Political Correctness or Plain Politeness?

A number of years ago my sister and I took our parents to a rather elegant restaurant for lunch. It was a converted old manor house with beautiful old rooms and quiet carpeted floors; utterly unlike the hard-floored echo chamber of a typical Melbourne café. The gentle clink of cutlery and quiet conversations were the only sounds.

I note this because at a strategic moment when everyone in the restaurant went silent, my father dropped the n-word.

Nigger.

It was like all the oxygen was sucked out of the room.

“Dad!!!! You can’t say that!!!” my sister said in horror.

“What did I say? What’s wrong with that?” he replied.

My father was born in 1916 in country Victoria, and in his mind describing someone of African origin as a “nigger” was descriptive. In this embarrassing context, my sister and I tried to explain that the n-word is considered a highly offensive racial slur.

Political correctness means “the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.” (thanks dictionary.com!) My father’s lack of political correctness was clearly offensive to the other diners on that day.

I think political correctness is one way of expressing good manners.

The heart of civility is to “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31). This involves helping others feel respected and at ease.

Conversely, you should NOT do to others as you would NOT have them do to you. No one likes being patronised, mocked, or abused.

Words can hurt. Words can hurt so much that we have laws against defamation: someone’s reputation or career (or both) can be ruined by untrue negative speech. We have laws against racial and religious vilification: hate speech can stir up physical violence as well as causing psychic pain.

Unkind speech that doesn’t cross the line into breaking the law can still be offensive and hurtful. While anything can become legalistic or petty, the essence of political correctness is well-intended.

Some extremists paint political correctness as a giant conspiracy. Some use the term ‘Cultural Marxism’, describing a sinister plot to destroy Western civilization. Like most crazy conspiracy theories, some naughty Jews are the major culprits in this evil plot.

I recently read this extravagant claim:

“The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial writers had recklessly pilloried a University of Pennsylvania academic as the personification of political correctness, said it posed a ‘far worse ... threat to intellectual freedom’ than McCarthyism. In the pages of The Washington Times (see 'Defending Dixie'), Heritage Foundation scholar Laurence Jarvik wrote angrily that ‘storm troopers’ were attacking ‘Western culture….’ ‘Racism, sexism and chauvinism are powerful weapons in the Marxist psychological warfare against traditional American values… Political correctness, the product of critical theory, is really treason against the U.S. Constitution and against America.’’’

(See this link for more: this is well worth a read.)

Um… excuse me?

I think political correctness might be codified courtesy more so than a Marxist plot of Jewish elites.

Have you noticed a backlash against political correctness? Or witnessed hostility to this? Or do you think political correctness really has gone too far?