I know, the link states “It shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the rural dialects of the Southern United States” though.
It’s not about the dialect, it’s about racial stereotypes.
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Nope. That implicit, racist (and/or sometimes classist), and usually unconscious presumption of superiority is definitely part of the problem.
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Dude, wake up, this has been going on for 12 years now:
Massachusetts Supreme Court Orders All Citizens To Gay Marry[quote=“nemomen, post:95, topic:90681”]
Political correctness exists sort of, though its nature is the trick. By and large it’s just a means of being polite/empathetic about the effects one’s language can have on others, and in that sense it’s just normal human group behavior of establishing a set of manners for how we treat each other so we can get along.
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I’ve been thinking a lot in the last year about the “political” part of “politically correct.” That is, what separates political correctness from simple correctness. When I use the pronoun “she” to refer to a trans woman, I am not being politically correct, I’m simply being correct. I think people rail against political correctness because it is obvious from the phrase itself that it means disingenuousness. Whether it once meant something else doesn’t really matter at this point.
I think the left-wing vision of political correctness is (to borrow a phrase from Neil MacDonald) “early-onset politeness” - a place where you haven’t successfully internalized your understanding of a group of people so you are doing your best to use the words and phrases you’ve been taught to use (some people go from, “I don’t care what you call yourself, men are still men and women are still women,” to “Apparently I’m suppose to say ‘she’ so I guess I’ll try to do that,” on their way to, “Oh, yeah, trans women are women.”). From the right-wing political correctness is outright lies to cover up genuine opinions that would hurt you chance of election (people who think, “Jews are inhuman monsters who are controlling the world through the media” and simultaneously think, "I better not say anything bad about Jews in public.).
I was just reading an article today about how the social isolation of men makes them very vulnerable to extremist groups. Groups that recruit young men to vote for Trump or blow things up for ISIS will actively encourage the (mostly) men who join them not to discuss the issue with friends or family - to make a clean separation between their online and real world politics. That, of course, should remind us of how cults behave and recruit.
That kind of separation wears on people. It’s difficult to keep up a facade all the time. I think people on the right tire of political correctness and eagerly embrace politicians who seem to go against it because hiding who you are and what you think in order to please other people is an unhappy way to live your life (and that’s true whether you are hiding that you are gay or hiding that you are a nazi, even if we rightly have less sympathy for the plight of the latter). Anyway, all of that to say that I think the reason why we see such a disconnect with political correctness is because those of us who think of it as “early-onset politeness” can’t understand why other see it as so horrible and why they feel victimized by it.
I’ve taken to asking everyone who comes will eat at my place, “Do you have any dietary restrictions I should know about?” Allergies, religious restrictions, lactose intolerance, super tasters, vegetarians, celiac, and on and on and on. I know people often think of asking this when they meet someone of a culture they aren’t all that familiar with, but it turns out we should just ask everybody.
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Funny enough demanders of a polite society are rarely so polite when dealing with the person and their desires, only how the person wishes to discuss the demander’s opinion of the person.
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I think that’s the main problem, based upon what I have read. As for my post which was controversial, I wonder how many people here would classify Malcolm X as “conformist”. Also, on the internet, I don’t assume what race or ethnicity anybody might be. Also I asked about what people think about the use of “articulate” when applied to other groups who are neither black nor white, or used by those who aren’t white. Perhaps there isn’t much consensus about those cases.
I wonder how much these cultural expectations tie into DuBois’ concept of double consciousness. I have been told that I exemplify “proper” Anglo speech, even though I don’t consider myself European. Is there inescapable oppressive influence of having inherited that language rather than one more true to my heritage? How about the “other kinds of Indians” in India who often strive to use English carefully - are they all just Victorian dupes? If I frame my concerns in English, are they really any more or less valid than an African American person doing so in English rather than from some more purely African model?
I think that it’s especially tricky as a bi/multi-racial person. If I communicate via a European model, then I am embodying imperialism one way by importing it here and normalizing it, but if I communicate with a Native model then I am appropriating something people argue I am not entitled to.
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Those suffering from early onset politeness have learned to refer to us as Zionists rather than just directly calling us Jews.
Seriously though, there are plenty of us who consider ourselves Conservative for whom manners are very very important. This is not something the Left has a monopoly on.
Very kind. As a tip, if you are ever inviting people who are seriously kosher dont feel bad if they beg off with “oh thats OK you dont need to prepare anything for me” kind of words. Most likely they will either have eaten beforehand or maybe even bring their own food. Dont feel offended in any way, its not a commentary on your cooking or manners, its just much easier for us to do this than to try and explain that we cant even eat a simple vegetable dish prepared in a kitchen that has not been kashered in advance.
If in the rare case that someone says they will bring their own food, if you assure them that you have disposable plates and utensils and well as lots of aluminum or plastic wrap to use when heating up a dish, they will be relieved.
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Sigh. Doubling-down dudes just gotta double down.
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I guess. Do you have any particular examples in mind?
I thought that the whole idea of emancipating people is to help people to define themselves, rather than snarkily try to define this for them on the assumption that our “camp” knows better.
What kind of dude are you, then?
Correct = “a trans woman is a woman”
Politically Incorrect = “hurr durr it’s a man in a dress”
Politically Correct (Left) = “hurr durr it’s a man in a dress she’s a woman, and that’s all I notice”
Politically Correct (Right) = “she’s a woman, and that’s all I notice just kidding, folks, it’s a man in a dress hurr durr, amirite? we’re all thinking it!”
I keep my politics hidden from my parents because it’s pragmatic. They are Fox News zombies. Whenever I call home they bombard me with the latest Fox News nontroversy, and I have to either be quiet or fight with them. It’s much easier to stay quiet, because pointing out bullshit does nothing. If it’s on the news it must be true, amirite? They know I’m left of them because I don’t think Obama is the literal antichrist, but they don’t know how far left.
I keep my political views to myself just to preserve civility, because other people shove their repellent views in my face all the time. Something has to give sooner or later, and I’m not sure what to do except engage in circular arguments that just deplete me of all my energy.
In my grandparents’ day, and how I was raised, someone else prepared a large meal, and I had to take at least a spoonful of everything, unless doing so would literally kill me. Suggesting that the host cook something special for me implies that I am finicky, set in my ways, ungracious for asking the host to go out of their way for me, and smug for thinking I know what to cook better than the host does. Heavens forfend that I don’t eat something the host makes, because that would be extremely ungrateful and also insulting the host’s cooking. I have no idea what my grandparents (or even my parents) would think of dietary choices such as vegetarianism, because they had no concept of dietary choice. As far as celiac/lactose/etc issues, that would probably not be sufficient either, because one spoonful of something isn’t the end of the world. If a lactose intolerant person eats dairy it will be bad for them, but it won’t be anaphylactic shock bad.
Nowadays, I just ask people what they want to eat, or if there’s anything specifically they don’t want or can’t have. It’s much easier this way. Less Old World emotional baggage, less Midwestern passive-aggressiveness. I try to be this way in all my interactions, as open and direct as possible. I think giving people options and treating them as individuals show that I care about them as people and that I’m putting their needs in front of my own, but I may be wrong.
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You forget that I figured it out long ago. You don’t fool me.
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Okay, so maybe I’m heavy handed with the right/left distinction. I think the two versions of political correctness is valid and the distinction between them helps explain why people get so angry about political correctness, but “Zionist” is dog-whistle paper-over-real-beliefs political correctness that you see in both the left and the right. Somehow we talk about North Korea’s human rights abuses without having to find a coded word to talk about people of North Korean descent.
Yeah, ultimately there are things we can accommodate and things we can’t. I can’t take back the fact that my plates have been used for both meat and dairy, but I can have a few paper plates around. One of my children has a severe allergy and I’ve on numerous occasions baked a cupcake at home for her to take along to a birthday party. Sometimes people hosting the party seem embarrassed or apologetic that I had to go to the trouble, but I don’t expect everyone to live their entire lives centered around my kid, I just hope we can all respect each other.
Thank you for this excellent summary. But in deference to @Israel_B I will amend my (Right) and (Left) to (A) and (B) and leave the correlations of these kinds of political correctness to political wings to the sociologists.
I have a problematic relative who everyone seems to tiptoe around, but I feel like I’m going to have to say something. She’s in her mid-90’s and I think many have been taking a “wait for her to die” approach to dealing with her views for a while, but I wonder if she’ll end up outliving us all. A few times recently when I’ve seen her she’s said something about Muslim culture taking over Christian culture in North America. She doesn’t vote for Canada’s actively racist party (something about not trusting out last prime minister because she met his father a long time ago), and I can shrug it off but I have young children. I don’t want my four-year-old being told she should be worried about Muslims when she isn’t old enough to figure out for herself that great grandma is full of shit (she might be old enough to figure that out since a third of her class is Muslim, but I have no idea what context or information she has about that).
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What I try to do in such instances is listen carefully, fully acknowledge my mistake and my understanding of it (instead of sucking up oxygen by repeatedly defending it), apologize, and move on.
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Why do you assume that I am “defending” anything? If people feel a need to assert that something is a mistake, then it is reasonable to assume they will be willing to explain how and why it is mistaken. So I try to create some discussion about something that the fucking innuendo squad likes to hint is important enough to shame wag about, but not actually explain in any detail. That is a level of openness to learning that apparently others are not willing to meet. I am giving people the benefit of the doubt, and making space for a lesson that never comes.
Sorry, but “That’s wrong, shame on you!” might be accurate, but it is in no way explanatory or educational. As I mentioned earlier in the topic, it is a disrespectful and lazy tactic for trying to replace dialog with opprobrium. I think it demonstrates itself to be doctrinaire and reactionary.
It dilutes actual discourse about social issues into derails about insults and personal problems between the participants. It also demonstrates a weird sort of entitlement, where people here can by proxy feel insulted about a comment I made about somebody else. Who here is qualified to defend the dignity of Malcolm X, as if he even needed that? Part of the problem of being a “minority” is that besides the oppressors, on the other side you get well-intentioned people who think they can defend from the outside what YOUR ethnicity, gender, class, etc means to YOU, with no pause to consider how disrespectful that can appear. It is merely a more benign form of authoritarianism.
But I doubt if my expressing all of that will make any difference to those on auto-pilot who may still comment while not demonstrating that they made any effort to read or understand what I said, or why exactly they might disagree with it.
wtf?[quote=“popobawa4u, post:153, topic:90681”]
Sorry, but “That’s wrong, shame on you!” might be accurate, but it is in no way explanatory or educational. As I mentioned earlier in the topic, it is a disrespectful and lazy tactic for trying to replace dialog with opprobrium. I think it demonstrates itself to be doctrinaire and reactionary.
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Who said anything about shame?
“Dude, you should rethink that thing you said” =/= “Shame on you! You should feel ashamed!”
“Disrespectful”? So now you’re the victim? Hmm, where have I seen this strategy before…?
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I did, you just quoted it, did you not?
What is doctrinaire is that “rethink” suggests that I am magically going to understand what you, or anyone else thinks is wrong with it. The implication is that there is somehow a consensus about a “correct” way for me to have spoken, and that if I stumble around in the dark I will through trial-and-error know which way is “correct”. That is not education, that is simple conditioning. That’s why I mentioned shame and opprobrium, because it is precisely how those methods are designed to work. It is also intellectually dishonest, because it suggests that those who appear not to share the some social views aren’t thinking effectively. It suggests a token answer, and aversion to nuance or context.
You did not read very closely, as I never stated that it was disrespectful to me personally (although it so happens that it is). And if you interpret my saying so as a strategy, then what does that strategy aim to achieve?
Why hasn’t anybody touched any of the questions I asked about this? Is it insulting for a black person to describe another black person as being “articulate”? Is it insulting for another minority to describe a black person as “articulate”? That’s why I dismiss it as a pat token answer, because nobody has been willing to discuss the issue, as these questions are outside of the framing of the controversy. There is only what consensus we make, and we don’t do that by resorting to making snarky personal remarks about each other. Why tell people to listen if you then decline to actually explain anything? Wouldn’t that simply make it silencing of an awkward question, an appeal to conformity over dialog?
We’ve had this conversation many times before, so on the pain of repeating myself; you say this a lot, in nearly every thread, in many comments to many others.
So.
Either everyone here is exceptionally bad at reading your words, or something else is going on.
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It’s a nonhuman thing, you just wouldn’t understand.
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There are at least as many Zionist Christians as there are Jewish Zionists, and it’s certainly possible that the Christians do more damage, by funding the worst of the violent invasive Zionist factions. I don’t know for sure.
If someone opposes Zionism, Zionist propaganda, and the worst policies of the state of Israel (all of which topics are outside the scope of this thread) that opposition provides precisely zero evidence that they are anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic.
Speaking for myself only, I believe that Zionism is inherently harmful to all Semitic peoples, and to the Judaic sects. Deconstructing that belief into some kind of imagined bigotry does not reveal anything in my heart, it only reflects some cherished wound in the heart of the deconstructor.
What the Left calls “dog whistles” and the Right calls “code words” really do exist - but when we start replacing people’s words in order to change what someone said into whatever statement we want to set ourselves against, we become ridiculous, and self-defeating.
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It’s not what you say but how you say it.
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Exactly.
Which is why people who want to communicate need to stop listening to their own past and listen in the present. Truly understanding how I said it requires listening with an open mind and heart, and not carrying baggage from things I don’t even know about.
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