Political Correctness, or lack of it, is front and center in today’s highly-charged political and social arenas. Terry Howard joins me in reflecting on the true nature of PC, then and now. Check out Terry’s editorial followed by my own. We welcome your views on PC, so please add your comments.
by Terry Howard
Okay class, listen up.
What’s the biggest problem facing the United States today?
No Tim, not the economy,
Sorry Juan, not ISIS!
Nice try Sarah, but not our crumbling national infrastructure!
No, the biggest problem facing our nation in 2017, so sayeth the pundits, is political correctness or, to put it in their words, political correctness run amuck.
Now class, before we go any further, let’s step back briefly with a backgrounder on “PC.”
Decades ago, the growth of cultural diversity, primarily on college campuses, brought with shifting self-identities and identifications coupled with evolving languages. And what accompanied that trend was a growing confidence and assertiveness in people articulating how they wanted to be treated and what they wanted to be “called.”
For many those early assertions were communicated without rancor and with explanations relative why they expected the change. “Say Bob, got a second? Please address me as a woman and not as a girl, okay? I know you don’t mean to offend but when I’m referred to as a girl I feel devalued as a woman.” For others, those messages were delivered rather harshly and with little or no explanation. “Stop referring to me as girl, Bob. That’s offensive and shows how sexist you are!”
So what do we do?
The answer to that question for the person offended leads to other questions, among them how do you call out the change you’re seeking. If it comes across as a personal affront, defensiveness – and maybe even downright denial – could happen. And trickier still is, if the message is too soft, too polite or too vague or ambiguous, then it may be lost altogether.
On the other side, that of the offender, if he/she is unaccustomed to constructive feedback or sees nothing wrong with what was said or done, “you’re just being too PC” may be the retort or, if the message is too soft, he/she may miss it altogether.
Let’s listen in on the “PC” perspectives of two of my favorite columnists, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post and Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald.
Wrote Milbank, “The notion of political correctness has recently grown into the mother of all strawmen. Once a pejorative term applied to liberals’ determined not to offend any ethnic groups or other identify group, it now is used lazily by some conservatives to label everything classified under “that with which I disagree.”
Wrote Pitts, “(Screaming PC) is used to mean they are sick of not being able to insult blacks, Muslims, women and homosexuals as freely as they once did. But for all the (sometimes justified) criticism it receives. So called political correctness has at heart an important goal: language that is more inclusive, respectful and reflective of marginalized lives.”
Now please. Let’s cut through the chaise, the BS, and comes to grips with the reality is that PC is really a strawman (oops, or “straw woman”), a tepid excuse, a whiny cop out for the inability to hear and accept an important, albeit uncomfortable, message.
So the question is who goes first, where does the lion’s share of the responsibility reside in launching into a productive conversation when the stakes are so high, when relationships, reputations, egos, dignities and even careers are at stake?
So what’s at stake?
by Deborah Levine
I sat in the audience of a university theater and listened to elected officials and professors ruminate on inclusion in the upcoming election. It was Chicago in the 1990s and as in-your-face then as it is now. The discussion over race was loud and raucous as the candidates, Caucasian and African American, went toe to toe. As the debate turned to women, the all-male stage veered into the surreal. It turned into a shouting match as to who was more popular with the ladies. They gestured wildly about the numbers of women who called them, trying to prove that who was the more politically correct and more popular among the ladies.
The audience was more than 50% female with expressionless faces, rolling eyeballs, and a few yawns. I couldn’t resist, raised my hand, and stood when the emcee called on me. “I appreciate that the bias is unconscious but it’s foolish for a male-only stage to be fighting over who gets more calls from women. The correct alternative is to have women on stage who can speak for themselves.” My political correctness was a bulwark against discrimination, but also a threat.
After much nervous fidgeting, the emcee finally responded, “We tried! We invited the woman qualified to join us on stage, but she was busy.” To which I replied, “Any woman in this audience would be happy to name qualified women for you.” The debate then concluded, quickly.
Later, one of the speakers, David Axelrod, approached me and offered to be my campaign manager if I ran for office. Regrettably, I declined. Neither I was not prepared to take on the inevitable personal attacks and name calling. Instead, I added my voice through writing, following the old saying, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” It would take years of lobbying, protesting, and aggressive challenges to achieve a greater representation in leadership, politically and socially.
The political correctness label would be applied to the activist women with the intention of intimidating and marginalizing them. The term “Feminism” was continually hammered as political correctness on steroids. Feminists were stereotyped as nasty, masculine and emasculating, and ugly, too. As progress for women was made, we expected, but rejected the accusations. With time, it became politically incorrect to make them.
Yet, just a few years ago, I was told to “Wait my turn” while less-experienced male candidates were chosen for board positions. Was this unconscious bias or a backlash against my political correctness? Either way, I wasn’t surprised, and simply moved on.
Since the 2016 election, attacks on political correctness have been weaponized. Is it the anonymity of the internet or the surfacing of groups previously side-lined by a politically correct culture? Either way, I wasn’t surprised, but now it’s impossible to move on.
On LinkedIn, I was told that women must stop demanding preferential treatment. If they were qualified, there wouldn’t be any disparities. When I objected, I was accused of being a man-hating b**ch. That my“manufactured rage” would no longer be tolerated and political correctness was over.
Since that incident, the women’s marches grabbed the public’s attention. The women relished the label “nasty”, rejecting any enforcement of “ladylike.” We endured name-calling like “childish”, “ignorant”, “deluded”, “manipulated”, and “manipulative.” Some gleefully called the women fat, and ugly, too. This is what political correctness protected us against. Ask women, any woman, if she’s going to back down when called fat and ugly. No, the fight for political correctness isn’t over. A new phase has just begun.