Just What is (and what is wrong with) Political Correctness?

I think there's a lot more to it than just how one words something.It's a moral system. It's also a political agenda.My problem with it is that it seems to try to dictate feelings. We are supposed to go around feeling nice, politically correct feelings all the time. But people aren't that way. Thus they sometimes PRETEND to have such feelings. That's why I call it a pretense.

Nothing wrong with it in most cases, as long as we realize that's what we are doing. In fact, it's necessary."PC" is rather hard to pin down, but we can make a start: It came out of the Civil Rights movement and the feminist movement. The idea is to get rid of prejudice, to eradicate it completely--any prejudice, all prejudice. The problem with this is that people are naturally prejudiced and tribal by nature.There's an essay called "In Defense of Prejudice," by Jonathan Rauch which has some interesting points. In this essay, the author's term for "political correctness" is "purism." He says at one point, "stamping out prejudice really means forcing everyone to share the same prejudice, namely that of whoever is in authority."Another comment from the essay: "Like earlier crusades against antisocial ideas, the mission [of purism or pc] is fueled by good (if cocksure) intentions and a genuine sense of urgency. Some kinds of error are held to be intolerable . . . Like their forebears of another stripe--the Church in its campaigns against heretics, the Mycarthyites in their campaigns against Communists--the modern anti-racist and anti-sexist and ant-homophobic campaigners are totalists, demanding not that misguided ideas and ugly expressions be corrected or criticized but that they be eradicated."Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

This seems insightful to me:

1. Be inclusive, not exclusive.
2. don't make assumptions about people
3. don't pity people: this is dehumanizing to them
4. don't judge people
5. recognize that America is racist through and through
6. recognize that American society is sexist through and through
7. don't steretype people or anything else
8. love yourself (have "self-esteem")

Me.

They are simple-minded. We are exclusive, we make assumptions, we judge people, we stereotype.

My point is that it's impossible to live without judging and assuming and so forth.

I know it was used as a joke among liberals because I experienced the use of if firsthand as a joke during the 70s and 80s.

No, I prefer being exclusive myself. I want to associate only with the best and brightest.Here's another point. Why is "judging" always viewed in a negative way? There's such a thing as a favorable judgment. I make favorable and unfavorable judgments about people all the time. Everybody does.

This show appears to be stereotyping Texans. I think I'll sue.

Sterotyping is inevitable. It's just a pejorative term for "classifying." That's how we think. We classify. Stereotypes can come in very subtle packages.

Then why is the character a Texan? Sounds very fishy to me.

No, I meant that was my opinion about PC.

Sure, the way they get corrected is through increased knowledge of whatever we have a stereotype about. I have a stereotype about the subject of genetics: it seems to me impossibly complicated. If I knew more aobut it, I might find out I was wrong.Let's say I meet some man at a party and he strikes me as rather rude. As time passes, I find out that he's not so rude after all. I classified him initially as "rude."To say we must not stereotype is very misleading.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.

I have this category in my head labelled "rude people." I have classified them. We're not supposed to do this, according to PC. That would be an irrational classification. Not all stereotypes are irrational.Edited by robinrohan, : No reason given.