My Stand On Political Correctness

Web Page and commentary by Kathryn Podolsky

It is nearly impossible to pin down an exact year or decade that politically correct words, phrases and ideas entered the English language and established themselves so firmly in our everyday speech, academic protocol and media-driven society.

The principle of political correctness - changing the language to avoid unpleasantness - is as old as mankind itself. Sunanda Datta-Ray, in his article for Time, "The Modern Moniker May Be P.C., But Linguistic Laundering Is As Old As The Ancients," asserts that "the [Greek] Furies were called Eumenides, or the good-tempered ones, in hopes of flattering them into being less furious."

We continue to do the same thing today with the hope of tempering people's emotions. The term politically correct, coined in the early 1960s, has remained with us into the new millennium. Many new or slightly altered English words and phrases have replaced the old ones that have become reprehensible to some individuals, and even whole cultures, and unfit for our newly sensitive society.

The principle of political correctness-changing the language to avoid unpleasantness-is as old as mankind itself.

Political correctness in America soon became the abbreviated P.C. in the early 1990s, driven by the media and their love of the catchy or snappy phrase.

Before the 1992 elections, P.C. became a tool for both political parties. After Bill Clinton's victory in '92, P.C. moved away from politics and further into academia.

The policies of many college campuses, affected by this growing movement, had already adopted many politically correct codes of speech and behavior but were identified more clearly in the 1990s.

Paul Hollander, for Academic Questions, said that "unexpectedly, the colleges and universities - institutions supposedly dedicated to free thinking, expression, and intellectual debate - have become the most hospitable havens…for which P.C. has come to stand."

There are speech and harassment codes, sensitivity classes, preferential treatment of minorities and a climate of conformity on our campuses; these are in great contrast to the campus atmosphere of forty years ago. The problem with political correctness on campus is that higher education should always be expanding minds and creating new ideas with the hope of bettering individuals, and therefore, society.

Education should help to open minds, not narrow them. Political correctness disguised as a speech code enforces uniformity and in reality, does not celebrate diversity. The outcries of various youth of the '60s - black, white, gay, straight, male and female - have been strangled by academic protocol.

Rollover for PC vs not-PC

The 1960s were a time of great social upheaval. This generation of vocal protesters, reinvigorating our constitutional right to freedom and freedom to protest, began to turn the supposedly happy-go-lucky 1950's upside down. The birth control pill and the ensuing sexual revolution awakened the feminist movement.

Women now had rights over their bodies and a new voice. Social unrest was everywhere, in part because of the Vietnam War. So many believed that Vietnam was not an American war fought for America's freedom, but a dalliance into someone else's politics.

Revolutionary doctrine flowed freely on our campuses. A new drug culture was springing up beside the new music culture. And the Civil Rights movement finally began to give black people a voice in America.

Yes, African-Americans were called black for many years, and our reference to a people America enslaved has changed several times over the decades.

My mother was a schoolteacher at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the next decade. Academic protocol has nearly always demanded, though not always successfully, what the general public's rules of conduct for speech should be and my mother was instructed by her superiors that all colored people should be referred to as Negroes. Tiny schoolchildren would run to her aid proclaiming, "Miss Noren, he called me black!" Her immediate reaction ("Well. he is black!") translated into a reprimand to the name-caller to use the word Negro.

Suddenly, the 1960s upon us, the phrase "black is beautiful" turned the schoolyard into a confusing arena of changing euphemisms.

Fast-forward 30 years in our educational system: My mother's African-American colleague at university scolds her for using the phrase "low man on the totem pole." The result of P.C.: An African-American professor whose strict adherence to political correctness has led her to defend the Native-American. My mother was appalled that her use of an everyday idiom could create such a stir.

Troubling and quirky times these are for the English language when dealing so delicately with such large institutions as education and government. The slang terms of yesterday are deemed derogatory, prejudicial and downright un-PC today!

Slang, the music of street language and the working classes, is truly the beginning of many new words in our language. Documented in the 1958 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, there are nearly one thousand American and British slang terms that were in use and most are still in use today. Words such as boss, boyfriend, booze, brainstorm, cute, girlfriend, hitchhike, snooty, and bonehead are used on a daily basis by millions of Americans, educated or not, moving through the classes with ease.

Slang, the music of street language and the working classes, is the beginning of many new words in our language.

Not class, but race, brings us to a word conspicuously left out of a 1958 Encyclopedia list of slang: the 'N' word, as it is referred to by less ignorant and more politically correct Caucasians, and nigger, an explosive word today considered abhorrent by most whites and yet, strangely enough, used by some African-Americans to each other.

No matter how politically correct we become or think we are, racism continues to run rampant through our country. Use of the word nigger between African-Americans is in sharp contrast to other cultures. Wops or Chinks never did refer to each other as Wops or Chinks because we, white America, threw this slang around as the voluntary immigration of millions of Italians and Chinese occurred here on our soil.

The problem with the introduction of the word nigger is that with it came 200 years of the enslavement of their people by white owners and masters. There was never even the smallest amount of respect attached to the word in its terrible beginnings.

Respect for race, culture and individuality, not the alteration of the language to make everybody feel better, should be the reason for political correctness, "as if the altered nomenclature had some indescribable power to abolish the condition by renaming it."

Steven Marcus penned this heady phrase in "Soft Totalitarianism," for Partisan Review (LX-4: 633). The debate over this word has continued into this new century, spurred on in part by the fact that many African-Americans continue to call each other nigger. Perhaps, if they truly "owned" the word, it would be quietly absorbed into their culture.

Instead, like a crashing cymbal, some Americans continue to use this word, blasting politically correct ideology in the name of hate and ignorance. When the debate finally ends, when people realize that some words just need to die, perhaps we will find the word nigger as useless or obsolete as the words typewriter or gin mill.

Another example of this is our newly politically correct presentations of American history. School textbooks are being revised to include more women and African-Americans, whether or not their contribution to our country was as large as, say, Samuel Adams or the Founding Fathers, who in some cases are delegated a footnote or a mere sentence.

In the early 1990s the National Standards for United States History guide for curriculum created much controversy with its noticeably politically correct changes.

"Harriet Tubman, the African-American who helped organize the pre-Civil War Underground Railroad, is cited six times in the guide, whereas Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is mentioned only once in passing," wrote John Elson for Time.

The guide mentions New York's convention on women's rights nine times but never even brings up Thomas Edison or the Wright Brothers, whose inventions completely changed millions of lives. History is being rewritten and edited for the teachers and professors educating our youth.

And so, really, how equal is equal? With our new inoffensive language, are we really making society a better place for all or are we simply pushing diversity and individualism underneath the surface, placating academic administration into thinking we are educating our young into being a nicer generation?

Russel Baker points out in his article for the New York Times that "what is odd about the PC people…is their dopey belief that people can be bullied into being kind, good and sensitive to each other."

No one is perfect; we all have our own special and individual flaws and strengths. Challenges, in whatever form we must confront them, are what push the human race forward rather than dully and complacently watching the world go by.

Political correctness, with all its pre-millennium tenacity, is starting to take a swing toward the other extreme. In the new millennium, there is the over-the-top, un-P.C. South Park cartoon that leaves no P.C. stone unturned. Fur is back with a vengeance.

Ostentatious wealth is flaunted and worshipped: celebrities and techno-millionaires are our new demigods. Mainstream movies are more violent and real than ever before. The highly un-P.C. Man Show, all bouncing breasts and female-bashing, and Sex and the City, devoted to sexual misconduct and innocuous relationships, are voraciously watched by millions of men and women. It is becoming politically correct to not be politically correct for the average American.

"What is odd about the PC people is their dopey belief that people can be bullied into being kind, good and sensitive to each other."

Will education and politics follow suit? What we can hope for is that the shift in attitude that began in the '60s, followed by changes in the English language, our international form of communication, will somehow create a tangible respect for our differences rather than quashing our individuality and diversity.

Apparently, respect for other individuals is a learned human characteristic, not inherent in our genetic makeup. Political correctness has tried to show us this by stating new rules concerning higher education and journalistic standards: change the words and demand new sensitivity.

My belief, that only a radical change in a human being's heart will bring sensitivity toward and respect for each other, may be too late in this post-P.C. century. Human beings so quickly forget history and move on toward the newest, and not always the most humanitarian behavior.

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