Political correctness

"Politically incorrect" redirects here. For the American television show, see Politically Incorrect. For other uses, see Politically incorrect (disambiguation).

Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and, as purported by the term, doing so to an excessive extent.

Historically, in the 18th century, the term Politically Correct appeared in U.S. law, in a political-lawsuit judged and decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1793. In the 20th century, the term was a European political usage among Communist and Socialist parties, which they applied pejoratively in their party debates, about what was and what was not the politically correct (official) policy to be voiced, supported, and abided — as determined by Josef Stalin, leader of the U.S.S.R., in his capacity as the principal ideologist for every Communist party in the world.

In contemporary usage, the terms PC, politically correct, and political correctness are pejorative descriptors, whereas, the term politically incorrect is used by opponents of PC as an implicitly positive self-description, as in the cases of the conservative, topical book-series The Politically Incorrect Guide, and the liberal, television talk-show program Politically Incorrect. In which cultural and sociologic matters, the term denotes and connotes that the speaker and the writer use language and proffer ideas, and practice behaviors that are unconstrained by a perceived “liberal” orthodoxy, and by over-sensitive concerns about expressing political biases that might offend people who do not share such cultural perspectives.

Historical usage

The phrase–term politically correct did not occur much in the language and culture of the U.S. until the late 20th century; yet its earlier occurrences were in contexts that did not communicate the social disapproval inherent to the contemporary terms political correctness and politically correct.

18th century

James Wilson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1789–98)

In the 18th century, usage of the term “Politically Correct” occurs in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), wherein the term meant “in line with prevailing political thought or policy”. In that legal case, the term correct was applied literally, with no reference to socially offensive language; thus the comments of Associate Justice James Wilson, of the U.S. Supreme Court:

The states, rather than the people, for whose sake 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 . . . “The United States”, instead of the “People of the United States”, is the toast given. This is not politically correct.

— Our Great Republic: Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793)

20th century

In the 20th century, contemporary uses of the phrase “Politically Correct” date from the dogmatic application of Stalinist doctrine, debated between formal Communists and Socialists, during the mid 20th century. The first use of the term in the typical modern sense is stated in William Safire's Safire's Political Dictionary to be by Toni Cade in the 1970 [[anthology The Black Woman, where she wrote "A man cannot be politically correct and a chauvinst too".

In the essay “Uncommon Differences: On Political Correctness, Core Curriculum and Democracy in Education” (1992), the American educator Herbert Kohl explains the doctrinaire nature, practical application, and consequences (moral and intellectual) inherent to such social control:

As the ideological leader of Communism, Josef Stalin determined the politically correct doctrines for the communist parties of the world.

I first heard the phrase politically correct in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in reference to the political debates between Socialists and members of the United States Communist Party (CP). These debates were an everyday occurrence in my neighborhood in the Bronx, until the McCarthy committee and HUAC silenced political talk on the streets. Members of the CP talked about current party doctrine as the “correct” line for the moment. During World War II, the Hitler–Stalin Pact caused many CP members considerable pain, and often disgrace, on my block, which was all Jewish, and mostly Socialist.

The “correct” position on Stalin’s alliance with Hitler was considered to be ridiculous, a betrayal of European Jewry, as well as Socialist ideas. The term “politically correct” was used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in equalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.

Given that history, it was surprising to hear right-wing intellectuals, in the 1990s, using the phrase “politically correct” to disparage students and professors who advocate multiculturalism, and [who] are willing to confront racism, sexism, or homophobia at the university. Yet, it is not uncommon, for example, for right-wing critics to accuse students (or other professors) who insist that women’s voices, or the voices of people of color, be included in the curriculum, of making rigid, oppressive demands that infringe upon academic freedom. The implication of these accusations is that people calling for compliance with antisexist and antiracist education today are similar to the Communist party hard-liners who insisted on compliance with the “correct” line on the Hitler–Stalin pact.

It is a clever ploy on the part of neoconservatives, a number of whom were former CP members, and know how the phrase politically correct was used in the past, to insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian, orthodox, and Communist-influenced, when they oppose the right of people to be racist, sexist, and homophobic. The accusation of being “politically correct” is a weapon used by right-wing professors, and publicized by conservative media critics, to protect themselves against criticisms of their own biases, by students or other, usually younger, professors. It is a way of diverting the issue of bias within the university to issues of freedom of speech without acknowledging that the right to question professorial authority is also a free speech matter.

— “Uncommon Differences”, The Lion and the Unicorn Journal

Contemporary usages

United Kingdom

In the U.K., “political correctness gone mad” is a catchphrase usually associated with the politically conservative Daily Mail newspaper.

United States

In the 1970s, the New Left had adopted the term political correctness; hence, in the essay The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970), Toni Cade Bambara said that “a man cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist, too.” In the event, the New Left then applied the term as self-critical satire, about which Debra Shultz said that “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”. As such, PC is a popular usage in the comic book Merton of the Movement, by Bobby London, which then was followed by the term ideologically sound, in the comic strips of Bart Dickon. Moreover, in the essay “Toward a feminist Revolution” (1992)Ellen Willis said that:

In the early eighties, 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”

— No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays

Mainstream usages of the term politically correct, and its adjectival derivatives — “political correctness” and “PC” — began in the 1990s, when right-wing politicians adopted the phrase as a pejorative descriptor of their ideologic enemies — especially in context of the Culture Wars about language and the content of public-school curricula. Generally, any policy, behavior, and speech code that the speaker or the writer regards as the imposition of a liberal orthodoxy about people and things, can be described and criticized as “politically correct”. In The New York Times newspaper article “The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct”, the reporter Richard Bernstein said that:

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.

— The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct, NYT (28 October 1990)

Bernstein also reported about a meeting of the Western Humanities Conference in Berkeley, California, on the subject of “Political Correctness” and Cultural Studies that examined “what effect the pressure to conform to currently fashionable ideas is having on scholarship”.

In 1991, U.S. President H.W. Bush (1989–93) spoke against the strictures of politically correct tolerance.

In the event, the previously obscure, ideological term from mainstream politics, became common-currency in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against the substantive expansion of the curriculum of and against progressive teaching methods in the secondary schools and universities (public and private) of the U.S. Hence, in 1991, at a commencement ceremony for a graduating class of the University of Michigan, U.S. President George H.W. Bush (1989–93) alluded to the political correctness of liberalism, when he spoke against:

. . . a movement [that would] declare certain topics ‘off-limits’, certain expressions ‘off-limits’, even certain gestures ‘off-limits’. . . .

— U.S. President H.W. Bush, at the University of Michigan (4 May 1991)

Practical application

The principal applications of political correctness concern the practices of awareness and toleration of the sociologic differences among people of different races and genders; of physical and mental disabilities; of ethnic group and sexual orientation; of religious background, and of ideologic world-view. Specifically, the praxis of political correctness is in the descriptive vocabulary that the speaker and the writer use in effort to eliminate the prejudices inherent to cultural, sexual, and racist stereotypes with culturally neutral terms, such as the locutions, circumlocutions, and euphemisms presented in the Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (1993) such as:

• “Intellectually disabled” in place of mentally retarded

• “African American” in place of Black, Negro, and Nigger

• “Native American” in place of Indian, in the United States

• “First Nations” in place of Indian, in Canada

• Gender-neutral terms such as “firefighter” in place of fireman and firewoman, “police officer” in place of policeman and policewoman

• Value-free terms describing physical disabilities, such as “visually impaired” in place of blind and “hearing impaired” in place of deaf

• Value-free cultural terms, such as “Holiday season” and “Winter holiday”, in place of Christmas, which respect the faiths of the non–Christian people of a society.

In the event, opponents of such compound-descriptor words and prolix usages, apply the terms “politicallly correct”, “political correctness” and “PC” as pejorative and obscurantist criticism, denoting and connoting apparently excessive deference to particular social sensibilities, at the expense of common-sense considerations of language, thought, and action. Conversely, opponents of political correctness then employed the term “politically incorrect” to communicate that they were unafraid to ignore the social constraints inherent to politically-correct speech. From such opposition emerged the culturally liberal television talk-show program Politically Incorrect (1993–2002), and the culturally conservative book series of The Politically Incorrect Guide to a given subject, such as the U.S. Constitution, Capitalism, and The Bible.

In the book The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America (1995), liberal opponents of the racially-determined-I.Q.-theory proposed in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) argued against the conservative and reactionary propositions that genetic determinism explains the statistical intelligence-test-score differences between black people and white people, and thus explained and justified the socio-economic inequality inherent to U.S. society. Moreover, in that matter, the conservatives said that criticism of their racialist and mono-cultural perspectives is unfair, because it is based upon the political correctness derived from a liberal and humanist worldview.

Linguistics

Main articles: Linguistic relativity, Linguistic determinism, Gender-neutral language, and People-first language

In the American Speech journal article “Cultural Sensitivity and Political Correctness: The Linguistic Problem of Naming” (1996), Edna Andrews said that the usage of culturally inclusive and gender-neutral language is based upon the concept that “language represents thought, and may even control thought”. Andrews’s proposition is conceptually derived from the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis, which proposes that the grammatical categories of a language shape the ideas, thoughts, and actions of the speaker. Moreover, Andrews said that politically moderate conceptions of the language–thought relationship suffice to support the “reasonable deduction . . . [of] cultural change via linguistic change” reported in the Sex Roles journal article “Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language” (2000), by Janet B. Parks and Mary Ann Robinson.

Moreover, other cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics works, such as the articles "Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction: An Example of the Interaction between Language and Memory" (1974) in the Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, and “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice” (1981) in the journal Science indicated that a person’s word-choice has significant framing effects upon the perceptions, memories, and attitudes of the speaker and of the listener.

Consequently, the advocates of culturally inclusive language and of gender-neutral language have proposed that such locutions are necessary, because:

1. The rights, opportunities, and freedoms of discriminated people are restricted when they are reduced to racial and sexual stereotypes.
2. Stereotyping is implicit, unconscious, and facilitated by the availability and acceptability of pejorative labels and terms.
3. Rendering pejorative labels and terms socially unacceptable, the prejudiced users of such language then must consciously think about how they describe someone unlike him- or herself.
4. Labelling is a conscious action, and the elimination of a stereotype then shows the labelled person’s individual identity as a man or a woman who is unlike the prejudiced speaker.

In the event, the critics of cultural diversity and of inclusive language, commonly oppose the identification of such social power disparities by dismissing the matter as superficial political correctness.

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. Alternatively put, the new terms gradually acquire the same disparaging connotations as the old terms. The new terms are thus devalued, and another set of words must be coined, giving rise to lengthy progressions such as Negro, Colored, Black, Afro-American, African-American, and so on, (cf. Euphemism treadmill).

Criticism

General

The philosopher Julia Kristeva said that U.S. Political Correctness is a distorted and totalitarian application of her work.

The journalist Peter Hitchens said that American Political Correctness is an imported cultural product pernicious to British society.

The academic Camille Paglia said that political correctness empowers the enemies of the Left wing, and alienates the masses against feminism:

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 [of] 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.

Moreover, the structuralist philosopher Julia Kristeva said that PC is an as American distortion of her works, especially noting that identity politics and political correctness are totalitarian practices.

In The Abolition of Britain (1999), Peter Hitchens said that:

What Americans describe with the casual phrase . . . “political correctness” is the most intolerant system of thought to dominate the British Isles since the Reformation.

In the Civitas think tank pamphlet, The Retreat of Reason: Political Correctness and the Corruption of Public Debate in Modern Britain (2006), the British politician Anthony Browne said that:

The most overt racism, sexism, and homophobia in Britain is now among the weakest groups, in ethnic minority communities, because their views are rarely challenged, as challenging them equates to oppressing them.

— The Retreat of Reason (2006),

Nonetheless, Inayat Bunglawala, media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the opinions of Anthony Browne are misleading and ludicrous about the societal realities of the peoples who are contemporary Britain.

Exclusion of certain groups

An article by Larry Elder in FrontPage Magazine referred to an incident on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect where the term "white trash" was used in reference to guests on the Jerry Springer Show and asked 'Why Is It Okay to Say "White Trash?"'. Commenting on this, and citing an instance of the term in a glossy magazine, blogger Ed Driscoll asked "Why Is "White Trash" An Acceptable Phrase In PC America?".

Cultural Marxism

Main article: Cultural Marxism

University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate connect political correctness to Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. They claim that liberal ideas of free speech are repressive, arguing that such "Marcusean logic" is the base of speech codes, which are seen by some as censorship, in US universities. Kors and Silvergate later established the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which campaigns against PC speech codes.

Conservative critics of political correctness said that it is a Marxist philosophy undermining the values of the western World. William S. Lind and Patrick Buchanan said that PC as a social-engineering technique originated by the Frankfurt School, by means of what Buchanan described as Cultural Marxism. In the book The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Culture and Civilization (2001), Buchanan said that:

Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a régime to punish dissent, and to stigmatize social heresy, as the Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance.

— The Death of the West (2001),

Higher education

See also: Higher education in the United States § Political views

A conservative criticism of higher education in the United States is that the political views of the faculty are much more liberal than the general population, and that this situation contributes to an atmosphere of political correctness.

Counterclaims

Engineered political term

The principal criticism of the concept of political correctness is that conservatives and reactionaries have demogogically used the terms politically correct and political correctness as red herrings, for mere political gain, by appeallng to the baser instincts (emotions, prejudices, ignorance) and fears (cultural, social, economic) of the men and women who are their constituencies; and as an ideologic attack upon the principles, ideals, and policies of the political Left wing. In the 1980s, the U.S. right wing re-engineered the originally left-wing term to re-frame U.S. national politics as a culture war. In The Observer newspaper article, “Words Really are Important, Mr Blunkett” (2001), Will Hutton said:

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.

— “Words Really are Important, Mr Blunkett”, The Observer (16 December 2001)

The British journalist Polly Toynbee identified complaints against “political correctness” as a right-wing code word for social intolerance.

Despite there never having been a formal “Political Correctness Movement” in the U.S., liberal commentators said that the conservatives and reactionaries who used the term did so in effort to digress political discussion away from the substantive matters of resolving societal discrimination — such as racial, social class, gender, and legal inequality — against people whom the right-wing do not consider part of the social mainstream.

In the U.K., in The Guardian newspaper article ““Religion Must be Removed from all Functions of the State” (2001), Polly Toynbee said that “the phrase is an empty, right-wing smear, designed only to elevate its user”; and in the article “This Bold Equality Push is just what We Needed”, about the Equality Act of 2010, Polly Toynbee said 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.

— “This Bold Equality Push is just what We Needed”, The Guardian (28 April 2009)

Right-wing political correctness

Right wing political correctness was manifest in the Dixie Chicks political controversy, when they criticized U.S. President G.W. Bush for launching a pre-emptive war against Iraq in 2003. At a concert in London, on 10 March 2003, they introduced the song “Travelin’ Soldier”, they said:

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.

— 

The newspaper columnist Don Williams said that such criticism is the price for speaking freely about one’s disapproval of the Iraq War, and that “the ugliest form of political correctness occurs whenever there’s a war on. Then you’d better watch what you say”; and he noted that the right-wing television-commentators Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly had said that the Dixie Chicks’ remarks were treasonous.

Examples of politically correct right-wing language, included the business community renaming French-fried potatoes “Freedom fries”. In 2004, then Australian Labour leader Mark Latham described conservative calls for “civility” in politics as “The New Political Correctness”.

Paul Krugman said that “the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which — unlike the liberal version — has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order”.

False accusations

In the United Kingdom, 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. See also Baa Baa White Sheep.

Science

See also: Politicization of science

Among scientists, the correctness of procedure, result, and consequent scientific data derives from the factual truth of the matter, and from the soundness of the reasoning by which it can be deduced from observations, first principles, and quantifiable results. When the publication, teaching, and public funding of science is decided by peer committees, academic standards, and either an elected or an appointed board, the conservative allegation can arise that the acceptability of a scientific work was assessed politically. As such, in What is Political Correctness (1999), the physicist Jonathan I. Katz applies the term PC as censure, characterized by emotional discourse rather than by rational discourse.

Conservative and reactionary groups who oppose certain generally accepted scientific views about evolution, second-hand tobacco smoke, AIDS, and other politically contentious scientific matters, said that PC liberal orthodoxy of academia is the reason why their perspectives of those matters fail to receive a fair public hearing; thus, in Lamarck's Signature: How Retrogenes are Changing Darwin's Natural Selection Paradigm (1999), Prof. Edward J. Steele said:

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!

— 

In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (2005), Tom Bethell said that mainstream science is dominated by politically-correct thinking. He argues that many scientists are motivated more by passionate emotion than by dispassionate reason.

Satirical use

Political correctness often is satirized, 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 South Park cartoon program 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.

British comedian Stewart Lee satirized the oft-used phrase "it's political correctness gone mad". Lee criticized people for overusing this expression without understanding the concept of political correctness (including many people's confusion of it with Health & Safety laws). He in particular criticized Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn for his overzealous use of the phrase.

See also

3

Further reading

• 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.

• 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
• 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
• 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

• Politically correct and proud of it Observer Special Report by Will Hutton
• Possible origins of the term at www.linguist.org
• Global Language Monitor's annual lists of politically correct language and controversies since 2003.
• "Shortcuts" by Thomas Jones, discusses the term "political correctness" in British discourse, London Review of Books, December 1, 2005
• A list of examples cited by the Daily Mail of political correctness in the UK