What is political correctness?

[tell-me-more]

Is it a positive or negative attribute?

[bernardo]

Overwhelmingly positive.

It has become increasingly common in recent years for newspapers, television and politicians to refer to the phenomenon of Political Correctness as if it were a single specific entity which can be controlled or manipulated for political purposes.  The Conservative Party leader Michael Howard recently devoted an entire speech to the subject, and the UKIP even lists it in its five evils - along with the EU, crime, overcrowding and bureaucracy - from which we should have "freedom".  It is not unknown for the letters pages in newspapers or teletext to contain letters from embittered members of the public demanding that it should be "banned".

A common theme running through most of this thinking is the unstated implication, and the subconscious assumption, that Political Correctness is intrinsically a bad thing, or that its very existence is to be regretted as a corrosive influence on the fabric of our everyday lives.  Indeed, it is uncommon for references to be other than the standard mantra of "Political Correctness Gone Mad".

In light of this negative onslaught, it should be remembered that Political Correctness is not a single simple thing; nor is it necessarily bad.  In its modern form, it started developing in the 1960s and 1970s as a response to the narrow social restrictions of earlier times.  Political Correctness means that it is no longer socially acceptable for landlords to display notices saying "No Blacks" or "No Asians"; or for police officers to refer to suspects as "queer" or "******"; or for official forms unthinkingly to ask someone to give their "Christian name". 

[bernardo]

(continued)

It means that it is legitimate for a large company to monitor the ethnicity of those who apply for employment, in order to ensure opennness and fairness, without automatically being accused of unfair discrimination.  It means that those in positions of responsibility to others should behave reasonably without resorting to arbitrary cruelty or unfairness.  It is a collective term for a whole range of different attitudes of common sense and consideration which make it easier for a wide variety of people to live in a complex multicultural society.

It has become so common for people to condemn things with which they disagree as "Political Correctness Gone Mad" that this has become an all-purpose term of denunciation, as if to end all further discussion or debate about the thing in question.  As such, it is used by those who are not sufficiently mentally self-disciplined to be able to formulate reasoned arguments against things which are, in fact, little or nothing to do with PC at all.  If a person or collective body in authority has made a bad decision, or applied a rule in an inflexible or unreasonable way, or unnecessarily cause hardship or suffering to someone, then this can and should be criticised and opposed properly, and in its own terms, without resorting to the use of an increasingly meaningless catch-all phrase which tends to reduce the problem as if it were a modern form of witchcraft.

PC, in its proper meaning, is and should be recognised as a force for good, for tolerance and diversity, and as a shining light against the malevolent and outdated forces of bigotry, racism, jobsworthism, and irresponsibility.  Those of us who wish to live in the modern world should be ready to praise PC whenever it is used in its proper context and in reasonable amounts, and be cautious of those who present it as a comic-book monster or bogeyman.

[bernardo]

The AB filter has sttruck again.  The ****** word at the end of part 1 should be the en-i-gee-gee-ee-ar word.

[jno]

positive, in the sense that it invites people to consider their words and actions carefully in order to avoid giving needless offence to others. As Britain (and other countries) become more multicultural, there are increasing numbers of ways in which people can be offended - nobody ever used to worry about talking about 'fuzzy-wuzzies' when there few black people in the country, for instance.

Since I quite like being polite, I find all this perfectly acceptable and 'positive' in the sense that it actively promotes harmony between different people. Abusive talk and actions quite regularly lead to violence. But many people, especially older white people, are outraged that anyone should try to stop them insulting others, particularly those of other colours, races or beliefs. You'll find a lot of these regularly venting their spleen in the News section; and it you want to understand the mindset that says political correctness is negative, you could look there. 

[Grunty]

Whilst agreeing with everything above, it is a fact that political correctness can be undertaken in excess, in the absence of common sense.

My large collection of press cuttings includes a ban on ordering black coffee a requirement on children to sing 'baa baa green sheep' and several attempts to ban our national flag. These are the matters that have brought PC into disrepute.

It is education that has done more to prevent people offending others. Sadly, many older people will never change.

[jno]

you don't want to place too much reliance on the press, Grunty. The ban on Baa Baa Black Sheep just never happened; it was a newspaper invention, along with Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster, David Mellor making love in a Chelsea strip and so on, and was disproved at the time. I believe the European Union has someone working full time on denying stupid stories about bans on curved bananas and the like. They seem to linger on in the popular consciousness all the same, I suppose because people really, really want to believe they're true. But they're lies.

[Loosehead]

As usual I'm sure the purveyors of PC had good intentions originally but unfortunately it has been hijacked by those who will take offence on behalf of some group or other that they believe would or should be offended by whatever the current subject matter is. Topical case in point, did anyone ask the Islamic community of they would be offended by piggy banks? I doubt it, someone somewhere took offence on their behalf.

[jno]

Loosehead, have you any evidence for your suggestion that nobody asked any Muslims about piggy banks?

I should add that this isn't political correctness anyway, it sounds like a commercial operation trying not to offend customers or potential customers, pretty much the way Robinsons dropped gollies - they didn't bring in new customers and they annoyed a lot of old ones. Commercially, that's not a hard decision to make.

[Loosehead]

Not in this case but I have read articles by senior muslims in the past and they have said that they are not offended by the existance or portrayal of pigs or indeed that other PC target, christian symbols, they accept that other religions exist as do other traditions and attitudes. In fact they are generally worried that this kind of thing just makes them out to be extremists something they are keen to counter. At least one article was by that guy that the BBC often wheel out to talk about islamic issues, can't think of his name at the moment.

[bernardo]

jno wrote:

I believe the European Union has someone working full time on denying stupid stories about bans on curved bananas and the like. They seem to linger on in the popular consciousness all the same, I suppose because people really, really want to believe they're true. But they're lies.

Bananas of excessive curvature are banned by EU directive 2257/94.

[jno]

the EU regulation in question is about quality standards, It bans abnormally curved bananas, seemingly on the grounds that there's likely to be something wrong with them. It doesn't ban curved bananas. It doesn't require straight bananas. I think that was a Daily Mail fantasy.

[Haggisdj]

I'm afraid I have to bite my tongue sometimes when I read about PC. Whatever happened to the freedom of speech that our parents and grandparents fought and died for? We most definitley do not have it now and we are losing more of it by the day!!!

[123paul]

It is positive. However, it is routinely hijacked by the �Daily Mail� brigade as being negative, as in:� [insert anything, e.g., children not being allowed to bully each other at school, women not being patronized in the workplace, black people not having to conform to a type]...is political correctness gone mad�.

Alan Partridge parodied these people beautifully at the time that Tony Martin shot Fred Barrass (remember that?). He said: �It�s got to the stage that you can�t shoot a teenage burglar in the back when he is running away from your house; its political correctness gone mad!�.

Cheers.

[Grunty]

This will be much too late, but in case anyone stumbles across it, BBC News 12 January 2000 reported that the Birmingham nursery had withdrawn its ban on "Baa baa black sheep". I do not know the details of the similar story in London.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/600470.stm