Political Correctness vs Legal or Regulatory Action: Where does "real change" come from?

[TygrBright]

The "PC is a waste of time" argument is made here: The Culture Of The Smug White Liberal

Before you decide, read this one, too: Waitress stunned by cruel message diners left on receipt instead of giving a tip

This is not our first time through this cycle. I remember listening to arguments about whether it's worthwhile to "force" people to conceal their racism and bigotry by eliminating the n-word from circulation, back when.

The arguments took several tacks, one of which was "they're gonna be bigots anyway, showing their ugliness in public hurts their own cause." Another was "we have better things to do, like pushing anti-redlining regulations in the mortgage industry (or other 'actual action.')"

There's always been a school of thought that dismissed the importance of semantics and social disincentives focused on bigotry, cruelty, and oppression, in favor of structural redirection via legal and/or regulatory action.

Sometimes it's been argued that "enforcing political correctness" has the paradoxical effect of exciting oppositional defiance and actually encouraging the tendencies such enforcement is focused on limiting. Lord knows, the cussedness of human nature certainly validates that in individual cases.

And sometimes it's argued social engineering via 'pc enforcement' runs counter to liberal/progressive core ideology itself, if not the actual First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. After all, people SHOULD be free to express repugnant beliefs.

They are, of course. "PC enforcement" via the application of social incentives and disincentives is not the same thing as legal/regulatory action. It's focused not on what people have legal sanction to do, but on what they have social sanction to express.

I will defend to the death your right to hold repugnant, bigoted views and beliefs, but that doesn't mean you have a right to make me listen to them or validate them.

I remember listening to a clueless racist from my own family, back when I was a youngster, arguing that "desegregation won't help" against racism, and that busing laws were the wrong way to go about it.

They certainly aren't magic, solve-it-all-permanently-in-one-go bullet solutions.

We thought at one point that the Voting Rights Act would be such a magic bullet solution, and how tragically wrong history has proven us in this era of diligent voter suppression.

I don't think it's an "either/or" choice.

Research validates that not only can you make people change their behavior by changing their beliefs, but you can make people change their beliefs by changing their behavior.

In other words, "acting as if" can powerfully change your thinking, just as changes in your thinking affect how you act.

Here's what I wonder: What made the person who wrote that disgusting message believe it was OKAY to do that? And with the belief that it's okay to treat someone that way based on what you assume about them, how and where will they next act on that belief?

If we want real change, I firmly believe that we MUST work both ends against the middle, consistently, thoughtfully, incrementally, and for the long, long haul.

There will always be backlashes against change, from one direction or another. Attempts to roll back progress, by playing one end against the other.

Only by working BOTH ends against the middle: pushing for changes in thoughts and actions and belief via social incentive/disincentive, AND pushing for changes in actions, systems, and structures via legal and regulatory means, can we continue the journey in the direction of human evolution.

thoughtfully,
Bright

[guillaumeb]

1. Why is it called political correctness at all?

Not using racial stereotypes in language should be called basic good manners.

Not treating people as second class citizens should be called basic good behavior.

Those who complain about political correctness seem most often to be the ones who insist on being bigoted in public, and also insist on acceptance of that bigotry.

They are angry for being called bigots.

[Igel]

2. Because there is a policy that is considered correct.

It was extra-legal and decided "democratically" (that was the term used) by your moral, intellectual, and political betters. You were expected to comply or suffer.

It's a calque from Russian "politicheskii pravil'nyi", from "pravil'naya politika"--correct policy (or politics). It wasn't neessarily the law, but was saying that the Party had determined what was good and right and just and you had to abide by it to be above suspicion. Often it was formal compliance, sometimes substantive.

A good non-Soviet example is what I observed happen between Kathy and Jane at church years ago. Jane was having extreme problems, and Kathy gave her a card expressing sympathy and support, hugged her and was near tears with compassion. 10 minutes later the minister disfellowshiped Jane. Kathy fidgeted during services and when she could asked for the card back. Kathy's face was stony, and she tore up the card and put it in her purse to throw it away elsewhere. She was worried--she'd evinced emotional support for one who was now an enemy of the church.

When I was a kid the politically correct word for a black American kept changing. If you didn't get the memo and used the word from the wrong week or month you were, honestly, called a racist and showing disrespect. What it showed, however, was that you didn't slavishly abide by others' requirements and worry about how they judged you.

Respect isn't what you show and intent. It's all about what's perceived, based on superficialities and form, and we've often handed control over what we mean to how others perceive us. We've empowered language fascists and said, "You get to tell us how we're supposed to act. It's not what we intend, it's what you demand that's important." This is silly, and acknowledges that some are created superior to us, all in the attempt to say we're equal. It's not compromise, it's victory that's the goal in social and political settings. And we wonder at the state of American politics.

[Igel]

3. Hmmm ...

"I will defend to the death your right to hold repugnant, bigoted views and beliefs, but that doesn't mean you have a right to make me listen to them or validate them."

Nobody can make you listen to them. You're always free to turn off the tv or radio, close the webpage, or leave the room. Or even use your speech to rebut them, but please do so civilly. Imprisonment and high-velocity lead pellets are frowned upon, at least in the US.

The very assumption that somebody thinks themselves required validate another's speech is disturbing to me. Perhaps what's meant is just "be silent in response to." That's hardly validation. But for some, the choice is validation or struggle, with the meaning of "tolerance" moving towards "appreciation." When language is manipulated, it's hard to know what's meant. There's no common tongue any more, just common folk saying their tongue is to be universal. Silly, that. (And what I mean by "silly" will be left to the ether ... net to discern.)

Some people really hate that first amendment and want it to be stricken, but just in the cases they want. They have a right to free speech; others, their inferiors, don't. Esp. if by controlling speech we can ultimately control other people's thinking. They have rights; others only have responsibilities.

With that kind of thinking also falls, "All men are created equal," because obviously some are more equal than others. I hail our porcine overlords, and will proudly think of today as August 21, 1984.

And in time I will start to think and believe as those who clearly born superior to me in terms of inherent worth. Until the BBQ. Oh, wait, I keep kosher.

I've seen and studied how that kind of thinking worked out. I do not look forward to that particular "bright future" (svetloe budushchee), as was the Stalinist-Leninist catch-phrase. Instead of "we live to make the fairy-tale reality" (fairy-tale is "skazka" in Russian), it really was "we live to make Kafka reality".

For now, it's not so bad (just coercive, illiberal, and non-democratic), but many would like it to be much more coercive and dictatorial. Or, as they would put it, "better."

[NuclearDem]

5. Indeed.

In a liberal, democratic society, the appropriate response to someone saying something a person disagrees with is to present arguments against it and attempt to convince them otherwise. Unfortunately, PC culture tends to skip any sort of discussion and jump straight to declaring the disagreeable speech "thoughtcrime" and punishing the individual for holding such a belief. In fact, the very idea of criticizing political correctness itself has been subjected to this treatment; "you only dislike PC because you just want to be a bigot in public." No arguments as to why political correctness is a positive force, just an attempt to purge criticism of it.

It's all very doubleplusungood.

[LWolf]

4. Thank you for

giving me something to chew on this morning.

First of all, I agree with your conclusion:

If we want real change, I firmly believe that we MUST work both ends against the middle, consistently, thoughtfully, incrementally, and for the long, long haul.

There will always be backlashes against change, from one direction or another. Attempts to roll back progress, by playing one end against the other.

Only by working BOTH ends against the middle: pushing for changes in thoughts and actions and belief via social incentive/disincentive, AND pushing for changes in actions, systems, and structures via legal and regulatory means, can we continue the journey in the direction of human evolution.

I was born white in 1960. I grew up surrounded by racism, and my mother raised me to abhor bigotry of every kind. Some of the things I observed over the decades of my life:

Overt racism diminished. It didn't just disappear, though. For some, I noted that it became a cultural, rather than a physical, bigotry. Skin color and other physical features were not judged when people fit your own cultural norms: acted like you, spoke like you, attended your church, etc.. As soon as black people didn't act white, though, a line was drawn and racism was there. Sometimes camouflaged by other hates, but it was there. For some, they turned their hatred towards other targets. It seems like people just NEED to hate. If they couldn't publicly hate people for the color of their skin, it would be for their religion or political leanings or sexual orientation or gender or education or anything else that could be found, as long as they had a target. We see this play out right here at DU, where it is legitimate and expected to hate our political opponents.

Still, even with all that hatred dispersed over a wider area, seeking out legitimate public targets, it remained. I somehow always knew it was there, ready to come roaring out of the hidden cellars of human spirit, given any encouragement. And we're seeing that today.

'Acting as if" HAS helped move us forward; my students, for example, are shocked and pained if I play them video clips of the white backlash against the civil rights movement I was born into. At the same time, it has just been a role play, not authentic, for too many. Over time, as generations who've never known any but the "acting as if" culture take us forward, it's possible that the role-playing will die out, replaced with more stable change. Not, though, if we allow that hateful bigotry to periodically erupt back into the public sphere.

The evolution of technology and social media is a fascinating and empowering thing. On the one hand, it allows us to see the truth, to be aware of truths outside of our own sphere of experience, making it much more difficult to gag efforts to promote change. On the other, the anonymity makes us more likely to drop some of those social filters, posting things that we might not say face-to-face. I think that note is an outcropping of that; we've dropped some social filters, and when we can put something out there without having to be present for a response, or have our real-world identities exposed, some are doing so with more frequency.

I'd love to see a collection of suggestions to how to, concretely, work both ends against the middle.