I’d strongly disagree. I’d call political correctness synthetic respect, and my personal observation is that it worked. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s and saw a moderate amount of racism (not a whole lot because there wasn’t a lot of diversity, but enough to know it was there. I’d call it casual racism rather than vicious.)
I then watched PC make it declasse to be openly racist in a nice middle-class neighbourhood. This didn’t change anyone’s attitudes, but it did change behaviours.
However, what it really changed was the next generation’s behaviour. We had a new generation that wasn’t exposed to racism not because it didn’t exist in their parents, but it was socially down-market, and thus not the sort of thing you repeated in front of them.
My two mixed-race children went to a nice middle class school, where they had to learn about racism second-hand. It was rather amazing to see a bunch of 11-year-olds not even understand the concept of a racial epithet.
(And I don’t think there was much acting ignorant. A lot of children were really upset at the idea and there were a fair number of tears.)
The truth is that PC had made its mark, and in a fairly permanent fashion.
So LapsedPacifist, don’t shortchange synthetic respect. It can turn into real respect. It just takes a generation.
To answer that question in general - and in the spirit of those head lines altered - I would say yes. Though there are exceptions where I think it goes beyond that.
Unfortunately too many people no longer want to allow nuance or allow context, but make a blanket statement that Political Correctness is a problem. Their focus on those exceptions where there is some debate, ignores the majority of times where it is synonymous with the term. And conversely, some people shout down any perceived disrespect or offense, when it might be valid criticism, difference of opinion, satire, etc.
Being cool to each other shouldn’t be a politicized concept - but here we are.
That’s because ‘people appointing themselves cultural authoritarians’ is not uniquely attributable to ‘a desire to “treat people with respect” or be “PC”’.
Surely you’re familiar with people who hold strong cultural values and would see them enforced on others.
Is that will strictly a liberal or PC thing? I think not.
Absolutely. For those comedians who fall into that category. Many of whom aren’t particularly well liked or well regarded by other comedians (though there are exceptions).
Seinfeld would be one of those guys who I suspect would fall into the other category. In the past (before the show) he very much came off as sort of hacky. But he has “updated” or at least refined his act. He specializes in a sort of mean spirited, sarcastic anti-comedy. Which is easily misconstrued. I’m not terribly familiar with his stand-up. But I’ve never noticed much in the way of particularly offensive or odious work. And he doesn’t seem particularly political. So I never quite got why he’s so vocal about the subject. I don’t even remember Seinfeld even getting personally protested for anything like this.
He has a reputation as a comedians comedian. So its entirely possible he’s just using his visibility to lend weight to other, less known, guys banging that particular drum. His generation of comedians has a… higher than average amount of people who seem to genuinely be laughing at other people’s misfortune.
To give credit where it is due, Jerry Seinfeld was an entertaining and groundbreaking stand-up comedian at his peak and his sitcom was one of the funniest things on TV in the 1990s.
However, the last time I watched him do his routine on the Late Show earlier this year it struck me that almost every part of his routine could have been lifted from a stand-up act of the early 1980s. He even did a bit on Swanson “Hungry Man” TV dinners, apparently oblivious to the fact that 1) TV dinners haven’t been a novel source of comedic material for decades, and 2) Swanson hasn’t even OWNED the “Hungry Man” brand for at least seven years.
In many cases when I’ve heard the term, the idea of political correctness has a lot to do with a supposed allegiance to a political narrative rather than the truth. Everybody knows that black people are violent, Muslims are dangerous, transgender people aren’t really the gender they claim to be and so on, including liberals and those people themselves.The only reason people would claim otherwise must be to further a political objective. The idea that you shouldn’t point out these obvious truths and use terms to describe people that fit this obvious truth is enforcing a fantasy, not treating people with respect. I like @tlwest’s comment about language changing behaviour, then changing opinions. While there’s a resistance to moving the Overton window, it’s necessary and it does change attitudes in the long term.
Where it gets more complicated is when the truths are less clear-cut and there is evidence supporting the other side. You mustn’t say that multiculturalism can have negative effects on social cohesion, even though many studies support this. On the other hand, the paradox is that believing this to be true makes it more likely to happen, while accepting people of other cultures and believing that social cohesion is possible makes a better environment for it to happen.
In the cases of both Rotherham and Jimmy Saville, revealing this would have done a lot of damage to particular narratives. Of course men of all backgrounds rape and most child rapists in the UK are white men (they do make up 87% of the male population), but you can’t say that there’s a particular problem among popular children’s TV presenters (since that would erode trust and harm some careers) or among particular Muslim community (since that would increase anti-Muslim sentiment and harm some political careers). In both cases though, those who commit these crimes need to be dealt with quickly in part because child rape should not be associated with these groups and rooting out abusers makes life better for the group as a whole, and particularly for vulnerable people within it. In both cases the abuse continued for a generation while people in authority had some knowledge of what was happening. The same happened in the Catholic church, but the people who are protected by this kind of “political correctness” are the abusers and those in power, not the group in question. I think this is what the founder of the British Muslim Youth was talking about – minorities don’t need this kind of “support”.
That’s sort of his schtick though. He often makes broad, foolishly common, frankly bad and embarrassing jokes. The sort of jokes that a shitty comedian would. But delivers them in a sarcastic way, with a frame work that’s clearly about something else. Or flips it in an absurd direction to do the same. Which is why he often comes off as hacky, even back in the day. But it’s also why other comedians love him so much, And why he was so ground breaking and influential.
But his approach is angrier now, a little more pointed. And while I don’t know that his current stand up benefits from that (or clear lack of effort). It certainly a lot more interesting in the podcasts and talkshow approach he’s been mostly working in. Where he has some one to play directly off.
But that’s sort of beyond the point. He’s the sort of comedian who’s work can often fail, by nature of his base approach. Fail to be funny, fail to be understood, fail make sense even contextually. Which are all on him. Given that it’s sort of surprising that he hasn’t run into this sort of dispute. It’s also surprising that he doesn’t have a more complex read on the subject. Makes me wonder why the fuck he cares
You assume nobody would have any issues with it, but I disagree. There are a lot of nasty people out there who treat people from other groups with disrespect (not to mention fear, hatred, and anger) purely out of malice and fear. And there are those who have the power to do physically “disrespectful” things about (like shoot and kill young unarmed men), just for being a member of that group. Reversing that pattern is a goal I would hope we could all strive for.
I doubt that political correctness has resulted in any racist-burnings, but I may be wrong.
Authoritarianism implies the physical power to enforce. It seems to me the people pushing back really don’t have to worry about the Secret PC Police visiting late at night.
A lot of people complain about “ah, you’re over-sensitive.” I remember that a lot from my youth. Well, I think there are a lot of people in this country who are quite under-sensitive, and should damn well do something about it in order to make the world a somewhat better place.
I’m waiting for somebody to notice that this automated rewriting of another’s words is exactly the kind of narrow-mindedness that people have in mind when they speak of “PC.” It’s the action of someone who can’t be bothered to take the other person’s words as they are, who thinks he already knows what the other fellow is thinking (hint: he’s a bigot) and that therefore there’s no need to actually read what he wrote. Instead, you can just push a button and make his words disappear. This is exactly the sort of universe many PC types would create if they could only figure out a way to design a plugin for the entire universe.
