Yes, the country has a problem with ‘political correctness.’ It’s called the GOP.
I’m finally ready to admit that the U.S. has a problem with political correctness. Until recently, claims of “political correctness run amok” would simply elicit a drawn-out sigh and an eyeroll. With every P.C.-related retort during a recent debate, I’d think, “Who’s buying this? Who honestly believes political correctness is ‘killing people,’ as Ted Cruz said?”
But now I’m finally ready to admit defeat — somewhat.
It all changed when I asked one of my friends a question about what he makes of the new landscape where the role of political correctness is being called into question on everything from the legality of warrantless wiretapping to the state of the economy. How did he — someone who has somewhat vocally criticized over-sensitive liberals like me — reconcile the difference between political correctness as it frustrates him and political correctness as has become the conservative mainstay this primary season.
What it comes down to is less about the message and more about the messenger.
“They tend to be, secretly, the exact personification of what they claim to be fighting,” he said, describing how he views the loudest anti-P.C. crusaders. And he’s right. It does seem that those most opposed to the idea of political correctness are also those who most intensely police the speech of others, declaring what is and what isn’t “American.”
The most insidious form of political correctness takes form in concepts of “American exceptionalism” and remembering the Confederacy as being about “states’ rights, small government, and ‘heritage, not hate.’”
The focus of the recent anti-P.C. movement has remained the supposed overreach of liberal-minded inclusivity. College campuses have transformed from places of higher learning where minds are challenged to think critically into “safe spaces” with trigger warnings that acquiesce to students’ pre-existing views.
Political correctness is, supposedly, preventing this new coddled class from seeing the reality of the outside world by softening the focus in their life lens. Political correctness is making us less informed, it’s making us weak. This is the point that’s been hammered home hard by conservatives, and the only solution is to tell it like it is.
So I’ll do just that.
Political correctness is ruining the country, but this — the state of college — is hardly the most egregious example.
The most insidious form of political correctness takes form in concepts of “American exceptionalism” and remembering the Confederacy as being about “states’ rights, small government, and ‘heritage, not hate.’” It’s in how we remember historical events like Columbus’s role in “discovering” America or the often glossed-over importance of the travesties we’ve been responsible for as a nation, such as Japanese internment. It’s the sanitation of American history in which we are painted as beacons of good while those who oppose are painted as evil incarnate. It’s a bumper-sticker approach to the world. If we must discuss which students are being “coddled,” it’s not college students, but instead, our grade schoolers being deprived the truth of our country’s foundation and legacy.
The “anti-P.C.” warriors of the right embrace the revisionist history of our children’s textbooks, demanding shielding from the reality of the big bad world. They embrace the exact thing they claim to oppose, using terms like “indoctrination” as their own home-crafted trigger warnings.
It’s the sanitation of American history.
They seek out a “safe space” in which they can say whatever xenophobic thing comes to mind with freedom from consequence of that speech — sometimes invoking religion to do so. The self-branded “truth tellers” bristle at the thought of things like showing women, LGBT individuals, or racial minorities basic human decency. It’s their own brand of political correctness — a new kind of political correctness — that shields them from the human responsibility to challenge their own preconceptions about gender, sexuality, and race.
Their reaction to being asked to consider something different is always the same: shut down conversation and lay stake to their own safe space.
So yes, political correctness is destroying the country — just not in the way we’re being led to believe.
