Political Correctness: History, Future, and Consequences
We’ve seen both the surviving candidates get attention for slips of the tongue during this election season. For example, Hillary Clinton’s use of “off the reservation” or Donald Trump identifying a man as “my African American.” More important than the linguistic misstep, though, are the carefully chosen and repeated words a candidate uses. Donald Trump shows pride in being the candidate that unapologetically says what he is thinking — often without consideration of the consequences or potential offense given (and sometimes because of those consequences). Similarly, one of the easiest ways to get applause at a GOP rally is to say that you’re fed up with “Politically Correct culture.”
Being “politically incorrect” in 2016 most often means you’ve said something that may offend someone who is sensitive to particular language. Accusing someone of being politically incorrect often means you’re accusing them of being reckless with their choice of words.
However, in 2016 the term is more fashionably and commonly invoked to rally against political correctness than to point out political incorrectness.
It has certainly not always been this way.
The History of “Political Correctness”
China’s revolutionary leader published a book in 1964. Mao’s “Little Red Book” laid out the strict party lines for communism. Quite simply, if you (in your actions and beliefs) were within these party lines, you were correct, politically…and if not, you were incorrect, politically. For example, there was only one very specific view of history that was considered correct by Chairman Mao. Any critique of the history laid out in party lines would be politically incorrect. This extended to all aspects of life including art (politically correct art would reflect the party’s desired public sentiment of life and work).
“What we demand is the unity of politics and art, the unity of content and form, the unity of revolutionary political content and the highest possible perfection of artistic form. Works of art which lack artistic quality have no force, however progressive they are politically. Therefore, we oppose both works of art with a wrong political viewpoint and the tendency towards the ‘poster and slogan style’ which is correct in political viewpoint but lacking in artistic power.”
So the terms “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” were originally quite literal; you were right or wrong according to the specific political definition given by a party (the Communist party).
The term “Politically Correct” first started popping up in American culture as a running, self-deprecating joke made by the American Left. That group, in the 70s (and, in many ways, today), was strongly supporting the idea that there is no “natural order of things” or “universal truths.” So the idea of a party dictating one “correct” way of thinking was an absurdity. That same mentality encouraged this generation of activists to fight ardently for causes they believed in (civil equality, gender equality, etc). It became a common joke to say that doing something counter to the emerging political beliefs of the time would not be politically correct. For instance, to an animal rights activist, it was (jokingly) politically incorrect to eat a cheeseburger. It was an attempt to ironically poke fun at the “party lines” being drawn in American culture, acknowledging that blind adherence to a party’s prescribed view is unamerican (and that those lines aren’t actually enforced in the way that they are in Communist China).
You might be able to see the trajectory taking shape now…
Confrontations over language (which are not new, they’ve happened long before the term PC came about) often start as jokes. Jokes can be a way of raising a caution flag without putting people in opposition to one another.
So that’s what happened. Saying “that’s not politically correct” slowly eased from being used as a joke to being an earnest confrontation and request for change.
The term existed in that capacity through the early 2000s. And now, in 2016, it is taking another step in its evolution:
Donald Trump’s GOP has taken an official stance against “political correctness.” This will be looked back on as a significant moment in the etymology of this term and history of the concept. In a two party system, declaring one party in opposition to a concept is an effective way of aligning the other party with that concept. So what started as a reference to the narrow set of views permitted by Communist China has essentially been adopted to reference any of the views, and language, encouraged by liberal America.
The Future of Language
So “Political Correctness,” as a term, has morphed and changed its meaning over time. Ironically, the debate around the concept of political correctness today is, at its core, about the future of language and the meaning of the words we use.
The term has been fully adopted by the right as a means of painting liberals as overly sensitive language police. They accuse “PC politicians” of being ineffective because they’re frozen in fear of offending someone. The most fearful stances paint PC culture as a radical attempt to limit free speech.
The truth is that no one (rational) is arguing to make certain words or terms illegal. People are simply expressing their discontent with the way certain terms frame issues that are important to them. And this happens on both sides of the aisle. Creating a word like “feminazi” has a similar goal as creating a term like “significant other.” “Feminazi” tries to reframe women’s rights activists as tyrannical man-haters, and “significant other” tries to reframe marriage and dating language to more easily include non-traditional couples. And these attempts to reframe issues don’t just happen around “offensive” terms; Republicans started using the term “climate change” instead of “global warming” in hopes of emphasizing the ever-changing nature of weather rather than the most recent phenomenon of increasing temperatures. Democrats love to talk about “gun safety measures” and “paying a fair share” but shy away from the less popular terms like “gun control” and “higher taxes.”
If this is all about the future of language, it’s important that we acknowledge the evolution of language is inevitable. Fans of William Shakespeare champion the bard for his willingness to invent words and mutate the meanings of familiar terms. Conveniently, he’s even credited as being the first to use the noun “champion” as a verb (in Macbeth). Today, the urban dictionary is the top result for thousands of google searches. Even Merriam-Webster allows people to submit words for entry in their dictionary. And the accessibility of music, particularly rap and hip hop, plants new terms in our culture daily. Read literature from the 1600s, or just watch a movie from the 1950s and it’s easy to see how quickly English changes form.
When we have a sense of this inevitability of language evolution, to argue for a specific direction of change is not any different than arguing for no change at all…both positions take a stance on what the future of our language will look and sound like. And liberals aren’t fighting to restrict or shape language any more than conservatives are; both are simply posturing their preferred lexicon to be the one that frames important issues. This debate isn’t going away any time soon.
The Consequences
There are consequences for “sides” taking shape as they have around this term. Originally, the line between Political Correctness vs Incorrectness was a line between legal, government sanctioned ideas and illegal ideas. That air still lingers around the term and Donald Trump taps into it. Trump intends for his official stance against Political Correctness to sound like a glorious, honorable fight – a fight that will free Americans to feel their true feelings without guilt and speak their minds without harassment.
It’s very important to remind ourselves that there is no freedom of speech to be earned in the fight against political correctness. As Americans, we ALREADY ARE free to speak as we please; a lot of people arguing passionately against you isn’t a sign of suppression of your free speech, it’s a sign that your idea/language is a losing product in an open marketplace of ideas. You’re idea is not being “forcibly silenced” it’s being discarded. You’re not getting “persecuted,” you’re falling out of fashion.
You have a right to feel however you want, and you have a right to say whatever you want…don’t confuse that with a right to feel and say what you want without loud disagreement. That’s what an open marketplace of ideas guarantees — disagreement. Good ideas are only good by comparison to worse ideas. We should all be excited to engage in this marketplace competition, and remember that losing an argument doesn’t mean you lost your rights.
So, if the fight against political correctness isn’t a fight for freedom of speech, what is it? If you’re advocating against political correctness, what are you really advocating for?
In 2016, the opposite of political correctness is not unfiltered truth, but unhindered carelessness. A politician that fancies himself politically incorrect is not promising decisiveness, but recklessness. “Just saying what you’re thinking” may not be without merit, but it does not guarantee what you’ve said is smart. We can’t afford to make the mistake of correlating thoughtlessness with honesty and thoughtfulness with deceit.
The worst part about the rally against political correctness is that the term is being used as a catch-all to paint destructive behavior as a virtue while demonizing empathy and thoughtfulness as weaknesses.
No matter what your political beliefs are, you should be confident that you arrived at those beliefs through thoughtful logic and reason. So, if at any point in an argument you find yourself accusing your opponent of being too thoughtful and considerate, you’re just helping them make the point that you have not been.
