Let me ask you this, do the majority of people look up to Donald Trump, the president of the United States? Do people respect and agree with what he posts on his Twitter account? How many people get offended by him everyday? In today's world, more and more people are becoming sensitive towards topics that are difficult, such as issues with race, gender, suicide, mental health, and many more. This is why "Political Correctness" is necessary. First off, I would like to define what Political ...
Essays on Political Correctness
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In her article, “Offensive Or Just Too Sensitive”, Claire Trevett discusses the viewpoints of both proponents and opponents of political correctness. On one hand, she contends, political correctness “removes divisions in society based on race, affluence, physical appearance and social status” (Trevett 1); at the same time, political correctness often “suppresses human rights, such as freedom of expression (Trevett 1). BJ Gallagher, in his article, “The Problem With Political Correctness”, ...
The academic year ends as it began. Campus enforcers, the deans and administrators of universities, are still busy denying that any effort to restrict free speech exists. The concern over 'political correctness,' they say, is overstated. Such denials don't alter the clear evidence that freedom of speech is no longer assured at many colleges and universities.
We have only to look at schools where nervously compliant administrations have established 'harassment' policies. These policies, or ...
We live in a society built around a vast human taxonomy that is constantly revised by the rich and powerful. And in every revision, every reinterpretation that undergoes the rigid set of social stratification we are left with the simple notion that our utility is over morality, purpose over personality and usefulness over happiness. If you could step out of the system and view it for what it really is, you would see a prison full of willing prisoners. We are slaves of what we conceive as ...
Language and terminology constantly change. What was once considered normal or comedic could be considered inappropriate and offensive today. Recently, the term ‘political correctness’, a term that means we use language that advocates replacing offensive terms and labels with more neutral terms, has become prominent in Western culture. This is due to many people voicing themselves about terms that are offensive and unnecessary to our current vocabulary. To support any arguments shown in this ...
To the "politically correct," the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America is no cause for celebration. And even before 1992 began, their protests resulted in a significant victory: the naming of an American Indian as co-grand marshal in the 1992 Rose Parade. Parade officials caved in to critics, who denounced the tournament committee when it first named as grand marshal Cristobal Colon, a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus. But the actual target of those critics was not simply ...
As Mark Smith describes in his online article “What is education?”, education signifies the wise and respectful cultivation of learning, undertaken in the belief that everyone has the right to share knowledge. Prison, as described by Wikipedia, is a “facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state”. Now, what do these two words have in common? How do they relate to one another? For some, this is a very easy question to answer, ...
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Main information
Political correctness is a policy, measure, or language formulated in a way to avoid offending a person or a social group. The term mostly refers to using inclusive language as opposed to insulting, marginalizing, and excluding disadvantaged groups of people.
Cause
Conservatives and right-wing politicians came up with the “political correctness” term as a way to humiliate their ideological opponents during the 1990s. Liberals argued that their efforts to resolve social discrimination of all types encompassed language, too.
Outcome
The debate over political correctness is ongoing, and it focuses on the question if language has the power to solve social and political problems.
Key Quotes
- “Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism… What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism - by levelling the charge of ‘political correctness’ against its exponents - they could discredit the whole political project.” - Will Hutton
- “The term ‘political correctness’ has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell’s ‘Thought Police’ and fascist regimes.” - Helmut Newton
- “Democracy was supposed to champion freedom of speech, and yet the simple rules of table decorum could clamp down on the rights their forefathers had fought and died for.” - E.A. Bucchianeri
Arguments For
There’s a thin line between freedom of speech and straightforward insults. The concept of political correctness aims to avoid insults in debates, keeping them at a more civilized level.
Arguments Against
Critics see political correctness as censorship, and argue that intellectual intimidation and mild language cannot make real social changes.
