Political Correctness
Why?
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
As I said in my mission statement, all political correctness is bullshit, and I guess y'all want to know why I think this. Well, the first reason I hold this opinion is that the majority of society think so too. Political Correctness began in the seventies with feminism and other left wing movements, but it came to a hilt in the mid nineties when everyone was wasting entirely too much effort on trying to please everyone else without realising that they were essentially trying to change and remould opinions and thoughts that people had been having since the dawn of polite society. Now I'll be the first to admit that certain elements of political correctness, such as those of race, class and sexuality are great, in principle. I'm all for people getting along with each other and not feeling the need to beat the crap out of someone because they're different. However, poltical correctness failed to focus on this, the fundamental problem, and instead decided that everyone would be ok if they all just had the right labels.
And that's what it boils down to; labels. Vertically challenged, Horizontally challenged, Physically challenged, it's fantastic, all of a sudden no one's ill anymore, they're all just challenged. Stuck in a wheel chair? you're not disabled, you're challenged. Noticeably shorter than everyone else, born with achondroplasia? you're not a dwarf or a little person, you're challenged. It's ridiculous, if you're lazy, you're motivationally challenged, if you're dead you're metabolically challenged, the list could go on and on. the whole premise of political correctness seems to me to be that so long as you're using the right terminology, it doesn't really matter what you think. Then there's the whole argument that it supposedly began as a way to spread communism ("Change... speech and thought patterns by spreading the idea that vocalizing your beliefs is disrespectful to others and must be avoided to make up for past inequities and injustices.", Blazquez, 2002) and ended up being used as an excuse to ban santa claus.
The fact is, why waste time and effort trying to think of a way to be polite on the surface, when inside everyone still has all the same prejudices they ever have. The fact is certain people where raised to feel this way about people that were lesser abled than themselves or not in the same social class, through parental and peer pressure. Children today are not so inclined to feel this way about certain minority groups, but as a race we are still programmed to look upon anything different in a suspicious way, and that dates back to the BCs when it was necessary for us to think that way due to natural selection, we needed to shun the weak and the physically unfit in order to evolve as a species. To a certain extent we still think this way today, only difference is, we know its bad.
So there it is. I realise that political correctness had a purpose at some point, but it kinda lost its way and I think it's time we all just gave it a rest and stopped trying to convince ourselves we're good people when despite all this newly found tolerance, black people, gay people and people of all kinds of other minorities are still being persecuted and ending up metabolically challenged. What's the point in trying to change what we say if it doesn't change what we think?
Sources:
The Origins of Political Correctness, Blazquez, Sutton (2002) http://www.taylor.co.uk/andrew/politicalcorrectness.htm
Frequently Asked Questions, The Little People of America (2003) http://www.lpaonline.org/resources_faq.html
The Politically Correct Dictionary, No Author (2004) http://www.funny2.com/dictionary.htm
And that's what it boils down to; labels. Vertically challenged, Horizontally challenged, Physically challenged, it's fantastic, all of a sudden no one's ill anymore, they're all just challenged. Stuck in a wheel chair? you're not disabled, you're challenged. Noticeably shorter than everyone else, born with achondroplasia? you're not a dwarf or a little person, you're challenged. It's ridiculous, if you're lazy, you're motivationally challenged, if you're dead you're metabolically challenged, the list could go on and on. the whole premise of political correctness seems to me to be that so long as you're using the right terminology, it doesn't really matter what you think. Then there's the whole argument that it supposedly began as a way to spread communism ("Change... speech and thought patterns by spreading the idea that vocalizing your beliefs is disrespectful to others and must be avoided to make up for past inequities and injustices.", Blazquez, 2002) and ended up being used as an excuse to ban santa claus.
The fact is, why waste time and effort trying to think of a way to be polite on the surface, when inside everyone still has all the same prejudices they ever have. The fact is certain people where raised to feel this way about people that were lesser abled than themselves or not in the same social class, through parental and peer pressure. Children today are not so inclined to feel this way about certain minority groups, but as a race we are still programmed to look upon anything different in a suspicious way, and that dates back to the BCs when it was necessary for us to think that way due to natural selection, we needed to shun the weak and the physically unfit in order to evolve as a species. To a certain extent we still think this way today, only difference is, we know its bad.
So there it is. I realise that political correctness had a purpose at some point, but it kinda lost its way and I think it's time we all just gave it a rest and stopped trying to convince ourselves we're good people when despite all this newly found tolerance, black people, gay people and people of all kinds of other minorities are still being persecuted and ending up metabolically challenged. What's the point in trying to change what we say if it doesn't change what we think?
Sources:
The Origins of Political Correctness, Blazquez, Sutton (2002) http://www.taylor.co.uk/andrew/politicalcorrectness.htm
Frequently Asked Questions, The Little People of America (2003) http://www.lpaonline.org/resources_faq.html
The Politically Correct Dictionary, No Author (2004) http://www.funny2.com/dictionary.htm