Political correctness(adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term denoting language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social offense in gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, handicap, and age-related contexts. In current usage, the terms are almost exclusively pejorative, connoting “intolerant” and “intolerance” whilst the usage politically incorrect, denotes an implicitly positive self-description. Examples include the conservative Politically Incorrect Guides published by the Regnery editorial house, and the television talk show Politically Incorrect. Thus, “politically incorrect” denotes language, ideas, and behavior, unconstrained by orthodoxy and the fear of giving offense.
History
Early usages
In the USA
The
earliest citation is not politically
correct, found in the U.S.
Supreme Court
decision Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), denoting that the
statement under judgment is literally incorrect, as understood in
the eighteenth-century US: “The states, rather than the People, for
whose sakes the States exist, are frequently the objects which
attract and arrest our principal attention. . . . Sentiments and
expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in
our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? [To] ‘The United
States’, instead of [to] the ‘People of the United States’, is the
toast given. This is not politically correct.”
In the UK
During the First World War, British
Ministry of
Information official
Arnold
Bennett used the expression
politically
correct in vetting language for
“appropriateness”.
In Marxism–Leninism
In
Marxist–Leninist and
Trotskyist vocabulary,
correct was the
common term denoting the “appropriate
party line” and the ideologic/
“correct line”.
Likewise in the People's
Republic of China
, as part of Mao’s declarations on the
correct handling of “non-antagonistic
contradictions”. MIT professor of literature Ruth Perry
traces the term from
Mao Zedong’s
Little Red Book
(1964).
In left-wing rhetoric
Even before the term PC appeared, the Left mocked its own language
usage in the pamphlet
Lifeitselfmanship or How to Become a
Precisely-Because Man (1956), by
Jessica Mitford, about “L and non-L” (Left
and non-Left) English, mocking the Communist clichés used by her
comrades when talking about fighting the
class struggle. The pamphlet’s title refers
to the
Stephen Potter book series
including the title
Lifemanship, and replies to
Noblesse Oblige, by
Nancy
Mitford, about the perceptible class distinctions in
British English usage, that popularised the
phrases “
U and non-U English”
(Upper class and non-Upper class).
In the 1960s, the radical
Left
adopted the term, initially seriously, then ironically, in
self-criticism of
dogmatic attitudes. By 1970,
New Left proponents had adopted the term
political correctness. In the essay
The Black
Woman,
Toni Cade Bambara
says: “. . . a man cannot be politically correct and a [male]
chauvinist too” — a usage that widened
the definition’s scope to include the politics of
gender and
identity to the politics of ideological
orthodoxy in governing. The New Left later
re-appropriated the term
political correctness as
satirical self-criticism; per Debra Shultz:
“Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and
progressives . . . used their term
politically correct
ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change
efforts”. Hence, it is a popular English usage in the underground
comic book
Merton of the Movement, by
Bobby London, while
ideologically
sound an alternative term, followed a like lexical path,
appearing in
Bart Dickon’s satirical
comic strips. Moreover,
Ellen Willis
says: “ . . . in the early ’80s, when
feminists used the term
political
correctness, it was used to refer sarcastically to the
anti-pornography
movement’s efforts to define a ‘feminist sexuality’ ”.
Current usage
Widespread use of the term "politically correct" and its
derivatives began when it was adopted as a pejorative term by the
political right in the 1990s, in the context of the
Culture Wars. Writing in the
New York Times in 1990,
Richard Bernstein noted "The term
"politically correct," with its suggestion of Stalinist orthodoxy,
is spoken more with irony and disapproval than with reverence. But
across the country the term p.c., as it is commonly abbreviated, is
being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at
the universities."
Bernstein referred to a meeting of the
Western Humanities
Conference in Berkeley, California
, on " 'Political Correctness' and Cultural
Studies," which examined "what effect the pressure to conform to
currently fashionable ideas is having on scholarship".
Bernstein also referred to "p.c.p" for "politically correct
people", a term which did not take root in popular
discussion.
Within a few years, this previously obscure term featured regularly
in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges
against
curriculum expansion and
progressive teaching
methods in US high schools and universities.
In 1991, addressing a
graduating class of the University of Michigan
, U.S. President
George H. W. Bush
spoke against “ . . . a movement [that would] declare certain
topics ‘off-limits’, certain expressions ‘off-limits’, even certain
gestures ‘off-limits’ ” in allusion to liberal Political
Correctness. The most common usage here is as a pejorative term to
refer to excessive deference to particular sensibilities at the
expense of other considerations. The converse term "politically
incorrect" came into use as an implicit term of self-praise,
indicating that the user was not afraid to give offense.
The central uses of the term relate to issues of race and gender,
and encompass both the language in which issues are discussed and
the viewpoints that are expressed. Proponents of the view that
black people are less intelligent, on average, than white people,
or that women are less intelligent than men, state that criticism
of these views is based on political correctness.
Examples of language commonly criticised as "politically correct"
include:
- "African-American" in place of "Black", "Negro" and other
terms
- "Native American" in place of "Indian"
- “Gender-neutral” terms such as "firefighter" in place of
"fireman"
- Terms relating to disability, such as "visually challenged" in
place of "blind"
More generally, any policy or factual claim opposed by the
political right, such as the claim that
global warming is a serious problem requiring
a policy response may be criticized as "politically correct".
World-wide
The term
politically correct is popular in
Scandinavia (politiskt korrekt
abbreviated PK), in Portugal
, Spain
, and
Latin America (Sp., políticamente
correcto | Port., politicamente correcto), France
(politiquement correct), Germany
(politisch korrekt), Poland
(poprawność polityczna, poprawny politycznie),
Slovenia
(politično korekten), The
Netherlands
and Flanders (politiek correct), Italy
(politicamente corretto), Russia
(политкорректность, политкорректный), and
New
Zealand
, .
Explanations
As Cultural Marxism
Right-wing, conservative and libertarian critics claim that
political correctness is a Marxist undermining of Western
values. In
The Abolition of Britain,
Peter Hitchens says: “What Americans describe
with the casual phrase . . . ‘political correctness’ is the most
intolerant system of thought to dominate the British Isles since
the
Reformation.” William S.
Lind and
Patrick Buchanan have
characterized PC as a technique originated by the
Frankfurt School, whose work aimed at
undermining Western values, by influencing
popular culture through
Cultural Marxism. In
The Death of the West, Buchanan
says: “Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a regime to
punish dissent and to stigmatize social heresy as the
Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its
trademark is intolerance.”
As a linguistic concept
In addressing the linguistic problem of naming, Edna Andrews says
that using “inclusive” and “neutral” language is based upon the
concept that “language represents thought, and may even control
thought”.This claim has been derived from the
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which
states that a language’s grammatical categories shape the speaker’s
ideas and actions; although Andrews says that moderate conceptions
of the relation between language and thought are sufficient to
support the “reasonable deduction . . . [of] cultural change via
linguistic change”.
Other cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics works indicate
that word-choice has significant “
framing effects” on the
perceptions, memories, and attitudes of speakers and listeners. The
relevant empirical question is whether or not
sexist language promotes sexism,
i.e. sexist thought and action.
Advocates of
inclusive language
defend it as inoffensive-language usage whose goal is
multi-fold:
- The rights, opportunities, and freedoms of certain people are
restricted because they are reduced to stereotypes.
- Stereotyping is mostly implicit, unconscious, and facilitated
by the availability of pejorative labels and terms.
- Rendering the labels and terms socially unacceptable, people
then must consciously think about how they describe
someone unlike themselves.
- When labelling is a conscious activity, the described person's
individual merits become apparent, rather than his or her
stereotype.
Critics of such arguments, and of inclusive language in general,
commonly use the terminology of "political correctness"
[3754].
A common criticism is that terms chosen by an identity group, as
acceptable descriptors of themselves, then pass into common usage,
including usage by the racists and sexists whose racism and sexism,
et cetera, the new terms mean to supersede. The new terms are thus
devalued, and another set of words must be coined, giving rise to
lengthy progressions such as
Negro,
Coloured,
Black,
African-American, and so on, (cf.
Euphemism treadmill).
As an engineered political term
Some left-wing commentators claimed that after 1980, right-wing
American conservatives
re-engineered the term
political
correctness to ideologically re-frame US politics as
a
culture war. Hutton reports:
"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."
Moreover, the commentators claimed there never was a “Political
Correctness movement” in the US, and that many who use the term do
so to distract attention from substantive debate about racial,
class and gender discrimination and unequal legal treatment.
Similarly,
Polly Toynbee argued that
“the phrase is an empty right-wing smear designed only to elevate
its user.”
Commenting on the UK's 2009
Equality Bill, Toynbee wrote
that:
"The phrase "political correctness" was born as a coded
cover for all who still want to say Paki, spastic or queer, all
those who still want to pick on anyone not like them, playground
bullies who never grew up.
The politically correct society is the civilised
society, however much some may squirm at the more inelegant
official circumlocutions designed to avoid offence."
Criticism
General
University of Pennsylvania professor
Alan Charles Kors and lawyer Harvey A.
Silverglate, connect
political correctness to Marxist
philosopher
Herbert Marcuse’s claim
that liberal ideas of free speech were repressive, arguing that
such “Marcusean logic” is the base of
speech codes in US universities, and later
established the
Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education, which campaigns against PC
speech codes.
The academic
Camille Paglia said that
PC empowers the enemies of the Left, and alienates the masses
against
feminism.
Critics of PC have been accused of displaying the same sensitivity
to word choice that they claim to oppose, and of perceiving
non-existent political agenda. For example, some newspapers
reported that a school had altered the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black
Sheep” to read “Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep”. But it is also reported
that a better description is that the Parents and Children Together
(PACT) nursery had the children “turn the song into an action
rhyme. . . . They sing happy, sad, bouncing, hopping, pink, blue,
black and white sheep etc.” That nursery rhyme story was circulated
and later extended to suggest that like language bans applied to
the terms “black coffee” and “blackboard”.
The Private
Eye
magazine reported that like stories, all baseless,
ran in the British press since The
Sun first published them in 1986.
Political correctness and science
See also: Politicization
of science
Groups opposing mainstream scientific views on
evolution,
global
warming,
passive smoking,
AIDS,
race, and other
contentious scientific matters argue that PC is responsible for the
failure of their perspectives to receive a fair public hearing;
thus, in
Lamarck’s Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing
Darwin’s Natural Selection Paradigm, Assoc. Prof.
Edward J. Steele says: “We now stand on the threshold
of what could be an exciting new era of genetic research. . . .
However, the ‘politically correct’ thought agendas of the
neo–Darwinists of the 1990s are ideologically opposed to the idea
of
‘Lamarckian Feedback’, just as the
Church was opposed to the idea of evolution based on natural
selection in the 1850s!”
The
Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, by
Tom Bethell, is a comprehensive presentation
argument that mainstream science is dominated by politically
correct thinking. Bethell rejects mainstream views about evolution
and global warming, and supports
AIDS
denialism.
Right wing political correctness
Accusations of political correctness, in the sense of enforced
orthodoxy, have also been directed against the political right.
Before the US
invasion of Iraq, the
Dixie Chicks country band played in
London. During the 10 March 2003 concert, they introduced the song
“Travelin’ Soldier”;
The
Guardian quoted Texan
Natalie
Maines: “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all.
We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the
President of the United States is from Texas.”
Newspaper columnist Don Williams described the
resulting backlash
against the band as the price for freely speaking political views
disapproved by the Right Wing — “the ugliest form of political
correctness occurs whenever there’s a war on. Then you’d better
watch what you say.” He noted that
Ann
Coulter and
Bill
O'Reilly called the musicians’ comment treasonous.
Linguistic examples of right-wing adjustments to language,
criticised as examples of political correctness include renaming
French fries as “
Freedom fries” on the model of US
manufacturers renaming
sauerkraut as
“
Liberty cabbage” during the First
World War as a marketing tool to avoid potential public disapproval
of a product with a German name.
In 2004, then
Australian Labor leader
Mark Latham described conservative calls
for "civility" as "The New Political Correctness".
Satirical use
Political correctness often is satirised, for example in the
Politically Correct Manifesto (1992), by Saul Jerushalmy
and Rens Zbignieuw X, and
Politically Correct Bedtime
Stories (1994), by
James Finn
Garner, presenting
fairy tales
re-written from an exaggerated PC perspective.
Other examples include the television program
Politically Incorrect,
George Carlin’s "Euphemisms" routine, and
The Politically Correct Scrapbook. The popularity of the
libertarian South Park cartoon program on the Right led
to the creation of the term
South Park Republican by
Andrew Sullivan, and later the book
South Park
Conservatives by
Brian C.
Anderson.
Replying to the “Freedom Fries” matter, wits suggested that the
Fama-French model used in
corporate finance be renamed the
“Fama-Freedom” model.
See also
References
- Ruth Perry, (1992), “A short history of the term ‘politically
correct’ ”, in Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of
Understanding , by Patricia Aufderheide, 1992
- Schultz, Debra L. (1993). To Reclaim a Legacy of Diversity:
Analyzing the “Political Correctness” Debates in Higher Education.
New York: National Council for Research on Women. [1]
- Chisholm v State of GA, 2 US 419 (1793)
Findlaw.com - Accessed 6 February 2007. “The states,
rather than the People, for whose sakes the States exist, are
frequently the objects which attract and arrest our principal
attention. . . . Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind
prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast
asked? ‘The United States’, instead of the ‘People of the United
States’, is the toast given. This is not politically correct.”
- Chang-tu Hu, International Review of Education / Internationale
Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de
l'Education, Vol. 10, No. 1. (1964), pp.12–21.
- Susan Biele Alitto, Comparative Education Review, Vol. 13, No.
1. (Feb. 1969), pp.43–59.
- Schultz citing Perry (1992) p.16
- Ellen Willis, “Toward a Feminist Revolution”, in No More
Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays (1992) Wesleyan University
Press, ISBN 0-8195-5250-X, p.19.
- D’Souza 1991; Berman 1992; Schultz 1993; Messer Davidow 1993,
1994; Scatamburlo 1998
- Remarks at the University of Michigan Commencement
Ceremony in Ann Arbor, May 4, 1991. George Bush Presidential
Library.
- Buchanan, Patrick The Death of the West, p.89
- Cultural Sensitivity and Political Correctness: The Linguistic
Problem of Naming, Edna Andrews, American Speech, Vol. 71,
No. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp.389-404.
- Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure
Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language Sex Roles: A Journal of
Research, March 2000, by Janet B. Parks, Mary Ann Roberton [2]
- Loftus, E. and Palmer, J. 1974. “Reconstruction of Automobile
Destruction: An example of the interaction between language and
memory”. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior
13, pp.585-9
- Kahneman, D. and Amos Tversky. 1981. “The Framing of Decisions
and the Psychology of Choice”. Science, 211, pp.453-8
- Hutton W, “Words really are important, Mr Blunkett”
The Observer, Sunday 16 December 2001 - Accessed 6
February 2007.
- Messer–Davidow 1993, 1994; Schultz 1993; Lauter 1995;
Scatamburlo 1998; and Glassner 1999.
- Toynbee P, “Religion must be removed from all functions of
state”, The Guardian, Sunday 12 December 2001 -
Accessed 6 February 2007.
-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/toynbee-equality-bill-welfare
- Kors, A.C. and Silvergate, H, "Codes of
silence - who's silencing free speech on campus -- and why"
Reason Magazine (online), November 1998 - Accessed 6
February 2007.
- Camille Paglia says it best-- Accessed 2 February
2007. “My message to the media is: ‘Wake up!’ The silencing of
authentic debate among feminists just helps the rise of the far
right. When the media get locked in their Northeastern ghetto and
become slaves of the feminist establishment and fanatical special
interests, the American audience ends up looking to conservative
voices for common sense. As a libertarian Democrat, I protest
against this self-defeating tyranny of political correctness.”
Further reading
For
- Aufderheide, Patricia. (ed.). 1992. Beyond P.C.: Toward a
Politics of Understanding. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf
Press.
- Berman, Paul. (ed.). 1992. Debating P.C.: The Controversy Over
Political Correctness on College Campuses. New York, New York: Dell
Publishing.
- Gottfried, Paul E., After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the
Managerial State, 1999. ISBN 0-691-05983-7
- Jay, Martin., The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the
Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research,
1923-1950, University of California Press, New Ed edition
(March 5, 1996). ISBN 0-520-20423-9
- Switzer, Jacqueline Vaughn. Disabled Rights: American
Disability Policy and the Fight for Equality. Washington DC:
Georgetown University Press, 2003.
Against
- Buchanan, Patrick J.2002. The Death of the West, St
Martin's Press.
- Dinesh D'Souza, Illiberal
Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus New York:
Macmillan, Inc./The Free Press, 1991, ISBN 0-684-86384-7
- Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf, The Official
Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook, Villard Books,
1992, paperback 176 pages, ISBN 0-586-21726-6
- David E. Bernstein, "You Can't
Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from
Antidiscrimination Laws," Cato Institute 2003, 180 pages ISBN
1-930865-53-8
- Daniel Brandt, "An Incorrect Political Memoir.",
Lobster Issue 24: December 1992.
- William S. Lind, "The
Origins of Political Correctness", Accuracy in Academia,
2000.
- Nat Hentoff, Free Speech for Me
- But Not for Thee, HarperCollins, 1992, ISBN
0-06-019006-X
- Diane Ravitch, The Language
Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn,
Knopf, 2003, hardcover, 255 page.
- Nigel Rees, The Politically Correct Phrasebook: what they
say you can and cannot say in the 1990s, Bloomsbury, 1993, 192
pages, ISBN 0-7475-1426-7
- Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural
Society, W.W. Norton, 1998 revised edition, ISBN
0-393-31854-0
- Howard S. Schwartz, Revolt of the Primitive: An Inquiry
into the Roots of Political Correctness, Piscataway, NJ:
Transaction Publishers, 2003 Revised Paperback Edition ISBN
0-765-80537-5
- Psychodynamics of Political Correctness -
Published in Journal of Applied Behavioural Science
- The Campaign
Against Political Correctness
Skeptical
- Debra L. Schultz. 1993. To Reclaim a Legacy of Diversity:
Analyzing the "Political Correctness" Debates in Higher
Education. New York: National Council for Research on
Women.
- Wilson, John. 1995. The Myth of Political Correctness: The
Conservative Attack on High Education. Durham, North Carolina:
Duke University Press.
External links