Has Political Correctness in America Gone Too Far? Amber Liu, Year 13, Keller
Among other events in this tumultuous year that is 2020, conversations surrounding race and diversity have started to loom over more and more dinner tables, both within and outside of the United States of America. However, in tandem with the amplification of voices seeking inclusivity, equality, and social justice are critics who argue that so-called political correctness has crossed the fine line between regulating hate speech and regulating free speech. *** The year is 2015. To Parisians, this foggy, -2℃ January day is just like any other. However, on the inconspicuous street of Rue Nicolas-Appert, today could not be more different. At 11:30am, two gunmen, both of whom are known to have ties with the Islamic jihad, break into the office of the infamously controversial French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, fatally wounding 10 journalists who work there. While the motives are not immediately clear, the attack — condemned by French president Francois Hollande as a ‘terrorist attack without a doubt’ — is most likely caused by the magazine’s recent history of mockery against Islam and the Prophet Mohammed, making it a target for a certain group of radical Muslim fundamentalists, who view the magazine’s provocative depictions of their faith as blasphemous. Widely known and revered among French journalists, the Charlie Hebdo weekly magazine has grown to become a symbol of free speech and thought, with its regular publishing of cartoons satirizing current political and religious leaders and a tone often characterized by irreverence and provocation. This 2015 attack is hardly surprising, considering the fact that one of the most prominent cartoonists and editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stephane Charbonnier, has been under police protection since 2011, when outrage at the magazine first started to devolve into violence against its members. Defiant in its aim to create and debate freely, however, the magazine continued to publish caricatures poking fun at Islam (as well as other religions), with a striking post of a naked Prophet Mohammed startling both French and American officials.1 The events that occured on that Wednesday morning of January 7 were to spark a new wave of debate2 in the USA — the ‘land of the free’ but a country beset with its own socio-political controversie nonetheless — all about political correctness (PC). *** Neither this debate nor this expression are anything new: the term political correctness, coined by Marxist-Leninists in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia3, has long been a subject of contention. Popularised in the last few decades of the 20th century, it broadly refers to an attempt to avoid language, policies or behaviour
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Has Political Correctness in America Gone Too Far?
that could be offensive to disadvantaged groups. The prevalence of the term political correctness in modern-day culture can be seen in its increased profile in many aspects of 21st century life, from elite higher education to the modern workplace, from daily conversations to international and domestic journalism. Since the emergence of the term, there has been heated debate surrounding its intent and impacts. Politically, modern liberals defend PC language and culture on the grounds that it contributes towards establishing a more “liberal” democracy — that is, an expansive view of democracy that not only involves free and fair elections of government, but also universal protection of individual civil liberties and rights, such as freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the right to equal treatment before the law. On the other end of the spectrum, PC has been attacked by centrists and conservatives alike, who criticize it for, ironically, constraining free speech. The famous political commentator and talk show comedian Bill Maher called far left PC a “cancer on progressivism” in 2019,4 and more recently in July of 2020, a group of leading professors, historians, writers, journalists, and playwrights, mostly based in the USA, cosigned a “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” for the Harper’s Magazine criticizing PC5. Academically, there is also fervent debate on this evidently contentious topic. There are views aligned with those of Jonathan Chait, commentator and writer for New York Magazine, who argued that PC is “a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate.”6 In other words, critics believe that PC culture is dictating behavior in a way that limits open discussion with those of opposing stances, undermining free speech. Views in opposition to Chait’s include those of Richard Feldstein and Teresa Brennan, writers of the book “Political correctness: a response from the cultural left”, who agree that the term is “much disputed” but believe that its original purpose has been warped: according to them, PC was originally used by advocates themselves for the purpose of self-mockery and satire, but now political pundits of the right have twisted it into a “brainwashing campaign on an international scale” that has gained “political and psychological success”7. But why would a term that seeks to represent equality for all and social justice draw so much fire? A Sacramento Kings sports broadcaster is dismissed from his job of 22 years after posting a ‘politically incorrect’ tweet — ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ — for which he later apologizes, but to no avail8; the internationally respected Ivy League Yale University is subject to the hashtag “#CancelYale” and faces petitions demanding a removal of its 319-year-old name after it is revealed that the institution’s namesake, Elihu Yale, was a British merchant and slave trader;9 Aunt Jamima, the 130-year-old syrup and pancake mix brand owned by the Quaker Oats Company, is now preparing to undergo name and logo changes due to the brand image’s ties to minstrelsy, a form of entertainment popular in early 19th century America and denounced today for its disrespectful imitations of African-American vernacular and behavior, facing outcries that this move will erase the brand’s rich history and the culture associated with its recipes10. Recent incidents like these, triggered by the racial reckoning that has struck America, have led some to bear the sentiment that PC, specifically the behaviors permitted to flourish under its culture and ubiquitous influence, has indeed gone too far. Before addressing the question ‘Has political correctness gone too
