What impact has political correctness had on society, if any? What are some examples?

Question

Having a good time Jeckyll? Geesh, and all this time I thought I was rather cute. And my avatar's adorable! Who can complain about that face? Ah well...makes no difference. Kinda like you.

Answer 1

Freedom of speech has become freedom of censure ship.
The right to hold a view other than that held by the politically correct masses is almost extinct.
Disagreement is a liability.
Today a person can no longer tell someone to "shut up" because They are talking rubbish for fear that someone will be offended by the truth!
Society is now in the hands of a generation of self obsessed gutless wonders who can neither handle criticism nor think for Themselves without resorting to the 'herd mentality'. Individuality is being oppressed, and Human nature obfuscated in the name of bland, sterile, non invasive cloning and cultural stereotyping.

Answer 2

I think the original goal behind political correctness was to make society more accepting of different people.This in itself is not bad but I think the problem began when people were more worried about peoples' feelings than the truth.Don't get me wrong it is important to consider someones feelings but wanting to spare someones feelings does not mean hat we change tradition or twist the truth.
For example, many schools now are not allowed to celebrate of mention Christmas, even though most of the kids( religious or not) celebrate Christmas.Officials are worried that they will seem like bigots if they celebrate Christmas and that they may offend people of other religions.Instead of taking a common sense approach, they totally ban it. A more logical approach would be to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan ,Kwanzaa and Diwali.Not only would this make a great social studies lesson but would incoportae the beliefs of all students and still keep the many Christmas traditions that many school have held for years.This is simply one issue of many that PC has caused.

Another major problem with living in a PC world s that many people are scared to express their opinions for fear of being labeled a bigot or racist.Therefore because no one can say the truth, people start to question it and believe some of the lies told. Example. If I were to say the majority of North Americans are Christian, I would be kicked off TV for being bigoted an insensitive to other religious groups. How is me telling the truth offensive?Saying the this does not change the fact that the majority of North Americans are Christian and this does not say anything against those how are not Christian.

We need more common sense in our society. Common sense says be nice and respectful to others and their beliefs but do not try to change the Truth with lies. A PC society has not prevented discrimination from happening, it simply goes after the wrong people, not the perpetrators.

Answer 3

Well, when emotion rules over reason and people's feelings trump objective truth, freedom of speech becomes the first casualty.

EDIT 1: Alexis de Tocqueville, in his _Democracy in America_, predicted that, in a democracy, even with freedom of speech supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution, the opinion of the masses would squelch opinions that were 'too far' 'out of line' with the majority.

Answer 4

i really can't see how this fairly innocuous question generated so much hostility.
___Political correctness is not just a cause, it's a symptom. It stems from late-modern skepticism, the most arrogantly named strain of which is called "post-" modernism. When there's no such thing as objective truth, and all truth is subjective, and these notions are taken as absolute doctrines, then there's no benefit to discourse besides winning political power. Traditionally, the back-and-forth of discourse was supposed to be a process by which people could expose their beliefs to the refining influences of mutual criticism, but this is currently passe.
___If all thought is subjective, and there's no transpersonal truth, our beliefs become far more personal matters, and criticism of one's beliefs becomes a very personal matter. Personal insults become more common.
___What is often forgotten is that all truth can be subjective but only MARGINALLY so, that is, though one can't squeegee all the subjective aspects out of human beliefs, this doesn't entail that there are NO non-subjective elements in human truth. The reliability of science should demonstrate that absolutist subjectivism is as wrong as absolutist credulity.
___A rather ironic aspect of modern subjectivism: it is often presented as an absolute fact, yet its proponents often claim to posess greater-than-average facility with nuance and subtlety in their reasoning. But a failure to grasp the ambiguities of the degrees to which subjectivism applies to human beliefs is a pretty fundamental failure of nuance and subtlety. Absolute and unambiguous negations of truth are no more nuanced or subtle than any other fundamentalism.
___Skeptical and subjectivist threads go way back in Western thought. Descartes, Hume, Kant, Husserl, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and the so-called "post-" modernists all contributed to an accelerating trend, and, at least in the humanities, this sort of thinking has become established conventional wisdom. There's nothing new here. (Many academics of the past several decades demonstrate, by the way, how easily those at the vanguard of conventional trends can get away with presenting themselves as "radicals" without actually being radical.)
___Political correctness is a symptom of all this. The politicizing of just about everything is a self-fulfillling prophecy of modern skepticism.
___As for its effects, one of the worst is the development of alternative epistemologies and intellectual methods in certain disciplines that explicitly embrace this politicization of truth. Buying into the notion that all truth is personal and subjective, and accepting how this renders all discourse political, these purportedly intellectual methods turn out instead to be methods of political and collective emotional manipulation. They also contain methods of self-delusion that discount the "oppressive" restrictiveness of intellectual rigor, discipline, and ingegrity.
___But why is it that many of the PC academics who argue most vehemently that others' truths are infected with subjectivity, and are merely biased constructs, insist that they (the PCacademics) somehow transcend the same human limitations, and speak a more reliable truth? It's more likely that buying into such a jaundiced view of the human intellectual landscape sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy.
___This, and the obvious epistemological hypocrisy, ought to make them less credible to most educated people. But alas, the power of peer-pressure in academic environments is a mighty thing.
___And who could be more intolerant of dissent than those of the PC persuasion?

Answer 5

Political Correctness has silenced our sincerity and forced most people to fall in line with the majority. For fear of offending people, we often do not say what we truly mean, even though it has no intent to offend!

It has also led to extremely unfair practices in the areas of business and employment. Honesty, in my opinion, is ALWAYS the best policy. No one benefits from being given an unfair advantage.

Answer 6

I think it has had a negative impact. People are afraid to say certain things, at the risk of sounding "politically incorrect'. Plus I think it's kind of silly. For example, the word "retarded" is in itself inoffensive, and sort of accurate, as the cognitive development of these people has been, for whatever reason, retarded, but now it's "developmentally challenged", which means the exact same thing, but in a way seems sort of cruel to me, like, these people are just being challenged, and if they try REALLY hard, they might rise to the challenge and become normally abled! But they can't. It sort of implies to me, that they're just not trying hard enough. But ten years from now, insensitive 14 year old boys will be saying, "What are you, developmentally challenged?" It's offensive because of the WAY it's used, not because of the terminology itself.

Answer 7

Politically incorrect views have been squelched publicly, but made stronger in private.......or online like here in G&WS.

Answer 8

PC has had a negative impact.
Women are now practically pushed into duel careers (motherhood/work career)...
Men (primarily) are pushed aside in favour of less abled people (Affirmative Action)...
Children are getting criminalized for playground activities (pinching bottom = sexual harassment)...

Answer 9

Well people who don't matter as much have more say than people who matter more due to being mainstream, having larger numbers and even arbitrary reasons etc. It's upside down.

We're losing the war in Iraq because of PC for example, giving enemy combatants more rights than our own soldiers is not the best thought out of ideas.

Answer 10

ask your teacher lol