I hate ‘political correctness’!
I hate political correctness, absolutely detest it, but probably not for the reasons you might imagine. This is not not going to be a diatribe against mythical canteens where you cannot ask for black coffee, or imaginary teachers banned from singing Baa Baa Black Sheep. The heading of this page isn’t urban myths, OK?
PC basically comes down to simple courtesy, treating other people with due respect. If you can’t see without being told not to do it that calling one group of people “niggers” or “wogs” (etc. ad nauseam…) on account of the melanin content of their skin is at the absolute minimum bloody rude, then perhaps there is some point to having PC around; but the very existence of the concept of political correctness can actually blunt its effectiveness.
This was forcibly brought home to me recently when I and some friends had to endure a meal in the company of a woman we barely knew; dressed and made up as though she had fallen into a Rip Van Winkle-style sleep in the early Seventies, she had all the attitudes to match. In fact, it was not difficult to imagine her sitting in the audience of Love Thy Neighbour and laughing till she was sick.
Throughout the entire meal she insulted several of those present (or at least attempted to), mounted a sustained verbal assault on vegetarianism (three vegetarians were present), expressed her terror in the face of “the underclass” (“They’re breeding! They’re breeding!” she cried, several times) and told a series of “jokes” which were bizarrely racist. I say bizarrely so because none of the rest of us could figure out why anyone, no matter how racist or bigoted, could find them amusing. Perhaps it takes a particularly meagre level of intellect.
We tolerated this hideous performance solely for the sake of her fiancé, whom none of us wanted to upset. At the end of the meal, when they had departed, those left were in no doubts about what they would have liked to do to her, although there was the question of whether “a good slapping” would be effective — one of the women suggested “strangling the bitch”.
At one point, one woman had, very mildly, suggested that she disagreed with this insufferable blight on the evening; our tormentor replied with a casual, “Oh, you’re just so PC!” That chilling little comment (which I realised that I had heard before) made me consider how far political correctness can be dismissed simply because there is a term for it. You don’t like me calling Pakistanis smelly, or suggesting that “niggers” go back “home” — well, you’re just so PC!
It is typical of our culture that everything needs to be packaged in some way; it isn’t enough to say that we should treat our fellow humans with respect, we have to give it a label. And now the bigots and the racists and the sexists have an easy get out: they can think to themselves “There’s nothing wrong with me, they’re just so politically correct.”
They would hardly say “Oh, you’re just so considerate” (or polite, or courteous) would they? Nor would you hear a voice stuffed with self-satisfaction say “Well, I’m not considerate of others” — but it is all right, apparently, to say “I’m not politically correct.” And that is why I hate political correctness: what should be a weapon against bigotry has been made into a shield for bigots.
After this was put online, I got some comments about it. It is worth noting that those who were there on the night and knew what I was talking about felt I had been a little too kind to the woman in question. I also received an amusing list of possible descriptions for her.
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