[xtypo_dropcap]N[/xtypo_dropcap]ovelty soap aroused a controversy in an Indiana mall last week. A store specializing in products that hearken back to days gone by sold soap with faux-vintage images of black-face minstrels.
Mall owners later pulled the product from shelves, concerned they might offend some shoppers, but the unapologetic store owner told the Indianapolis NBC affiliate that he simply didn’t believe in political correctness.
At first I was appalled at the store owner’s statement. How dare he say that, selling soap like this! But I began to wonder if he had a point.
I grew up in the 1980s just before all the Politically Correct (PC) overkill jokes, when the move to adopt this language was in full swing and culturally enforced. I remember well-meaning individuals correcting my speech so that I could avoid offending, and I was thankful for their advice. I didn’t want to make any unintended blunders that might brand me a racist, sexist, or any other –ist that I wasn’t.
But the advice was rarely consistent or useful. I remember visiting a friend at a private college where signs were posted on the doors in the student union explaining that “Oriental” was a derogatory term. However, I later met a number of Asians from a variety of backgrounds who knew of no stigma attached to the word, and even included “Oriental” in the official titles of their organizations.
I was also instructed to avoid using “Indian” when referring to Native Americans. But when I attended a pow-wow years after this lesson I observed that that community embraced this word. While different nations preferred the moniker of their particular tribe, “Indian” was still used with great pride.
Of course blatantly offensive terms do exist, but exercising our ability to spot them and learning to evaluate important factors such as context and intent serves to create a well-reasoned individual. By enforcing a sanitized language, PC speech relieves us from the burden of having to consider each situation appropriately.
In his recent article “A Politically Correct Culture 1960-2010” writer Robert Price observes that years of PC language is creating a “cloned population” lacking initiative and free thought.
“Society cannot properly develop if it is forced to keep within a certain language, behavioral framework that denies itself any possibility of viewing rogue or inappropriate behavioral patterns that we appreciate as unwanted but that we would miss as necessary within society in order to help it maintain a proper balanced development,” he writes.
There is a prevailing notion that PC language is exclusive of the left, but I see it as only one aspect of a larger problem—the practice of shaping public perception in a coercive and limiting way—which is shown to enjoy rigorous bipartisan support.
This brand of language control breeds a fear that you might be unintentionally yet unmistakably offensive despite your best efforts. As atrophied reasoning carries over from social group evaluations to other subjects, it leaves people, eager to fit in and not offend, vulnerable to perceiving otherwise valid arguments as empty simplifications and absolutes.
Observe the growing list of evil “-ists” we’re instructed to avoid, which serve to silence and discredit individuals who might otherwise express an informed point of view.
Oppose government decision-making and you risk being labeled “unpatriotic;” fail to appeal to the lowest common denominator and you risk being labeled an “elitist;” criticize industry practices shown to hurt our health and environment and you risk being labeled “anti-business.”
This absolute language impairs our ability to identify important distinctions, and negatively colors an argument before it even has a chance to be communicated.
In other words, it impairs our ability to think clearly.
I think we should always consider what we say and how it will affect others, including in matters of race, gender, or other categories. But we should also acknowledge that our culture contains a wide variety in points of view that can’t tolerate limited expressions that funnel thought toward narrow possibilities. To do otherwise is actually kind of offensive
