Understanding Political Correctness

Now that we've gotten the feel-good Freshman Week discussions on diversity out of the way, it's time to begin the school year--and the real discussions on diversity. This year, in fact, looks to be full of debate on issues of multiculturalism. Not only has a new organization, the "Multicultural Issues Forum," started up, but the Institute of Politics is centering this weekend's Fall 1998 Conference on "A Seat at the Table: Fairness in Minority Representation."

But starting a substantive conversation...aye, there's the rub. A lot of people fear that some monster called "Political Correctness" is going to devour them if they slip up--if they, for instance, forget to use the adjective "[fill-in-the-blank]-ly-challenged." Only peppering one's speech with the words "pluralism," "diversity," and "sensitivity," it seems, will appease the beast.

If this is indeed how "Political Correctness" behaves, then I agree with all those critics who charge that it impoverishes political debate. In a nation that needs a desperate heart-to-heart about issues of racism, sexism, heterosexual privilege, and entrenched hierarchy, we need to get rid of this monster if it prevents us from engaging social issues substantively.

I don't think, though, that this ridiculous monster is the real political correctness. It doesn't seem to be consistent with the founding intention of the concept--what Director of the Harvard Foundation Dr. S. Allen Counter has often called "the collective insistence on human decency." American society has only raised up this monstrosity because it misunderstood how to realize the principle.

Most people can't begin to talk about minorities because they think that the policy of political correctness is an imperative statement. That is, that the policy flatly says, "You cannot call me a 'Chink.'" I would rather consider the policy a conditional statement: "If you call me a 'Chink,' you have to take responsibility for it." Because people want control of their own utterances, they obviously resent feeling gagged when they want to speak. What I think political correctness should be trying to do is to make people more conscious of what they say. Language, after all, is power; as a medium of communication, it can affirm or degrade the humanity of others. If someone does call me a "Chink," I can put their language through the litmus test of political correctness and recognize it as degrading. Recognizing that language can be used to strip others of their humanity, political correctness only codifies this recognition into a policy. Invoking political correctness forces the person who called me a "Chink" to accept that what he or she has said offends me. I might call that person a racist, forcing him or her to come to terms with the personal bias the language betrays.

Political correctness gets a bad rap, I think, from people who think about its conditional statement backwards. That is, those who think that if we make someone say "Chinese-American," we can sensitize them to the plight of hyphenated Americans. Putting terms in others' mouths does not change the way they think. People who push to de-gender "chairman" into "chair-human-being" to make people less sexist are going to find their action does not change political attitudes. Because most proponents of political correctness use this "backwards conditional" too often, critics fairly call this policy mind control. Real political correctness doesn't try to brainwash people, but only targets those who think that they do not have to deal with the repercussions of what they say.

Furthermore, certain criticisms, including Jackie Newmyer's essay in the summer Harvard Political Review, allege that following political correctness means preferring works by "non-whites" to works by "whites." Using political correctness as a cover to favor whatever isn't white only recycles white supremacy's basic assumption that one specific race should receive an inherent privilege over all others.

I don't think political correctness has to give into such "racial reasoning," however. For example, I don't think that Amy Tan's books are the be-all, end-all of literature just because we're both Chinese-American. If "racial reasoning" is really part of political correctness, then it doesn't stop the degradation of all human dignity as it purports to do. Believers in political correctness would do well to enact Cornel West's prescription for improving the current political debate in this country: replacing racial reasoning with "moral reasoning." That is, Americans must resist the vilification or deification of any group of people. A desire to promote universal human decency can and should avoid degenerating into a "my-tribe-can-do-no-wrong" mentality.

The worst product of this monster political correctness is the perception that political correctness is no more than ethnic self-affirmation a la Stuart Smalley. Assuming, for example, that minority literature only appeals to minorities comes perilously close to placing the burden of multiculturalism on the minority. Assuming that whites aren't involved--or aren't interested in becoming involved--in building America's multiracial, multiethnic democracy means going back to seeing racism as "That Black Problem" or Yellow Peril as "That Asian Problem." Strained relations between members of our American community are everyone's problem.

I'm sad that a fear of saying the wrong thing often hobbles substantive debate. People shouldn't be deterred from saying what they really think for fear of offending someone else. If our language is imprecise, we can only refine it by testing where it goes wrong. Let's spark deep debate with this new "Multicultural Issues Forum;" let's prevent this IOP Conference from degenerating into whites on one side and "ethnics" on the other. Let's take risks with our words. Let's take responsibility for our utterances and our prejudices so that we address them. Folks, let's start talking.

Jia-Rui Chong '99 is a history and literature concentrator in Kirkland House. Her column will appear on alternate Mondays.