Apologia for Political Correctness

Music: Cocteau Twins: Garlands (1982)

I wish I could say that I found the photograph of 60 or so teens giving the Nazi salute surprising, but we've known—certainly ever since I can remember—that our anti-racism vaccines are ineffective.  These white, fascist zombies—which is to say, their infection is not a reflective one—are probably less ubiquitous than we think. The mass mediated overexposure of the extreme does give us a skewed worldview.  Still, there are certainly more racist zombies than folks in my line of work (that is, in the academy) often suppose.  Given the stories that are coming out from other students about the rampant racism at Baraboo High School, and the alarming racist sympathies of many administrators, the environment sounds a lot like where I went to high school. Bullying on the basis of gender, race, religion, sexuality, and so on was a common thing where I grew up.   

Jordan Blue, in the upper right hand corner, refused to salute. We should all be more like Jordan.

Still, that a photographer and these students thought this was a permissible cruelty should be alarming, even if this is not a surprise. And, of course, everyone knows the "permission" comes from the intoxicants of Trumplandia, easing a heretofore weak but nevertheless working clutch that makes driving drunk a little bit harder.  I am going to argue that this clutch is "political correctness," and that we need to be defending political correctness, but not as code for policing others' statements or calling folks out on the basis of some epistemological privilege.  Those who rally against political correctness—which is a sizable group across the political spectrum—perceive those of us who protect it as enacting a kind of smug arrogance.  I think (and feel) that we should return to thinking about "political correctness" for what it used to be when I was in college, something more akin to "political sensitivity," or perhaps "other attunement": the clutch you have to depress, the "what if," before you kick expression into a new gear.  Political correctness is a pause for reflection, not censorship.

I have an example of what I mean from this past weekend, when I attended a conference.  I was having drinks with a friend and we were discussing a mutual friend who identifies as genderqueer.  They use "they/them" pronouns and I slipped up and used the wrong pronoun.  My friend said, gently and with kindness, "you mean 'they.'"  "Oh yes," I responded, "I'm sorry.  Thanks for reminding me."  He responded that he didn't mean to police my language, which was unnecessary, I replied that it's not policing and it's ok to remind me that we're part of a larger community.  This, to me, is what "political correctness" has meant, lifting each other up as a community, not to be confused with identity politics, which has evolved into an essentialism in many ways that undermines the original point of identity politics.  That's a whole different issue, of course, I just want to make sure I separate political correctness from identity politics conceptually. 

Perhaps a term other than "political correctness" might be used, since it is so widely disliked as a “devil term,” but the original idea behind it, which also animates in some sense the growing awareness of micro-aggressions, the kindness intended with trigger warnings, and so on, is the clutch: political correctness is not thought policing, it is simply a point of reflection, a pause, in speaking or writing to consider what you are about to say. 

As a person influenced a lot by (post)structuralism and psychoanalysis, I tend to think that speech and thought and writing work with each other so tightly we have an egg or chicken problem: sometimes the words speak us, right?  Sometimes we mess up, mindlessly, and so it’s good to have a friend stop you and say, “did you mean that?” And our attitude to these reminders should be reparation, not defensiveness. I have regrettably lost more than one friend for my own lack of reflection and awareness—I can only wince thinking about how many more friends I would have lost were it not for political correctness.

So in my mind political correctness is not as much about policing thought or speech because, well, that's hard outside of some coercive context.  It's about creating a pause or fostering mindfulness and attending to the person or people you are engaging.  And because in a real sense we are each other—that is, self-consciousness is in many ways a composite of relationships with others past and present—it's ok to be someone else's clutch, not in some policing manner but in a sort-of community-minded way: "you mean 'them/they.'"

Teaching political correctness, then, is something like what we term in my field of study "rhetorical sensitivity," not only to others but to yourself because, well, you are what you say; you persuade yourself in how you speak. 

I'm reminded, too, of Richard Rorty's defense of political correctness: in the academy, at least, it has done more good than harm, and attuned us to the suffering of others.   The point of moral progress is to include more and more of the previously excluded and marginalized.  The Nazi salute by these kids--who are more than likely woefully ignorant of history and what it represents other than their privilege and cultural power--is a consequence of the erosion of political correctness, the attacks on political correctness hastened by the climate of hate orchestrated by the White House.  

As we widen the domain of inclusion, pronouns are changing—radically and quickly. Those of you who resist this changing need look no further than this abhorrent photograph: without the clutch you get a Nazi salute.

So I say again, it may be that the term "political correctness" needs to be retired, that it is saddled with the connotation of thought policing.  I have been trying to think of an alternative term to protect the idea that it represents to me--the pause, the clutch, the holding space--but I haven't quite come up with an alternative.    Or, perhaps, it's precisely the negative connotation of the term that we need to draw attention to its defense?