An Old Essay on Political Correctness

A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING AMERICA—the spectre of political correctness. All the Powers of the new United States have entered into a holy alliance to nurture this spectre: prominent politicians, community leaders, and socially conscious Americans. This spectre holds an undue influence over the words and actions of the American people, who adopt the practices of political correctness believing that it will increase multicultural sensitivity and tolerance. Two things result from this fact.

I. There is a disparity between the political correctness in theory and its effects in reality.

II. It is high time that those opposed to political correctness should openly, in the face of this systemic juggernaut, denounce political correctness in all its facets.
Political correctness is an approach to increasing sensitivity toward cultural differences in society. The history of American society up until now is the history of cultural struggles. The American Revolution was a cultural conflict between progressive, colonial freedom fighters and dynastic, imperial aristocrats. Since the incident that birthed our nation, the dichotomy resulting from every major event in American history has categorized two opposing groups into two struggling cultures: Colonial American versus British, American versus Native American, Union American versus Confederate American, Allied American versus Axis European, capitalist American versus Russian Communist, and finally American versus Islamic extremist. Although most members of the two opposing cultures were separated, either geographically or otherwise, in the aforementioned instances, the conflict in question brought the two together. Consequently, when tensions relaxed, the two cultures were forced to coexist. For example, during the WWII stage of American history, large factions of German American sympathetic to the Axis war effort struggled with members of the anti-immigrant America-First movement. Once the war ended, the two cultures lost the defining characteristic of their relationship. Hence, they had to inhabit the same country and function in one society as fellow citizens.

Throughout our history, even when the conflicts between opposing cultures ended, cultural differences still existed and continued to plague society. Consequently, political correctness was developed as a method to abolish these differences and end the cultural misunderstanding and awkwardness that they cause. By limiting speech concerning culture, race, gender, and sexual orientation, political correctness attempts to and fails at accomplishing this goal. The logic behind the PC approach is this: if we do not openly acknowledge our differences, they will not exist. Taking stock in this method is tantamount to believing that if we close our eyes to the sun, it will no longer shine. This reasoning is flawed, since it does not account for the reality that cultural differences cannot always be overlooked.

Political correctness's primary goal is to limit expression that acknowledges cultural differences, whether it be written, spoken, or communicated through any medium. Even the purveyors of political correctness realize that we must be able to discuss differences in some capacity. As a result, PC only permits highly sanitized language that contains no trace of generalization. In this spirit of censorship, political correctness has slipped a noose over the head of the American people. Political correctness has actually created an atmosphere of intolerance by preventing people from expressing honest opinions. Ostensibly, decreasing the chance of someone somewhere saying something culturally insensitive is a good thing, right? After all, how could forcing people to assess whether their words are offensive be harmful? The harm is this: by forbidding the communication of honest ideas for the fear that they may be offensive, we lose the opportunity to challenge and change them. Well we can't challenge an opinion until someone expresses it, yet it is exactly this expression which PC seeks to prevent.

Political correctness doesn't make us more sensitive, it coerces us into bottling up thoughts that might be construed as racist, sexist, etc, which will fester and grow into solid, actually harmful opinions. In the interest of making us more culturally sensitive, the norm should be the opposite of what PC mandates: we should be able to express any opinion, so long as it is not intentionally created to hurt or offend, no matter how insensitive it might turn out to be. What are PC supporters so worried about? If racism is truly the subjective, hateful fantasy it is made out to be, surely the majority of rationally minded people won't believe in it; and if cultural sensitivity is the really the moral, beneficial reality we should all embrace, then why do we need to prop it up with such extreme safeguards, i.e. political correctness?

-written by me 5/2/07