(Note: No, you don't know me. You are on the friendslist of one of my friends. I was moved to comment.)
The reason people react against political correctness is not because it deprives them of the linguistic liberty to throw around "fag" and "retarded" like they used to in the good ol' days, or because it takes away their right to laugh guiltlessly at unfunny jokes. People react against political correctness because it destroys the idea that the -isms are about other people, bad and hateful people, doing bad and hateful things. It makes us realize that they're systemic issues that we all benefit from and maintain in various ways. Having to keep tabs on language and individual action reminds us that we're all personally culpable, in a culture where we're obsessed with feeling like Good People.
If I may, I'd like to respectfully disagree with you to a bit. I do agree that it's important that we all at least be made aware of the unconscious nature of some of the racism and prejudice in society; I was in college during the highwater of the PC movement, and agreed with that argument then.
However, I always felt that attacking the language itself for this racism kind of missed the point. Yes, it's a shame that there are those who are so unconscious to racism in language that they casually refer to Chinese folk as "chinks" and are completely unaware that the word is a slur. However, completely removing the word "chink" from public discourse is not the way to solve the problem; those spearheading the PC movement argued not only that we should drop the slang use of the word, but that we should also drop the expression "a chink in one's armor", solely because that particular five-letter word was found in it. Even though it was meant in an entirely different way and in an entirely different context. That, I always felt, was utterly ridiculous.
Moreover, if you have someone with bigoted thoughts, simply taking away certain of their words isn't going to change their thoughts, and it's really the thoughts that are the problem, aren't they? I always argued that: look, I obviously wouldn't like it if anyone snarled at me that "you Micks are all drunks." But, if they were to say instead, "you Irish-Americans are all drunks," I...really don't see why that would be any better.
Also, the initial PC advocates actually would have argued for the obliteration of books like Little Black Sambo. I wholeheartedly agree with you that it's important to have access to these books, as well as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the film Birth Of A Nation, and the like, but I agree that we need to have access to them in a historic context, precisely so that we can see what's out there and so we can see the downside of what people throughout history did -- and sometimes, still do -- think. The PC advocates argue that doing away with these articles would curtail these attitudes -- but I think the opposite, I believe that completely doing away with them would do no more than sweep these philosophies, and the people who hold them, under the rug. And what's swept under the rug doesn't go away. I'd just as soon know what's out there so I know how to guard myself and others against it, and how to work against it.
Holy... thank you for such a thoughtful response! I fear that as the result of having not slept properly in about four days I'm not at my best to give you an equally thoughtful reply, but we'll see what I can muster, huh?
I feel like the biggest problem with how we deal with race in our culture, and the thing I try to stay ever conscious of, is that we treat racism as SUCH an individualized phenomenon. Even that when people conceptualize the word "racist", their association with it is of caricature-ized (ugh... vocabulary!) Bad Racist People. So, often a crazy Confederate flag waving Southerner who shouts racial epithets all day long, or their angry uncle who says inappropriate things at the dinner table, or some zealot of a Christian fundamentalist politician, or whatever, rather than, say, one in two aboriginal women living below the poverty line. Our cultural understanding of racism, I don't think, includes a very good understanding of racism as a collective phenomenon and system in which we are all implicated and work to maintain in various ways.
To me, I guess that's exactly why political correctness is important and something I support as a.. strategy? Because in a society where we understand things as so fundamentally individual, it works on that individual level to make people realize, even if in a small way, that they are responsible for the maintenance of inequitable social practices.
Maybe I'm just too steeped in or faithful to poststructuralist theory for my own good, but I also think it's impossible to conceptually keep apart "saying" and "doing". I think that "racially insensitive" comments ARE part of "doing" racism. So I don't think it so much misses the point, as it does deal with facets of the phenomenon of racism that can't be addressed through law or politics or and of the macro processes we generally rely on? Maybe?
The reason people react against political correctness is not because it deprives them of the linguistic liberty to throw around "fag" and "retarded" like they used to in the good ol' days, or because it takes away their right to laugh guiltlessly at unfunny jokes. People react against political correctness because it destroys the idea that the -isms are about other people, bad and hateful people, doing bad and hateful things. It makes us realize that they're systemic issues that we all benefit from and maintain in various ways. Having to keep tabs on language and individual action reminds us that we're all personally culpable, in a culture where we're obsessed with feeling like Good People.
If I may, I'd like to respectfully disagree with you to a bit. I do agree that it's important that we all at least be made aware of the unconscious nature of some of the racism and prejudice in society; I was in college during the highwater of the PC movement, and agreed with that argument then.
However, I always felt that attacking the language itself for this racism kind of missed the point. Yes, it's a shame that there are those who are so unconscious to racism in language that they casually refer to Chinese folk as "chinks" and are completely unaware that the word is a slur. However, completely removing the word "chink" from public discourse is not the way to solve the problem; those spearheading the PC movement argued not only that we should drop the slang use of the word, but that we should also drop the expression "a chink in one's armor", solely because that particular five-letter word was found in it. Even though it was meant in an entirely different way and in an entirely different context. That, I always felt, was utterly ridiculous.
Moreover, if you have someone with bigoted thoughts, simply taking away certain of their words isn't going to change their thoughts, and it's really the thoughts that are the problem, aren't they? I always argued that: look, I obviously wouldn't like it if anyone snarled at me that "you Micks are all drunks." But, if they were to say instead, "you Irish-Americans are all drunks," I...really don't see why that would be any better.
Also, the initial PC advocates actually would have argued for the obliteration of books like Little Black Sambo. I wholeheartedly agree with you that it's important to have access to these books, as well as Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the film Birth Of A Nation, and the like, but I agree that we need to have access to them in a historic context, precisely so that we can see what's out there and so we can see the downside of what people throughout history did -- and sometimes, still do -- think. The PC advocates argue that doing away with these articles would curtail these attitudes -- but I think the opposite, I believe that completely doing away with them would do no more than sweep these philosophies, and the people who hold them, under the rug. And what's swept under the rug doesn't go away. I'd just as soon know what's out there so I know how to guard myself and others against it, and how to work against it.
Thanks for the food for thought.
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I feel like the biggest problem with how we deal with race in our culture, and the thing I try to stay ever conscious of, is that we treat racism as SUCH an individualized phenomenon. Even that when people conceptualize the word "racist", their association with it is of caricature-ized (ugh... vocabulary!) Bad Racist People. So, often a crazy Confederate flag waving Southerner who shouts racial epithets all day long, or their angry uncle who says inappropriate things at the dinner table, or some zealot of a Christian fundamentalist politician, or whatever, rather than, say, one in two aboriginal women living below the poverty line. Our cultural understanding of racism, I don't think, includes a very good understanding of racism as a collective phenomenon and system in which we are all implicated and work to maintain in various ways.
To me, I guess that's exactly why political correctness is important and something I support as a.. strategy? Because in a society where we understand things as so fundamentally individual, it works on that individual level to make people realize, even if in a small way, that they are responsible for the maintenance of inequitable social practices.
Maybe I'm just too steeped in or faithful to poststructuralist theory for my own good, but I also think it's impossible to conceptually keep apart "saying" and "doing". I think that "racially insensitive" comments ARE part of "doing" racism. So I don't think it so much misses the point, as it does deal with facets of the phenomenon of racism that can't be addressed through law or politics or and of the macro processes we generally rely on? Maybe?
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