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Political Correctness...what's your problem?

12/18/2011

10 Comments

 
As a child of the 70s and 80s I grew up listening to various people complain of ‘political correctness gone mad’.  However, although concerned I might somehow fall foul of some 1984 style thought police, I never seemed to make a mistake.  I’m not particularly subtle, not particularly politically adept and yet I seemed to avoid censure.  Entering the education profession I was even more amazed that I seemed to effortlessly manage not to offend.  This has developed into an ongoing curiosity about language and its usage.

What I have come to realise is that the phrase political correctness (PC) is both misused and misunderstood.  If we look first at its misuse we venture into the murky world of health and safety.  Amazingly people will describe actions by schools, such as the restricting of playing conkers, as political correctness.  Clearly the phrase is being used to broadly describe state intervention, however even in this interpretation it is misused.  When schools and other such bodies have banned activities it is not a matter of public policy but at the bequest of insurers.  Increasingly we live in a litigious time and with ‘no win no fee’ lawyers praying on the gullible and greedy insurers have to protect their funds.  It is not the case that you ‘can’t get insurance’ merely that the insurance will be too expensive.  Simply put each advert you see for no win no fee lawyers is another reason to think again about you organisation’s health and safety policies and procedures.

Next we have the misuse through confusion over language.  Did you know it is wrong to call our national flag ‘the Union Jack’.  Not, as I was once told, because it was gendered but simply because it is only a ‘Jack’ when it is flown from a ‘jack staff’ on a ship – for a nautical nation we can be quite ignorant of such things.  Of course this level of pedantry is unnecessary – Union Jack has entered common use.    Similar confusion exists around the terms Great Britain and United Kingdom.  The UK is not a politically correct version of GB.  GB refers to the island of England, Wales and Scotland excluding Northern Island, hence the use of the phrase ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ to describe the UK (which also has that full title but is reduced to UK and includes NI when it is).     Confusingly at the beginning of the twentieth century, after the separation of the Irish Republic, the full name became The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  Again we can be pedantic but that is all.

Returning to the health and safety theme we see a new heroism, a new patriotism, coming through.  We have of course all heard of the nurse who was forbidden from wearing a crucifix.  A clever use of language there.  The actual policy of the hospital was that no necklaces were allowed to be worn for health and safety reasons.  Yes the nurse had worn the necklace for years but now the rules had changed, largely for the reasons mentioned above.  This of course takes us on to the cases of shop assistants, poppies and the like.  In all cases it is simply a case of the company having a strict policy on uniform, not for any political motive but because they feel that unadorned uniforms are smarter.  In all cases when there has been a ‘fuss’, normally due to a junior manager applying rules a little too literally, the company has reviewed it policy.  There is no conspiracy here, none other than consumerism. 

Moving now to the misunderstanding of PC we can look directly at the use of language.  A popular one this year has been the ‘banning’ of the word Christmas.  As with so many horror stories relating to PC there is little basis in fact, as an educator I would be the first to know – we’re paid to be careful!  This story began with from two sources; first there are a few stores, mostly in the States, that have adopted this ‘happy holiday’ approach; secondly there are some councils who have flirted with the idea.  However it has never been the policy of government.  The shops, just as with uniforms, have simply adopted a policy that they feel will be best for sales, no message, no mission, just consumerism.  Normally trying to broaden the appeal and attract a wider range of customers.  The councils, though I can find only one example, rarely are doing anything other than trying, business like, to extend the season. 

Of course this relates to the use of the phrase ‘you are not allowed to say...’ and takes us back to education.  Did you know you are allowed to say anything, that there isn’t in fact one single word banned by English law?  Did you realise that the board in classrooms that is white is referred to a ‘white board’, an especially handy description when there is a blue notice board beside it.  In the canteen you can have a black coffee and the scraps are placed in a black, white or green sack.  The thing is that a great deal of sense exists within the public sector however there is also a degree of ‘well meaningness’.  When an employee reads a story in The Sun or The Mail they mistakenly try to apply it at work, without ever receiving instruction.  The only instruction we are given relates to discrimination and that is clearly defined in English law.    We can say any word in context.  As parents would expect we don’t swear – but I doubt that is seen as political correctness.  In addition we don’t call students fat, stupid or ugly.  We may refer to an act as stupid but not the student.  I am fairly sure this is what parents expect.  Likewise we don’t tolerate students using derogatory terms to each other. 

This moves us towards a more complex area.  Words change meaning with time.  Medical terms used to describe individuals slip into common use as a derogatory term.  In order to avoid the use of a derogatory term to describe an individual the medical profession adopts a new term.  In addition words have multiple meanings.  I describe my doctoral gowns as ‘gay’ relating to their colourfulness in the early twentieth century use of the word, however if you were to describe them as ‘gay’ with a sneer in your voice you would be using the term to describe homosexuals in a derogatory way and applying it to my outfit.  This use is unfortunately growing among young people it seems and is clearly offensive. 

Going back to the original observation, how have I managed to avoid falling foul of this culture of ‘political correctness gone mad’?  Simply I have never found it necessary to call anyone ‘names’.  Oh I can and do swear on occasions, though usually not at work, and when I do I may question your intelligence as part of that.  But I find language is rich enough without resorting to name calling, and at the end of the day that’s all it is.

 

10 Comments
Micheal
2/10/2012 01:42:20 am

You have had no "problem" with PC because you never had an original thought that made someone want to silence you.

Many sacrifices have been made for your right to free speech: use it.

PC is opposed to independent thought, and that goes well with your use of the faintly superior expression "What's your problem?" towrds different persuasions.

Give it time: you are clearly younger than I and your moment of collision with the censors wil come; courage when it does.

Reply
Bryan Mills link
3/3/2012 08:50:49 pm

Sorry for delay - I travel a lot at times.
Well you have made a few assumptions there. As it happens I tend to be known for my off the wall and original views and approaches - and I have had people try to resist them - but do not see where PC fits in with this.
Yes we have free speech, yes I use it, no it does not allow me to call people names. People who cannot articulate their argument without littering it with abusive terms rarely have much of an argument – more a gut driven hatred. I can think of no example to the contrary, where someone has been silenced by PC - I can find none in the press.
PS - not sure where age comes in to it - it may surprise you that I am closer to retirement than an apprenticeship.

Reply
Micheal
3/4/2012 08:38:40 pm

It's a boring fact that we all make assumptions, including you. I don't hold it against anyone, until it inspires nastiness. Nature has an annoying habit of creating us all different, and some use language less subtly. I didn't call anyone names.

PC came in when you mentioned it (line 1, para 2)

I am impressed that you have done an archive search so quickly, to show that the absence of a recorded case proves that no-one was ever suppressed in expression of their views. I am not so logically gifted. It is a common tactic to pay people off and gag them.

A search under "headteacher accused or racism" will show how this particular charge is used: "mobbing in academia" also. Sexism and racism are often the charges.

The quote from Hunter Thompson, and its date, show you as older than your photo indicates (I guessed about right). I am retired, and remember his works - and the reasons for their flavour.

Censorship is a many headed monster. Name calling is clearly unnecessary, but the rules are often switched, making it hard to keep up with what one group is now allowed to call another, and new "groups" are being defined all the time. I have even been at a lecture where I was told quite seriously that it was "not enough to treat people the same"; an interesting idea, as a number of world teachers (of all kinds) have tried to get us to do just that.

Reply
Bryan Mills link
3/4/2012 09:31:04 pm

If you look you’ll see I did not accuse you of calling anyone a name – I was suggesting that the use of terms often picked up as being non-pc is also often accompanied by rather base arguments.

Yes often teachers (and others) are accused of being sexist, racist etc. but they are also accused of theft, having affairs, being violent. There is, I believe, quite a difference between falsely accusing someone of something to be vindictive and accusing someone based on grounds of attitude. The cases that come up are not attempts to challenge/silence on philosophical grounds but simply to divert blame, the result of a disgruntled ex-employee, etc.

A more complex case, in which a point is being made but the language confuses the issue, is David Starkey’s line “The whites have become black” in reference to last year’s riots. I do not believe that Prof Starkey is racist, I do feel he sometimes mis-0-judges the audience as he did again on Question Time this week. The difficulty lies in the way his phrase polluted his argument – which was in fact that youth culture has veered toward a nihilistic materialistic position. This fashion is most evident in videos and lyrics of (popular) rap songs. I think he was contrasting this with early riots which had more of a political motive (albeit perhaps miss-guided motive).

Reply
micheal
3/4/2012 10:55:53 pm

Many do not "call names", yet are accused of it, on grounfds of being something unfashionable. Groups with a point to make are known to shift the ground upon which they take offence (consider the change from the title NAACP through "Black" to the modern "African American" usage; all still in the archives), so we could (at any future time) become guilty, retrospectively, of giving offence. This is exactly where I view PC with suspicion - the rewriting of books, or even burning them, one day.

I duverge from your para 2. My researching of bullying and mobbing indicate that the given motives for attacks on teachers etc are not always the true ones. To me, the distinction you see is muddied in practice, and it is a "real world" in the end.

Recent reports are that most complaints against teachers are unsubstamtiated; this does not prove there was no greivance, but suggests an attitude of "any way will do" when there someone desperate enough

Prof Starkey now: I think professions form a cocoon for those of us (including me) who couldn't hack it making cars, and words change value according to who uses them. I agree with you completely about DS, who used words in a way that academics fully understand, but they are used to waiting to the end to get the whole argument, without sneering (too much) at the way the words are spoken.

The real test of acceptance awaits a stand up comic targetting values that put gang loyalty and posessions above life itself : one who uses "street language". We should not attack the messenger because we dislike the way he was taught to speak, but humans are only human, and we do.

Lastly, we who enjoy words and fine thoughts and niceties should always remember that the guy who grows the food may be less sophisticated - and that is his right. In the world of hard knocks, arguments get sorted by rough justice. Our ideas are valuable, but are not the whole show.

I worked in a multiracial institution whose members - as far as I could see - got where they were by ability. We ended working together through common interest. Only once do I recall a disparagement on the grounds of religion (my lack of it meant I "could not be moral", apparently) and never regarding race or sexuality. I think the world could better use good heartedness more than scholarly manifestos, but I don't know how you teach it.

Reply
Bryan Mills link
3/5/2012 12:11:17 am

Yes as words go from descriptive (innocent) use to becoming derogatory we have to change the word we use - and of course they go the other way to (I understand that ‘blimey’ was once very offensive).

As for complaints – I once recall a young woman saying to a police officer going about his duty “what are you looking at pedo, he’s a pedo he is”. She was clearly using these evocative words to try to prevent him going about his duties – but that of course is not a PC issue – just the misuse of language to get results. She could have easily and falsely have said something to do with race, religion, gender, etc.

I enjoy the confrontational comedy of the likes of Frankie Boyle – though sometimes he goes too far perhaps, that said I am glad we have past the 80s ‘humour’ of Jim Davidson with his stereo-typing.

In many ways PC has been hijacked in two directions – partly by the super-cautious who worry a little too much and think a little too little. Hence I call a white board and white board. At the other end of the spectrum is the group that tells a person “you aren’t even allowed to say xyz in your own country anymore” designed to provoke hatred toward the marginalised group.

I also try to work with people to help them see you can question everything and anything – from gay marriage to immigration, from benefits to rights, and that you need to work within a language of reason and not hatred to do that – I think we are largely talking that same approach here.

Reply
Micheal
3/7/2012 12:05:45 am

Forgive me for reopening this with an entirely new thought. This is inspired by a comment made by a stand up comic on R4 the other day. He is part British, part German, and bilingual. He finds that this one goes down well in Germany; he explains his heritage and then says - "I'l like to dominate the world, but I'm too polite"

I have just spoken to the Indian who runs our corner shop (we share a passion for cricket and talk a lot). He confirms that his customers are, indeed, polite. Despite our abrasive self image (inherited from the Anglo Saxon tradition), many foreigners say that the Brits are polite, and perhaps this is a clue to unfocussed use of the term PC.

You have spoken thoughtfully about the poorly thought out use of the term and I have stood my ground in saying there there is, nevertheless, a hard core of genuine instances of minorities using PC as a stick to beat the majority population; and I do not relent.

Your comments also suggest bigotry (whatever that really means) as the cause of many uses of expressions like "PC gone mad", but I have another. What we have is a culture clash, between a longer term native population which expects, from historical common usage, a degree of politeness, which includes a show of deference - even when it is not sincere.

It is a common remark by US comentators that Brits apologise when they have been bumped into, and this often causes a little chuckle. It is, though, clearly a civilised adaptation to a crowded society. If we did not do this (I used the Tube for 35 years - have you used it?), tempers would frazzle far more and quicker than they do.

I suggest that immigrants are seen as perfectly acceptable so long as they do not offend local conceptions of social manners, which takes time to learn, but (from my Tube experience) IS learned, eventually, by all groups. The native sense of justice is broken when individuals act or express themselves too directly - by e.by being seen to put a hand out in front of other deserving claimants. This is a paradox, alongside the bluntness of short word English, but there it is.

The use of "It's PC gone mad", I suggest, is the outraged cry of someone who really wants to say "Why can't everyone be as polite as we are told to be; why can't everyone queue; why can't everyone take their turn just like we have to?".

I am sure your answer to this will reflect your view of we, the long term native population, as it is a question of values, which science scrupulously excludes from all rationalist debating. And there's the problem; people are only partly rational beings by design. In my view we are under no obligation to change that - all we are entitled to ask of each other is the Golden Rule, expressed thus: "How would you like it if someone did it to you?".

Shouts of "PC gone mad" go up when somebody is perceived to be cheating on the social order: the person who stops vandals is the one arrested and they are allowed to continue bullying the neighbourhood; the burglar sues on the grounds of his human rights etc. Please don't say these have not occurred - even the Guardian; even the Independent, has reported such.

The surest way to quieten this down is for greater respect to be shown by all towards the established social conventions in public. That's not to say we should never protest injustice, but we should remeber that expecting other people to show a self efacing attitude while we take the cream is a recipe for conflict. Eventually, resentment breaks out, and we will discover what it's like when the native tradition of social manners is abandoned.

Reply
Micheal
3/5/2012 01:42:56 am

You've body swerved past my first point: it is disengenuous for a self defined group who have changed their preferred form of address to become (or feign) angry at someone from the sterotyped oppressing majority, just for using last year's term. I have seen this done in the flesh and on TV. A polite word to the effect that we now call ourselves X is all that is needed, not indignation.

By the way, I recall a variation on this being practised by US radicals in the late 1960s, and a similar one on a UK campus just 5 years ago.

Second para - this exact same tactic was used locally by a gang of kids, before that word became quite what it is now.

Comedy: I had in mind the new wave of muslim lady comics recently featured in arts progs, and that marvellous Iranian/Brit whose name eludes me.

As well as the hijacking of PC there is the oh so serious tendency who are determined not to let the majority off the hook; perhaps you have not encountered these, and they may be on the wane. Look at the M McGoldrick case from the 80s.

Yes, as Howard Jones said, "Always asking questions"; or, as I used to say to students "there is NO BOX".

The most encouraging thing would be for someone else to join in - and if they rubbish one or both of us, much the better: so long as they think and feel for themselves. I think we 2 have done this to death.

To finish, an encouraging tale:

I am an avaiation buff and once saw a documentary on the Pacific war. One of the American pilots was speaking of the respective machines and tactics of the each side (with a lot of respect). At one point he talks of "The Japs - Japanese"; immediately correcting himself. It does happen, eventually, even when people have been shot at.

Reply
micheal
3/26/2012 07:40:10 pm

I am disappointed that no-one would even disagree with this point.

......................................................................................


On a separate tack, a very educational R4 programme about Asian Youth Movements of the 80s managed to avoid any mention that a "White" man - Blair Peach - died at Southall, demonstrating against racist Fascists.

The author quoted time constraints. the cynic in me finds it is conveneient to stereotype peoples, and that Caucasians will do as well as anyone else.

THAT is what many of us regard as "PC" at work, (in practice), Sir. It is (truly) lazy to steretype non White people, but allowable in the current climate to ignore an unltimate sacrifice for the cause of good race relations.

By the way, did you ever research what happened to Maureen MacGoldrick?

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plymouth dating link
8/27/2012 12:55:29 am

Great blog post.

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    Dr Bryan Mills

    "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die" Hunter S Thompson describing the author in 1971.

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