

Wait, then how do hate crimes work?

There was a huge thread on this, and I know that the laws vary from state to state, with differing effects. The laws that I support the most work kind of like this:

You commit a crime, usually a violent crime. There's that crime. If I assault someone with a baseball bat, I'm (hopefully) guilty of some sort of crime.

Now lets say I don't want white people living in my area. So, I specifically attack white people, and make sure they understand that "crackers aren't welcome in this neighborhood."

Then I'm committing an additional crime, because I'm assaulting one person, and I'm using that assault to send a message to all the other white people in the neighborhood that they are next. Its not that I attacked a white person that matters, but that I attacked a white person with the intention of creating an atmosphere of intimidation against white people.

So, if you think that driving people from their homes using fear and intimidation tactics a crime unto itself, I think you can see that there can be pretty clear cut cases of "hate crimes" which really aren't about the "hate" but more about the "terrorizing a specific population."

This does get messy because like any other crime, prosecution goes for one thing, and defense claims another, and some prosecutors use "hate crime" as a way to 'trump up charges' because they take the "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" line of prosecution.

At the end of the day Arguments are presented, and a jury (or a judge) makes the decision. Hopefully, its an enlightened decision where people who are just muggers are convicted of being muggers, and the KKK gets convicted for the terrorism they inflict. I think the burden of proof, like any other crime, should be on the prosecution, and in cases that I think actually further the cause of removing evil elements from our society, the bar for "hate crime" is pretty high. At the same time, I think the penalties should be pretty high too.

So I think we're in vehement agreement. Hating someone for their skin color, or religious affiliation, or sexual orientation, while a particularly shortsighted view, shouldn't be a crime in itself. Terrorizing a class of people because of who they are in order to make a situation -- neighborhood, workplace, whathaver -- more pure *should* be a crime, because you're infringing on the rights of a group of people.

I'm adding a real-world case in point. Iraqi Christians were murdered not because they were particularly bad people, or had a grudge, but because radicals wanted Christians to leave Baghdad. Largely, the efforts were successful -- Christians fled Baghdad in droves. So not only were these radicals murdering bastards, they were murdering bastards who engaged in ethnic cleansing, which I think should be a crime unto itself on top of the murder.

mapaghimagsik
So I think we're in vehement agreement. Hating someone for their skin color, or religious affiliation, or sexual orientation, while a particularly shortsighted view, shouldn't be a crime in itself. Terrorizing a class of people because of who they are in order to make a situation -- neighborhood, workplace, whathaver -- more pure *should* be a crime, because you're infringing on the rights of a group of people.

Okay, your explanation of hate crimes is pretty close to what I imagined (and better defined it for me. Thank you for explaining it). But what confused me is that you said the hate crime laws shouldn't be administered based on ethnicity, and I thought that ethnicity was a large part of what the laws were about.

Hawk

mapaghimagsik
So I think we're in vehement agreement. Hating someone for their skin color, or religious affiliation, or sexual orientation, while a particularly shortsighted view, shouldn't be a crime in itself. Terrorizing a class of people because of who they are in order to make a situation -- neighborhood, workplace, whathaver -- more pure *should* be a crime, because you're infringing on the rights of a group of people.

Okay, your explanation of hate crimes is pretty close to what I imagined (and better defined it for me. Thank you for explaining it). But what confused me is that you said the hate crime laws shouldn't be administered based on ethnicity, and I thought that ethnicity was a large part of what the laws were about.

In a way, they are, because those are the kinds of things that we tend to terrorize over -- I *think* religion is part of the law, but sexual preference isn't.

I should have clarified about ethnicity -- Just because a white man mugs an asian, that's not enough for a hate crime, in my mind. The ethnicity involved isn't really important. The fact that the person is trying to terrorize becomes of some bias is the issue. So to me, the group being biased against isn't the huge part -- its the fact that a person has decided that "they" don't belong here, and take violent steps to make it happen.

So, a hate crime against whites shouldn't be any different than a hate crime against blacks, or against Christians or Jews. Its not a matter of giving preferential treatment to a particular ethnicity, but recognizing the perp is really doing the one crime to terrorize a group of people.

For example, IRA terrorists didn't bomb "Orange" schools because they hate schools. They bombed them because they wanted the Irish Protestants out of Ireland. The killing of children is bad enough, but the killing of children to drive other children (and their families) away is even worse.

This does carry over in cases of assult. You can get into legal trouble if you decide to vehemently threaten to kill someone. Passing out flyers about how all all the Irish protestants should be killed (as was done by the IRA) should be against the law as well.

Yeah, that does make plenty of sense. We really shouldn't be allowing people to encourage murder.

Japan actually has their own hate crime laws too. They stem from the time after WW2 when Americans occupied the country for a while. In order to counter the frequent "accidents" of Japanese citizens swerving their vehicles to hit foreign soldiers, they doubled the usual fines if your victim was a foreigner. They've never actually repealed the law.

While I was living in Japan some old guy in a van actually hit me. It knocked me to the ground pretty bad and I cracked one of my ribs. As he was coming to my aid, he realized I was an American and he jumped back in the van and ran. I had to pay for a new suit myself.

I'm sorry I've strayed us so far from political correctness... I just found the hate crimes topic kind of interesting.

Hawk
I'm sorry I've strayed us so far from political correctness... I just found the hate crimes topic kind of interesting.

I think the topic of "hate crimes" has a lot to do with "political correctness" To me, both are canards thrown up by the right wing to feed into the conservative persecution complex. They are framed by many right wing pundits in ways that are simply designed to inflame their "base"

The whole point of it is that "political correctness" is a right wing term which is used in what's called "dog whistle politics" -- its the vernacular used by a group to communicate that which can't be said.

This muddies the water for those of us who want to discuss whether changing language changes behavior -- especially if that change is enforced.

Out of curiosity, do you know if the law in Japan was effective, and the number of foreign soldiers getting run over went down?

mapaghimagsik
Out of curiosity, do you know if the law in Japan was effective, and the number of foreign soldiers getting run over went down?

You know, I'm not really sure. And I don't know where I would find the information, but it would be interesting to know.

piraterpg
If we were to live in a world where everyone spoke in "political correctness" would the world be better? Would we all be happy because no one is being offended, or would it drive humans insane not being able to express extreme emotions through language?

I think it depends on a couple of things, first off what you mean by political correctness, we shouldn't be going out of our way to kick each other in the shins and be mean anyways, basic respect. But I mean everyones gets in arguments at some time and place, and ideally people should be trying to express their opinions in a mature way. However that obviously doesn't happen. So if that's what you mean we should all be trying to at least give each other respect. But somehow I associate the term "politically correct" with what the majority of people assume to be right, and I don't it would be a good world for everyone to abandon their morals and agree with what most people think. I dunno if it would drive people insane, it might give your life a somewhat more oppressive vibe though.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a conservative fellow recently. He went on and on about "hate speech," essentially implying that it was terribly unfair that he did not feel free to refer to people of other racial types "however he wanted." He felt that the culture had become too stultifying and unfair. He wanted more freedom call people by derogatory terms.

I asked him if he felt the same away about flag burning, or people saying that they hated America.

Of course, his tone quickly changed - such expressions were treasonous and should not be allowed! The police should crack down!


I think the folks on the right and the left are about the same here. They would both like less speech that they do not like to hear.

Of course, people tend to mix culture and the law in these conversations. I am OK if all speech is legal - but I am also OK if a lot of nasty speech is considered rude and "off limits" and people do not always feel free to express their garbage in polite company. That's the whole point of "polite company."

I am also very much with mapaghimagsik on "hate crimes." Attacking someone to "send a message" isn't bad because of who you attacked - but because you tried to use violence to send a message. Assault is not protected speech.

i believe political corectness is bad when it becomes hypocritical.
an example: not allowing radio and television ads to say "Merry Christmas" because some people find it offensive, yet allowing other religiously-infused holiday greetings such as "Happy Hanukah". If you live in a country that boasts tolerance of varying religions and ethnicities, shouldn't EVERYONE be able to express themselves? (as long as its not insulting to anyone)

I have absolutely nothing against any religion or their holidays. Just people who try to create double standards. :)

It's nice to be nice, but being "politically correct" is taken WAY too far these days. For instance, I am only an inch above midget height so I get called one all the time. I would actually much rather be called that than a "little person" which is the correct term. When a word like that becomes insulting, changing it will not do anything to help as the new term will either not be used at all, or also come to be used as an insult(for example retarded now being mentally challenged).

"political correctness" is a phrase, words and phrases do not just fall out of the sky. people create them , people resurrect them , and people choose to use them towards particular ends.
in this case it seems to be as a verbal fog machine of some sort ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#History [en.wikipedia.org]
"Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism....What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism - by levelling the charge of political correctness against its exponents - they could discredit the whole political project."