Political Correctness: The Modern Day Straw Man
I was in sixth grade the first time I was called a “fag.” During recess one day, I decided to wear the new hat my mother had purchased me during a field trip to the Queen Mary, a hat I was convinced made me look exactly like John Lennon in a photo I had recently seen. As I walked by the basketball courts, I made an effort to pass by as many people as possible in the hopes that at least one of them would tell me that they thought my hat was as cool as I did. I received exactly one review: “nice hat, fag.” I continued on silently in the direction of my classroom, turned a corner, and promptly took the hat off. As I tucked it into my backpack, I prayed that my face hadn’t given any indication of the ways in which my stomach was contorting.
When I went home that day, I asked my mother what the word meant. “It’s a…not nice name for gay people,” she struggled to explain to her 10 year old. “Oh,” I responded, “and what are gay people?” My mother explained this too and I went to bed content with my new knowledge. Looking back on this event, it doesn’t seem like it should mean much: kids insult each other all the time and, aside from being the instigating factor in my learning about homosexuality, it wasn’t a life-changing experience for me. Besides, since I hadn’t heard the word before, I didn’t even know what the kid had meant when he said it. But I knew it wasn’t good. And that’s the whole point.
Words convey meaning. They are an agreed upon shorthand to describe our feelings, beliefs, and intent. Words allow us to explain to another the fear we felt at the doctor’s office, why our eyes have been puffy all week, and the weightless feeling in our heart when our beloved says our name. Words give us the ability to share a human experience that would otherwise remain largely individual. If actions speak louder than words, words explain actions in a way that isn’t true in the reverse. This is precisely why they matter. The child in my example easily could have substituted his choice word with “nerd,” “loser,” “idiot,” “dork,” or any of the myriad options to convey the intended sentiment. The end result would have been no less mean to me — and is certainly not a behavior that I’m promoting — but would have been accomplished in far more ambiguous terms. Instead, he accomplished a sort of pejorative “twofer” which allowed him to insult me for the crime of wearing a hat while also contributing to the disparagement of a group of people entirely outside of the matter at hand. Granted, this all seems overly-analytical for what was personally a rare example of schoolyard teasing, but the same factors that make it seem minor are the same factors that make it important.
First of all, I’m not gay. This fact undoubtedly helped to mitigate the pain I felt when the slur was thrown at me that day, as well as the handful of times it has happened since, but does nothing to address the larger issue. The reality that I’m not personally a referent for the term — that one can’t, when trying to explain what the word means, correctly point at me and say “that!” — is not the problem; the problem is that there even is someone who “defines” a slur, and that that person’s greatest offense is their existence. Admittedly, it’s entirely possible that the child who used the term had no inherent homophobic beliefs and merely chose to insult me for his own amusement. If this were the case, there truly would have been no difference in his mind between calling me what he did and calling me one of the aforementioned substitutes: loser, nerd…etc. This highlights another issue, though: since words serve to convey intent, the actual intent behind the words remains exclusively with the speaker while the recipient is left only with perceived intent. As a result, the listener is led to the conclusion that, if the speaker uses a word as a synonym for other disparaging words, the speaker must therefore find the words to actually be synonymous.
Naturally, this leads to a discussion of “political correctness,” a term it has become popular to attack as an overzealous censoring of language as a means of catering to the emotions of overly-sensitive individuals. This tactic is often employed in an attempt to appear reasonable and level-headed by claiming irrationality in others, similar to the way people will often begin their political opinions with the caveats “I didn’t agree with everything Obama did but…” or “I didn’t like either candidate but…” in order to seem less biased (both statements may be true, but rarely is either crucial to the argument). The irony here is that those who attack the term “political correctness” invariably end up being those for whom the term exists in the first place.
Put bluntly, the phrase “political correctness” exists to the benefit of straight white men. This isn’t to demonize that demographic — it’s the one that I personally fall into — but to expose a reality that’s crucial to understanding both why the term matters and why the attacks on it are misguided. To begin, when we speak of the need to be “politically correct,” we tend to mean altering our words to avoid offending people outside of that demographic. This is partially a matter of common sense (I’m not sure slurs even exist to describe either straight people or men in general) but it ends up establishing the straight white male as the default. As a result, a subconscious sense of “otherness” is created to describe those who don’t fit that mold. Of course, it would be foolish to pretend these differences didn’t exist and insist that we are all exactly the same; the problem is that no single formula should be considered the norm. The issue is further exacerbated when we realize that this normalizing extends to our language: if we are the default demographic, then our language is the default language. Consequently, the notion that we should change how we speak is seen as more than an inconvenience; it is an attack on our very way of speaking.
To take a recent example, we can look to the controversy surrounding the name of the Washington Redskins NFL franchise. While there has been criticism from parts of the Native American population regarding the name for some time, it has recently gained national attention with people on both sides adamantly defending their stance. Those against a name change often employ one of a few arguments, each of which has difficulty holding water. First, many (including the franchise itself) will insist that the team name was chosen by the original owner, George Preston Marshall, to honor the head coach of the time, “Lone Star” Dietz, himself a member of the Sioux tribe. Assuming this is true, that’s all well and fine but it goes back to a problem noted earlier: when our words don’t align with our intent, the fault for the disconnect lies with us rather than the recipient; words are our primary form of communication and the failure to relay the intended sentiment is poor communication. Another argument that those against a name change will often use is that many Native Americans aren’t offended by the term and they will often point to polls and surveys demonstrating as much. However, if we accept the validity of these polls, the argument remains a strange one. There is clearly a sizable contingent of Native Americans who do find the team name offensive. Assuming that they are in the minority, it’s still odd to favor the option that continues to offend people of the demographic represented by the team name rather than simply adopting a new name that avoids offense altogether. While some may point to the idea of tradition, one should remember that this is a league in which Staleys have become Bears, Spartans have become Lions, Oilers have become Titans, Browns have become Ravens, and Pirates have become Steelers, all without any significant lasting issue. The crux of the matter doesn’t seem to be changing the name, or an everlasting nationwide reverence for “Lone Star” Dietz, so much as it is that a change is being requested for a reason that makes those who have always used the name feel that they are being labelled racist.
This fear of being considered prejudiced isn’t particularly surprising or unnatural, especially for those of us who genuinely feel no resentment towards people of a different race, gender, orientation…etc. It’s the instinct of every living thing to defend itself when it feels under attack. But defiantly defending the use of the terms in question and casually dismissing the concerns of the demographic they were created to disparage prioritizes one’s own convenience over another’s emotions and does little to mend that breach. The guilt felt over hurting one’s feelings is painful, but the proper response is not to evade that feeling by attempting to make the other’s feelings seem illegitimate. When one group asks another to discontinue the use of a particular word or phrase, it exists as a plea rather than an attack, regardless of what our initial gut instinct may be. Yet the dynamic is often framed as one in which those using the terms are attacked by an unreasonable and easily offended populace, ultimately mocking the idea of victimization while simultaneously claiming it for themselves. This is most clearly seen in the debates regarding religiously-tinged language such as the use of “Happy Holidays” in place of “Merry Christmas” or whether gay couples can properly be considered “married.” In both of these situations, there is a contingent of people who claim that the “PC” versions constitute an attack on Christianity. It is neither the intent nor within the scope of this article to judge the merit of these claims, they are brought up to demonstrate the tactic of combatting perceived victimization by claiming to be the victim.
“Political Correctness” is not the attack on free speech that it’s sometimes made out to be; it is merely the name given to courtesy on a grander scale. When one feels devalued by a particular choice of word or phrase, those feelings are legitimate. Even if we don’t agree with their response, the solution takes relatively little effort, particularly since several other words are capable of making the same point (slurs couldn’t exist if they weren’t associated with pre-existing words). Political Correctness is about realizing that words are part of how we build our culture and how we see the world around us; it’s about realizing that you can’t change the meaning of a word without the consent of those to whom it has always referred; it’s about realizing that language is a shared commodity and therefore requires a two-way relationship; and it’s about acknowledging that our speech can have lasting effects beyond the immediate conversation in which they exist. Words matter, even when — and perhaps especially when — we like to pretend they don’t.
