Freedom of Speech and Political Correctness

Ceili- Fascinating "take" on the subject. I would like to see that we have matured enough, as a country, to have developed some sense as to what is appropriate speech, and what is not. But I am not sure that is the case.

I believe that the whole PC movement has come out of both the civil rights and women's movement, since the 1960's. As different groups attained political and social clout, there was a change in how they could be spoken about, and what words could be used to characterize the group.

This tendency to walk on eggs verbally spread to other facets of society, like the mentally ill and the disabled. As a result, many of the descriptions of various groups, and descriptions became sanitized and euphemized. The focus had shifted.

The word that comes to mind as I am writing this is "entitlements", a word that I abhor. When I was young, we used the words "relief", and later, "welfare". The implication of those words was that people were being helped by others, in this case, the government. They were fairly neutral, straightforward descriptions.

When PC became fashionable, welfare had morphed into "entitlements", which means something completely different. The implication in this word is that the government owes some people a living. The word "entitlements spread to include many other social give aways. The attitude of many people receiving these "entitlements" clearly illustrated a profound change in the state of mind of some people receiving these funds, and clearly illustrated a shift in thinking. From being grateful for a helping hand, the attitude switched to "you owe me".

With women, behavior at work took a marked change. Sexual bantering has always been a part of office life. If it is taken in good fun, and is not abusive, it adds lightheartedness to the office, and I see no problem with it. The difficulty was, that now men needed to hold their tongues. To be "politically incorrect" now, could easily engender a lawsuit.

The long and short of it, is that I think that we have done a 180 in the service of political correctness. Yes, there were wrongs that had to be corrected. Being belittling, abusive, and uncaring of another's feelings is just plain bad manners, and is totally out of place in a civilized society. But swinging in the totally opposite direction is fraught with a new set of difficulties.

It's a new uniquely American and uniquely idiotic philosophy of language that the words you use to describe something change the nature of it. I have no respect for it. Oftentimes, making things "politically correct" actually makes the terms less correct - case in point:

African-American student expelled for not being black enough: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36764

It's like newspeak - limiting the number of things you can say limits what you can think. So if we stop talking about race, we'll stop categorizing people. Maybe that's why Americans put so much emphasis on having out words free, if we believe they hold the power to alter what we think.

Carlos Mencia brought up a wonderful point in one of his shows; we don't have the freedom of speech anymore. If you are anything but black, try to walk down a street in Harlem and crack a joke about blacks. Even though black people often call themselves niggers, you try it too. See what happens? Maybe we have the right to say what we want, but we also have the right to die.

People are also so uptight about what is politically correct these days. We white people aren't white anymore, we're caucasian. Those of us who descended from the orientals aren't orientals. Native Americans aren't Indians even though we sometimes call ourselves that.

What it comes down to is that we are so afraid of offending someone else that we end up not talking at all even though freedom of speech is the privilege that most of the world holds to the most. What is wrong with us?

All the black people I know personally are actually horribly offended by the term "African-American". The whole thing is about white people feeling bad that they learned the original terms (black, oriental, white, whatever) as slurs and are trying to pat themselves on the back and say they aren't racist. So when someone else uses the terms, you can rail about how the evil people who made up the terms were horrible and how we've evolved out of that dark age and then they can climb back up on their high horse.

Personally, I'd hate being called a "Jewish-American" or something like that - as if I weren't born and raised here like every other American.

I never called anyone "African-American" because I have only once met a black person who didn't like being called black. He wanted people to refer to him as a negro. He was a funny guy.

[irony] Don't you mean the "crazy and the crippled"? [/irony]

I've railed about the whole "PC Movement" fallacy before, but this kinda sums it up:



No, "entitlements" came from the RIGHT, as a criticism of "welfare queens" who were characterized as feeling "entitled."

Yeah, this PC thing has gotten out of hand. I'm going back to calling women bitches and ho's. When they get knocked up I'll say they are "spent". And for goodness sake call a gimp a gimp. Staring is fine too, these days it seems people are afraid to look at each other for fear of offending someone's "sensibilities".

Jokes about the Holocaust are also fine, after 5 years everything is game. If you see a Jew poking around in an ashtray ask if he's looking for relatives.

What really gets me is how politically correct funerals have become. What? Are we that afraid to offend people? I was at a funeral the other day and I asked if I could have the dead guy's gold teeth. The widow went berserk, heck she must have been really caught up in this whole new fangled pee cee wave. If it offends it offends. We need to stop walking on eggshells.

This reminds me of the time I found out a neighbor kid was adopted, he didn't know yet but hey, I told him. None of this PC nonsense he cried it out in a few days. These days people are afraid to do anything to kids, I take a baseball bat to them if they get close. Hell back in the day my parents used to use a 2 by 4. We shouldn't spare the rod.

And what's with women having the right to say no? Men are stronger than women, let's stop worrying about offending someone and give them the rough treatment they deserve. They might bitch and complain but deep down I'm sure they like it. None of this PC crap I tell you.

This really burns my ass, hell I can hardly throw rocks at the blind kid down the street without some over-sensitive PC freak telling me to cut it out. What's next? Can't detonate firecrackers in a cat's ass anymore? Can't joke about blacks and slavery?

Why can't I point and laugh at the sensitive girl with braces? I don't call her "dentally challenged" I call her beaver. I don't care about this PC crap.

Why can't I call the fat postal worker lard ass? You're damn right I tell her to work out and make her cry. Maybe that'll motivate her to get off her fat ballooning ass.

See, we've gotten so afraid of offending people that we don't speak out mind. I'm a free thinker, I don't follow this PC crap. I, like 98% of America, think PC has gone too far and I like them want to stop following the pack.

Some call me an ass for the way I laugh at blind people after I trip them, they call my behavior offensive. But I'm not an ass, and I take offense to that. Those people are total jerks for calling me names like that.

[/satire]

"Entitlements" became a part of the Federal Budget lingo when provisions were first implemented to provide pensions to Civil War soldiers. That was long before anyone had ever heard of "welfare queens".

OK, thanks fishin'. This also means it was long before the "PC Movement."

I think that the current usage and derogatory meaning -- they think they're entitled -- owes more to the right than to the "PC Movement."

And welcome to a2k, lapsus!

I think courtesy is a reasonable mode for humans and that much derogatory wording has been hurtful not just to the immediate person being derided but to colloquy at large. Most of the words objected to as things turned "pc aware" were used as separators - such as "crazy".

I agree that sometimes we go overboard into sillyness as it is occasionally hard to keep up with group preferences and some are a little contrived, but I like the underlying idea of simple courtesy behind the newer appelations.

Free speech, I have it, I can call anybody anything, but I choose my words, or try to, to deride ideas or constructions, not groups of people en masse.

Missed ya there Lapsus, love it!

Welcome aboard Lapsus and LOL :-D

Is there a "PC Movement"??? I didn't get the impression that Phoenix was refering to anything like that when she wrote:



I read that to mean that as different group became political empowered they used their newfound clout to exorcise terms that they found derogatory/offensive from common usage.

But "entitlements" began to get used in place of other terms during the 1960s (In the Civil Rights Act of 1964 mostly) when a lot of civil rights groups started claiming that people had a right to welfare, etc..

So it sort of becomes the chicken/egg thing. The word got used, then it got turned into something with a negative connotation (much like the word "liberal".)

Here in Germany, our speech is almost as free as in America, but our political correctness codes are much less restrictive. For example, the traditional German way of describing several people of the same kind, the male form of any noun is used unless all people addressed are women. The women's movement in the 1970 has made this movement politically incorrect. Today, opening a speech with "Dear dustmen" is politically incorrect and reveals you as a conservative. The politically correct term is "Dear dustmen and dustwomen".

Besides that, the only big pitfall is when you criticize Israel, because the Central Counsel of Jews in Germany inevitably interprets it as anti-semitism, which is a big no-no for well known historical reasons.

But that's really it. Nobody here would switch from "handicapped" to "differently abled", or from "black" to "African American". It's much more relaxed here than it is in the US.

It was within my adulthood that very few women were admitted to medical school in the United States - perhaps 1% of students overall.
It was certainly within my adulthood that it was assumed that
people who did or could engage in certain careers were men only, so there is a basis for the prickliness about 'postmen' and similar group words. I agree some of the ways around the issue are silly.

I've observed different groups working out preferred wordage differently. The actors I know are male and female, actress being less used recently - at least within my association.

Stewardesses and stewards became Flight Attendants together. I have no particular opinion on that, but there was inclusion of both men and women, if distinguished by suffix, there in the first place.

It seems easy enough to me to say 'workers' instead of 'workmen'; that allows a little air for the woman who might venture the employment.

Thomas, I think that most langauges with gendered plural pronouns has the convention of referring to a group of people with the male default. And in English too, when you have nouns for which the default form ends with -man - congressman, etc. I personally have no problem calling a woman a congressman either, it's not really a gendered word in modern context. But people seem to be placing the emphasis on historical misuse to ban words now - I had someone tell me I can't use the word "gyp" because it was once a slur on gypsies - I admit, I used to think it was spelled "jipp" instead. Someone else once told me that "woman" is Greek or something for "other than man" and that this was offensive because it singled women out. First off, it's not Greek, it's Old English from wifman (with a more or less equal male version - waeman or something like that) and the "man" part meant adult human, ungendered. The prefixes wif- and wae- added gender to the word. Second of all, I damn well hope we're singling women out in language. How the hell else are we going to tell if characters in stories are male or female?

Tact in certain circumstances is one thing, but this is getting out of hand. I find politically incorrect humor funny. Am I evil? Give me a break.

[/rant]

I don't know how pervasive this is, but in my city we don't have aldermen or alderwomen or even alderpersons, we have counsellors.

I believe most humour must be a little mean to be funny. For a while there you couldn't say most joke or your life would be handed to you, but I believe the pendulum has begun to swing the other way.

Why must I watch everything I say in order to protect the feelings of the overly sensitive. I'm with Lapus, we are so afraid to offend, but dammit...sometimes you need to.
A few words can't really hurt or can they? Especially when said generically or from a distance.

Wrong. They can't hurt you when said from a distance. But who really cares if they hurt the oversensitive?