Essays on Political Correctness

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.

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.

The debate over political correctness is ongoing, and it focuses on the question if language has the power to solve social and political problems.

• “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

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.

Critics see political correctness as censorship, and argue that intellectual intimidation and mild language cannot make real social changes.