March 15, 2006
Political Correctness Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 11:00 AM EST John Steele Gordon’s point about the spelling of non-English (often transliterated) words is well-taken, but I’m somewhat uncomfortable with his invocation of the term “politically correct.” Working as I do in a university setting, I often hear more conservative voices—in and outside of the academy—bandy the phrase about with very little precision. In effect, anything that remotely disturbs the old order of things can be discredited as “politically correct,” code for a seemingly coercive, overly sensitive, rights-based persuasion that privileges “special interests” over the general populace. (Let me emphasize that my remarks are not a rebuke of John Steele Gordon; I found his specific post about spelling both entertaining and intellectually challenging.) The trouble is, of course, that what conservative critics often dismiss as “politically correct” is little more that polite. A few examples: Unless we knowingly attempt to invoke an anachronism, we no longer describe African-Americans as “Negroes” or as “colored.” Why? Because these terms are fraught with ideological meaning; they were imposed on African-Americans by white Americans. Similarly, we don’t (or shouldn’t) lump tens of millions of human beings together under the vague category “oriental.” Why? Because the term “oriental” is and always has been pejorative, and it incorrectly defines as unitary a vast array of national, ethnic, and religious groups. By the same token, whereas my colleagues 40 years ago would refer to their female students as “girls,” I call them “women,” as do the more perceptive of their male student counterparts. Why? Because 18-year-old women are women, not girls. They can serve in the military, bear children, and be tried in adult courts. In short, what many critics dismiss as “political correctness” is no more than a belated attempt to recognize that we live in a more democratic, pluralistic and inclusive culture than 100 or even 25 years ago. Women and African-Americans enjoy full citizenship rights, which was not the case until the 1960s; immigration, sharply curtailed between 1924 and 1965, once again provides the United States with an important influx of ambitious and diverse newcomers; and we are coming, by and by, to recognize that gay and lesbian Americans want nothing so radical as a simple piece of the American dream—stable homes and families, good jobs, safe communities. Do supporters of pluralism and popular democracy sometimes go overboard? Sure, I guess they do. But the naysayers—those who freely invoke the cry of “politically correct! politically correct!”—are gesturing at a bygone world that most thinking people would prefer not to revisit. In short, if they don’t like a country where women, immigrants, ethnic minorities, and gays and lesbians are treated with full equality and dignity, then, to throw an old conservative cry back at the source, they should go back where they came from. The nineteenth century.
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