Introduction
I have seen it often argued that
“Political correctness isn’t gone mad or posing a danger to free speech. It’s just about treating people with respect!”
You may have seen this belief expressed in
this video
put out by MTV addressing the question “Is PC Culture Anti-Free
Speech?” But that type of conception of Political Correctness paints a
very incomplete picture which results in a lot of misunderstandings
regarding what is actually being criticized when it is said that
Political Correctness has “gone mad” or is “out of control”.
The Meaning of ‘Political Correctness’
We of course need to define the term “Political Correctness” in order
to have any debate. Dictionaries differ slightly in their definitions
but the following encompasses the idea that I am discussing in this
article, regardless of what you want to call it:
“Political correctness” refers to the use of various forms of
social pressure to prevent words, ideas, and opinions from being
expressed that are viewed by some people as offensive or harmful in some
way (usually only to a group perceived as disadvantaged in society.
Offense or harm to anyone perceived as non-disadvantaged is generally
ignored, excused, or even encouraged).
Initially this may sound simple enough so it may be hard to imagine
how any problems could arise from it. However, as I will explain, the
effort to strongly enforce respect for others and suppress harmful
speech is actually fraught with major problems.
Note: What Political Correctness is NOT
Political Correctness is not about suppressing any general rudeness
and vulgarity. It is about suppressing speech that is perceived as
inherently harmful to an entire group of people who are considered
disadvantaged or oppressed. Often a statement or joke can be both rude and seen as politically incorrect, but these ideas are distinct.
The Dangerous Side Of Political Correctness
I don’t have a problem with treating people with respect. Political
Correctness can often have some benefits as intended. For example,
insisting that people avoid using derogatory slang for people of East
Asian or African descent. Certain terms are just unnecessary and do not
help in communicating any information more clearly than using other
terms or phrasing. The terms merely carry emotional baggage that insult
those groups and – for related reasons – tend to be used to express
disgust of those people.
But unfortunately this idea is that it can be used – intentionally or
otherwise – to justify social intolerance of all kinds of disagreement
and thus become a tool for dogmatic ideological control of society.
So the problem with political correctness “gone mad” or “out of
control”, is not “respect for the oppressed”. The problem is people
becoming irrational and viciously intolerant of dissent
in their zeal to enforce
what they consider respect for who they believe are oppressed; and that
these behaviors ultimately undermine important freedoms and many of the
goals of social justice.
Close-Mindedness And How Social Intolerance Undermines The Goals of Social Justice
Employing the idea of political correctness entails being socially
intolerant of many statements and ideas which you think are harmful. Due
to the nature of this practice, it necessarily operates under the
presumption that your current opinions are extremely accurate and your
current information is sufficient to form such accurate beliefs.
But there is a problem:
Anyone can have inaccurate and illogical views about which ideas, statements, and so on are morally good or bad.
There is no perfect and utterly objective method of analysis and
judgment at the basis of political correctness. What is suppressed
depends on which beliefs and dogmas become popular among a large or
powerful portion of the population sufficient to wield a strong
influence over political discourse and social behavior. This means that
politically correct censorship has the potential to be applied to any
ideas, information, opinions, or form of expression at all.
This includes truthful statements and disagreements made on grounds of legitimate disagreement, not merely hate or delight in aggravating others.
And the problem can worsen through a self-reinforcing effect on
close-mindedness. By using social intolerance, existing feelings and
beliefs are exposed to fewer and fewer challenges that could help create
a more realistic understanding of a topic. And this has the effect of
making those current views inflexible and prone to building up to
extremes as issues are perceived through an increasingly simplistic and
information-lacking lens. This means that political correctness can
undermine its own noble goals by inadvertently condemning ideas that
benefit society or defending sources of harm.
These problems make “politically correct” social intolerance a very
dangerous practice to let spread as a normal and acceptable form of
political activism in any society.
The Dangerous Behaviors
In the following list, I explain the most disconcerting behaviors
that are often fostered by political correctness and which lead to the
problems described in the previous section. Political correctness does
not always involve the behaviors I describe below – and these behaviors
are not only seen in cases of political correctness – but these are the
behaviors that are of primary concern when speaking about political
correctness “gone mad” and posing a threat to free speech.
1. Using “offense” as a standard for deciding what speech should be considered intolerable
The standard for deciding that a statement or idea is socially
intolerable is often based on whether a particular group of people feel
that it is “offensive” to hear, either because it is perceived as
harmful or as just not respectful or whatever other reason.
But offense is a necessary element in the concept of free speech.
This is not for the sake of offense itself, as offense has no value as a
goal in itself, at least in my own view. But rather, offense must be
tolerated because it is crucial that people are able to speak their true
opinions and present information and discuss ideas despite how others
may feel about it, because otherwise, important truths and good ideas
can be silenced.
The list below describes the main reasons that offense is a poor basis for censorship.
A. Subjective
B. Caters to extremists
C. Necessary speech
2. Irrational Analysis And Jumping To Conclusions
The desire to be attack injustice can sometimes overwhelm a person’s
desire to have a correct understanding of what is actually happening.
Often people will hastily jump to conclusions or simply use illogical
reasoning because they’re
trying to believe that evil is occurring more than they are trying to consider the details fairly.
They will make accusations of racism, sexism, and myriad other “isms”
and “phobias” based on short video clips or a few sentences a person
spoke rather than make an effort to understand the person’s complete
statement, argument, or perspective. Or, in cases where they have
sufficient pertinent information, they will still make those accusations
based on illogical thinking.
They also often conflate fundamentally different ideas that are not
mutually inclusive. Criticism of zionist ideology and Israeli government
policy may be misconstrued as anti-semitism. Or criticism of some
claims and ideas from self-identified feminists may be accused of being
anti-feminist or misogyinistic.
Consequently, people and situations that are
not sexist or
racist etc by any definition (including definitions defined by relative
power of different people) suffer the same accusations and vitriol as
the people and situations for which those labels
are apt.
You can read numerous examples of this in the drop-down below.
Stephen Fry makes a joke at the BAFTA awards
Sam Harris accused of racism for criticizing Islamic belief
3. Misuse of Accusations and Negative Labels as a Political Tool
I touched upon how political correctness often involves making
irrational judgments and accusations, but in this section I want to
point out how the accusations are themselves political tools, not merely
annoying results of irrational thinking.
The constant, ferocious use of accusations of racism, sexism, and so
on is a form of political activism in itself which, it appears, many
people have found to be an effective tool for combating dissenters.
People will often use negative labels (e.g. “sexist”) or even create
entirely new pejorative terms (e.g. “Islamophobic”) to label any speech
they disagree with. The constant use of these terms has enabled them to
make their way into mainstream usage in American media, and they have
quite effectively been used to simply identify all a wide variety of
opinions and information as inherently “bad”, immoral, malicious, and
factually wrong, regardless of any actual information, discussion,
analysis, or logical argument. These labels and accusations are being
used as tools to demonize and shut down ideas that the accusers cannot,
or do not want to, contend with rationally – and they are surprisingly
effective.
The most appalling example of this is that criticizing Islamic
beliefs or the Quran or even debating possible negative impacts of mass
immigration of Muslims is all labeled “Islamophobic” as if these views
are inherently wrong and “bad” despite all evidence in their favor and
the fact that our culture has no trouble viciously criticizing myriad
other beliefs and ideologies.
4. Extreme emotional reactions
Highly charged emotional reactions are a common sight in the realm of
political correctness, and it comes from all corners of the political
spectrum. Of course being highly emotional is not always a bad thing in
every context, but leaping to such reactions should generally be
discouraged since it feeds into the following problems:
A) Causes close-mindedness. An extremely emotional
state of mind tends to impede one’s ability to think rationally and be
open to disagreement and new information.
B) Causes hastier judgments. An extremely
impassioned person will be more likely to make hasty judgments based on
little information about an event that occurred or a statement someone
made. Intense emotions are often a major factor in causing the
irrational accusations mentioned in earlier sections.
C) Fosters more extreme dogmas. Highly charged
emotions can lead people to adopt more simplistic and extreme
perspectives of reality in their attempt to eradicate what they see as
problems, while also causing them to ignore the problematic aspects of
their own ideas.
D) Extreme actions. Extreme emotion produces extreme
choice of action, especially with regard to the more extreme dogmas it
can create. These extreme actions, whether on an interpersonal, social,
or legislative level, can have very harmful effects.
E) Severely disturbs discussion. Very strong
emotions make it difficult or impossible to discuss an issue in person
or to maintain a peaceful protest. The extreme passion and fear or anger
leads to people speaking over each other or starting physical fights.
A rather stark example of these problems manifested itself in the now infamous case at Yale where a student was filmed
screaming at a professor who very calmly and politely disagreed with her about an issue of cultural insensitivity that had occurred at a party.
5. “No-Platforming”; Discourse And Even Tolerance Itself Are Demonized
There is a common doctrine within many groups on the political left
which holds that dissenters with politically incorrect views should not
be engaged with via discourse. The act of even listening or tolerating
the speech of such dissenters is itself considered approval or promotion
of terribly harmful views.
Obviously no private organization should be required to provide a
platform for all speech and ideas they may disagree with, and private
groups have a right to decide who they wish to associate with or
represent them. I support this very much, since specialized groups are
important for advocating certain ideas, which requires them to maintain
unity and convey a coherent message (however, do not confuse this with
the individuals themselves being closed-minded; these issues are not
mutually inclusive).
But there is a problem when A) people are being rejected form private groups
as a result of
the issues mentioned in the previous sections, especially when they are
being disinvited due to views they hold which are not directly related
to that group and which they would not even be discussing in that group.
And even worse than that is when people are disallowed from speaking in
places
intended for debate and learning (when such spaces are
eliminated) by either, B) again, disinviting speakers due to the
irrational aforementioned issues, or C) by disrupting events at which
they speak, or D) by forcefully trying to bar entrance for speakers they
dislike and the people who wish to hear them.
Forcefully trying to bar entrance is very disturbing. It reveals an
extreme degree of close-mindedness and it is an escalation of the
methods used to silence dissent by entering the realm of physical force.
Examples (corresponding to letters above):
A. Rejection from private groups
B. Disinviting speakers
C. Disruption and threats
D. Forcefully barring access
The Danger of Political Correctness Becoming Law
The ultimate danger of the intolerance of dissent is that those views
may become established in law, and numerous opinions will be made
illegal to express. Using government power to punish speech deemed
“harmful” is largely subjective to the opinions of whoever has power at
the time (i.e. the people making the laws), and sets a dangerous
precedent that is easily used for sociopolitical control by any group
that gains popularity.
Conclusion
As a society, we must remember that tolerance does not mean to just
love certain things and hate other things, although that connotation has
become commonly used. Tolerance, at least in the basic sense I mean
here, means to be willing to endure the existence of, and exposure to,
what you dislike. It is this latter form of tolerance that ensures more
fair discourse and helps foster an atmosphere where people are more open
to learning and changing their beliefs.
I cannot claim that any society will be perfect in this regard – far
from it – but we can certainly avoid the dangerous path of going
straight in the opposite direction.
http://www.defenseofreason.com/dangerous-side-political-correctness/
