Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learnt to Love PC
Thursday, April 20th, 2006 01:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robinturnerToday, one of my students e-mailed me to ask for information on Political Correctness, after I had set an essay which involved analysing current debates about this subject in terms of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. I answered as well as I could as a Turco-Brit who is confused by the fine differences between “African Americans”, “People of Colour” and “Niggas”—from where I am, all you American imperialists look the same. [ducks]
As though I hadn’t had enough of the PC debate to last me for several incarnations, I dutifully scoured the web for useful sources. What I found confirmed my original supposition (based on personal experience) that the term “political correctness” surfaced in the early ’80s as a left-wing in-joke, and was later taken up by right-wingers who, unsurprisingly, did not understand left-wing humour. This in turn prompted a reaction from the left, who intensified their efforts to bring the class war into the culture wars, but this was relatively insignificant compared to the efforts of well-meaning but essentially clueless liberals. Here I should stress that I mean “liberal” in the American sense of the word, which seems to mean someone who has no coherent political ideology (which is understandable), feels bad about the plight of those less privileged (which is laudable though sometimes inaccurate), feels guilty about their privileges (which is unnecessary) and believes that peace, justice and warm fuzzies can be achieved without any radical changes to capitalism if everyone behaves like American liberals (no comment).
It is thus that we encounter the famous absurdities of PC-speak. Terms for ethnic groups change every other year, with those who fail to keep up with the fashion being branded as racist. (While we’re at it, do you know the correct term for Lapps?) If you have a part of your body that doesn’t work, you may be handicapped, disabled, differently abled, or crippled. If you're a guy who likes having sex with other guys, you might be gay, queer or differently horny. Worst of all, if you’re poor, you might get branded as a “person of poverty”.
OK, enough fun. PC people come out with a lot of linguistic silliness, but so does anyone who attempts the thankless task of reforming language. Over here, the Turkish Language Institute prompted hilarity by suggesting gökgötürgeç konuksal avrad as an alternative to ostes (air hostess—the proposed alternative literally translates as “sky-send-implement guest-related mature female”). I also have some serious problems with the whole PC thing, because often it makes the left look silly, obscures real injustice by reducing everything to cultural niceties, and (in its more centrist forms) tries to pretend that capitalism would work fine if we got rid of prejudice and everyone had equal opportunities. However, these objections are trivial when weighed against the valuable service PC provides in pissing off conservatives. I react with amusement to the latest PC absurdities, but it drives right-wingers into fits of apoplexy. When I googled “political correctness”, almost all the results pointed to right-wing sites railing against it. In particular, a speech addressed to “2000 Consevative [sic] University at American University” caught my eye by attempting to trace PC back to Adorno and Marcuse. Personally, I find Adorno perceptive but depressing, and Marcuse rather silly, but anything that resurrects these two beloved bogeymen can’t be all that bad.
As though I hadn’t had enough of the PC debate to last me for several incarnations, I dutifully scoured the web for useful sources. What I found confirmed my original supposition (based on personal experience) that the term “political correctness” surfaced in the early ’80s as a left-wing in-joke, and was later taken up by right-wingers who, unsurprisingly, did not understand left-wing humour. This in turn prompted a reaction from the left, who intensified their efforts to bring the class war into the culture wars, but this was relatively insignificant compared to the efforts of well-meaning but essentially clueless liberals. Here I should stress that I mean “liberal” in the American sense of the word, which seems to mean someone who has no coherent political ideology (which is understandable), feels bad about the plight of those less privileged (which is laudable though sometimes inaccurate), feels guilty about their privileges (which is unnecessary) and believes that peace, justice and warm fuzzies can be achieved without any radical changes to capitalism if everyone behaves like American liberals (no comment).
It is thus that we encounter the famous absurdities of PC-speak. Terms for ethnic groups change every other year, with those who fail to keep up with the fashion being branded as racist. (While we’re at it, do you know the correct term for Lapps?) If you have a part of your body that doesn’t work, you may be handicapped, disabled, differently abled, or crippled. If you're a guy who likes having sex with other guys, you might be gay, queer or differently horny. Worst of all, if you’re poor, you might get branded as a “person of poverty”.
OK, enough fun. PC people come out with a lot of linguistic silliness, but so does anyone who attempts the thankless task of reforming language. Over here, the Turkish Language Institute prompted hilarity by suggesting gökgötürgeç konuksal avrad as an alternative to ostes (air hostess—the proposed alternative literally translates as “sky-send-implement guest-related mature female”). I also have some serious problems with the whole PC thing, because often it makes the left look silly, obscures real injustice by reducing everything to cultural niceties, and (in its more centrist forms) tries to pretend that capitalism would work fine if we got rid of prejudice and everyone had equal opportunities. However, these objections are trivial when weighed against the valuable service PC provides in pissing off conservatives. I react with amusement to the latest PC absurdities, but it drives right-wingers into fits of apoplexy. When I googled “political correctness”, almost all the results pointed to right-wing sites railing against it. In particular, a speech addressed to “2000 Consevative [sic] University at American University” caught my eye by attempting to trace PC back to Adorno and Marcuse. Personally, I find Adorno perceptive but depressing, and Marcuse rather silly, but anything that resurrects these two beloved bogeymen can’t be all that bad.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 06:01 am (UTC)I knew that because I'm a liberal American who hates political correctness, but does believe in self-determination. I'll go out of my way to call someone whatever they prefer to be called, as long as it's not ridiculous.
OK, I'm lying about knowing that for liberal reasons. I read the Wikipedia entries for the nordic countries two weeks ago. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 04:37 pm (UTC)I answered as well as I could as a Turco-Brit who is confused by the fine differences between “African Americans”, “People of Colour” and “Niggas”—from where I am, all you American imperialists look the same. [ducks]
I had about 50 simultaneous and contradictory internal reactions to this statement. "Amused" seemed to be the strongest reaction, so that's probably a good thing. The only thing I'll add is that there's a lot of history and context here, that I think a lot of people don't get. I'm African American (no hyphen), Black, black, a person of color, a person of the African Diaspora, and several other racial/cultural identifiers, all for various reasons and in various situations (though there are very few people on the planet who won't get a beat down for calling me a "nigger/a"). I'm also bi, queer and SGL in various situations, for various reasons. But that's an essay in itself. And no, I don't think anyone who can't keep up is a racist or a homophobe. People who're dismissive or contemptuous of the needs of various groups to identify themselves on their own terms for political and other reasons do get on my nerves, though.
I also have some serious problems with the whole PC thing, because often it makes the left look silly, obscures real injustice by reducing everything to cultural niceties, and (in its more centrist forms) tries to pretend that capitalism would work fine if we got rid of prejudice and everyone had equal opportunities.
This is pretty much my biggest problem with a lot of what PC has turned into. I also have a problem with conservatives dismissing any serious discussion of a lot of issues by calling things PC. Someone brings up racism? Just call it PC and end the discussion. Someone brings up heterosexism? Shut down the discussion by calling it PC. Want to talk about gender relations? Forget that PC nonsense. It's frustrating.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-20 07:56 pm (UTC)I think it's interesting that people are starting to write "google (v.)" in all lower-case letters. Is it changing from being a proper name to a generic term for any kind of web search? Do people go to Yahoo to google information?
Just thinking out loud.
Googling
Date: 2006-04-21 07:56 am (UTC)WILLOW: Have you googled yet?
XANDER: Willow, she's only seventeen!
Incidentally, it was quite recently that I found out what a google actually is.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-21 09:13 am (UTC)Indeed. One of the things I mentioned in my reply to my student is that we need to distinguish between the different reasons people may have for dismissing PC. There is a big difference between a traditional leftist who regards it as a distraction from "real" political struggle, a liberal/libertarian who sympathises with the motivation but is worried about the social engineering aspect, a linguistic conservative who objects to the terminology but not necessarily to the ideas behind it, and a political/religious conservative who uses objections to the terminology as a smokescreen to disguise objections to the principles behind it.
By the way, what's SGL? Being the geek I am, I originally read it as SGML, and thought "She identifies as a mark-up language? Cool, though if I were a language, I'd definitely be LaTeX."
no subject
Date: 2006-04-21 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-21 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-21 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-21 04:51 pm (UTC)