I get the sense that when someone accuses someone else of being “politically correct” they are trying to give the impression that there’s a conspiracy to keep people from saying things that are true — as if the person accused of being “politically correct” is the one most interested in silencing honest discourse.
Far better, they say, to be honest, straightforward, and to the point.
But here’s the thing: It is not brave to be honestly insulting when you’re the most powerful person in a given situation. And people only seem to use the term “politically correct” in those situations.
Say a bully on a playground goes up to an overweight kid who struggles with learning. The bully is good-looking, fit, and a straight-A student. He tells the overweight kid that he’s overweight and has learning disabilities, and the overweight kid cowers, quietly bearing it. What can he say? Others are on the bully’s side, laughing. The kid is silenced.
If another kid tells the bully to stop, the bully might say the kid was being “politically correct.” But let’s take a closer look.
The bully is the one able to speak.
The overweight kid is the one silenced, afraid, forced not to insult the bully. If anyone is being silenced and barred from being honest, it’s the one being bullied, not the bullier.
Maybe the overweight kid laughs it off to keep from being alienated. Maybe the overweight kid goes home and cries while the bully continues to be smug. But my point is that it is far, far braver for the kid being abused to honestly speak up and protect himself than it is for the bully to honestly insult him.
If you were REALLY interested in protecting honesty, then you’d fight for a playground in which the abused kid doesn’t have to be any more scared to speak up than the bully.
That’s why I think the term “politically correct” is just a term for the bully to use to protect his bullying behavior and discourage anyone from stepping in. Think about it. Would the kid on the ground, who is really the one ACTUALLY silenced by the politics of the school, get labeled “politically incorrect” if they talked back to the bully? No. Because the bully is the one in power. The terms “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” are there to protect his right to bully.
Don’t believe me?
Try this thought experiment.
Imagine someone making a “politically incorrect” insult. Say, someone white says that someone is the n-word in front of a group of white people. Someone protests. And then the response is, “Man, stop being so politically correct.”
Seems like a standard use of the phrase? OK.
Let’s change the scene. Say that same person says the n-word while surrounded by the Black Panthers. ALL of them start to glare. Others begin to ball up their fists.
Somehow, “Man, stop being so politically correct” doesn’t seem like a proper usage of the term.
I mean, honestly…now that the power dynamics have shifted, I don’t think most people would think the problem was that the Black Panthers were too concerned about being politically correct.
The problem is that the guy didn’t know where he was at. You don’t say the n-word to a black person in a roomful of the Black Panthers if you’re the only white guy there. Bad idea.
What was the difference? The word used? No. The word’s offensiveness? It’s offensive in both places. What changed was the power dynamics of the environment.
So, the phrase “politically correct” is not about honesty. It’s not about a right to say or not say a certain string of words.
It’s about an effort to protect your “right” to insult the most vulnerable person or people in the room.
I know it might not feel like that, especially when you’re restricted from saying certain things that you’re used to saying. But the clear fact of the matter is that, when you look at most of the groups you’ll get accused of being “politically correct” for speaking up for — at the actual STATS, not at the unscientific hearsay of random people — you’ll find invariably that those groups are the main ones being silenced. Not the insulter.
If you were in a roomful of any one of those marginalized groups when you made these insults, we both know that the “politically correct” moniker wouldn’t work. It only works when that person is in the more vulnerable minority, surrounded by people who, in that situation, are more powerful in some respect.
Since “politically correct” is a term that only works when it comes from the people at the top of a power imbalance, the more of us fight against the term, and the more that power shifts, the less power that term will have.
It’s not about honesty, because if it were you’d be empowering the voices that are silenced by the lies you tell about them.
It’s about power dynamics, plain and simple. It’s about you wanting to be a bully, and having a hissy fit when someone threatens that.
You’re just scared. Which is understandable, on some level. It takes time to adjust when people start talking and shattering your illusions.
Just admit you’re scared of change. Stop lying about the problem being “political correctness” and start admitting that you’re having to adjust to changing understandings of the way the world works and it’s hard; that’s the real problem.
Be honest; tell the truth.
Thanks for reading.
[Image via Sander van der Wel under CCL 2.0]