Political Correctness (often abbreviated as PC) is the action of avoiding certain forms
of expression in order to not offend a particular group of people.
I don’t know about you, but it has gone mad in recent years.
Recently, I have been working for a university helping disadvantaged students.
One of my students is blind, but apparently the term “blind” is not politically correct.
Let me explain.
When I first went to meet him, I asked the receptionist if she had seen him.
I had never met him, so I told her his name and mentioned that he was blind.
She started to look uncomfortable and then replied, “Oh, you mean the gentleman who
has a visual impairment”.
“Yes, of course I mean that!”, I thought.
What else could I have meant?
After dealing with other staff, I found none of them wanted to say the word “blind”
any more, as if it is some label that is used to offend or discriminate.
After getting to know the student, I know that he also agrees with me.
I’m always very tactful in conversation, so I made sure I didn’t use any words that
offended him.
He sensed this, and one day told me about his experiences with political correctness.
He’s of the opinion that we should call a spade a spade.
He can’t see, so he’s happy to call himself blind.
He doesn’t feel insulted by the term and thinks that most of the political correctness
that comes about is not caused by him or other disadvantaged people – it’s caused by
what he calls the PC Police.
Political Correctness Police
The PC Police are a group of individuals who take it upon themselves to be offended by
everything.
They are usually not in any position of disadvantage, but act as the defenders of all the downtrodden.
I’m all for helping those in need, but changing the words people use just to prevent some
hypothetical offence from being caused, is in my opinion, downright stupid.
Some words are just bad, such as “nigger”.
Of course, if a large group of people are offended by a word, we should not use it,
at least not in a way that would cause offence.
But the whole argument over what we should call a person of dark skin colour, for example,
“black”, or “African American”, or “person of African descent”, is bordering
on silly.
Some people don’t even want us to use the terms “him” or “her” because that
could be implying that somebody is a man or a woman (heaven forbid!).
I find at work, I am surrounded by people who are constantly censoring themselves in
order to not offend one other, even though there is nobody in the room that would be
directly offended.
Basically, the PC Police are a group of white, middle-class, English speaking individuals
who’ve made up all these stupid rules.
The other day, one of the staff actually used the term “ocularly challenged” to refer
to another blind student.
Quite frankly, that just makes people confused.
It’s unnecessary, and in my opinion causes more offence than the simple term “blind”.
If the individual student would like to explain to me that they can see different shades of
light, or see one or two colours, that’s up to them.
But by using the term blind, we all know immediately that they can’t see and that they need some
assistance with certain tasks.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
We should be happy to help, and they should be happy that there are people willing to
help.
Using terms such as “visually impaired” or “ocularly challenged” does not make
you a good person – it just makes you a person who has been caught up in this political
correctness madness.
Here’s a link to a list of general rules written by a blind person.
Point 11 states, "You don't need to remember some 'politically correct' term, 'visually
impaired', 'sight challenged' etc.
Keep it simple and honest, just say blind."
Losing Our Vocabulary
By allowing the PC Police to dictate how we speak, we are slowly going to lose our vocabulary.
In a sense, it is a way of dumbing down the population.
If we aren’t allowed to use certain words, then entire concepts start to be erased from
our society.
We should be encouraging people to think.
By telling people, “You can’t say that!”, we are censoring them from critical thought.
My four-year-old son, for example, was asking why my friend from Bangladesh is “burnt”.
I told him that he’s not burnt – he’s just from another country where most people
have dark skin.
That’s all I had to say.
My son immediately understood and has never mentioned it again.
If my first reaction was, “You shouldn’t say that!
That’s very rude!”, he’d still be confused about the whole situation and would probably
still be using the word “burnt” with his friends.
Let’s Just Be Nice
Of course, we should respect the wishes of those who are actually offended.
For example, Australian Aboriginal people don’t like to be called “Abbo”, so of
course, we shouldn’t call them that.
But they’re happy being called Aboriginal people, and from what I understand, are often
proud of it.
We don’t need to make up stupid terms like, “Black Australian”, or “Native indigenous”,
or whatever other terms the media use.
Let’s talk to the actual people who we are referring to, and simply ask them!
There’s no need to sit in back rooms trying to come up with politically correct terms
that us white people seem to think is fitting.
It just makes people feel worse.
People feel much better if we include them in the conversation.
One of my students is black and blind – a “double whammy” he says.
He’s just happy that people are willing to help.
He doesn’t care if people refer to him as blind – he knows he’s blind!
Let’s just be nice to people and call a spade a spade.
Let’s stop trying to censor one another and encourage free speech!
I'll finish with a quote by David Harsanyi, American political pundit:
"Political correctness is one of the engines of nannyism.
Allowing and even encouraging ‘offensive’ ideas is vital for the intellectual health
of a free society."