In a @NewYorker piece on @meghan_daum, @embot (whose book Future Sex is really good) makes a claim about political correctness that's worth a closer look. She writes: (1/x)
@NewYorker @meghan_daum @embot that to be on the left is not merely a materialist position–– it "indicates a set of values, most obviously fairness, in which political correctness is a form of good etiquette practiced by well-intentioned people."
One objection is that most people on the right value fairness too, though they may disagree with the left on what fairness entails. But let’s focus on defining political correctness as good etiquette. That strikes me as flawed in two ways:
1) sometimes politeness or etiquette is the main thing at stake in political correctness disputes; but other times a truth proposition is at stake, and those instances are fundamentally different.
2) In some instances that are about etiquette or politeness and not about truth, the “pc” side is not clearly correct about what does or should constitute proper etiquette. And we have folks discussing a useful example this week: “Latinx”
Latinx is the PC term. It is also a term rejected by the vast majority of the people to whom it ostensibly applies. One might call it proper etiquette, but if so, not in the sense of being good to people—
Rather, it’s etiquette in the same sense as its etiquette for rich people to come up with obscure ways to set out silverware, call that way proper, and then act like anyone who doesn’t follow the etiquette is showing themselves unsophisticated.
And that dynamic is among the reasons that vast majorities of people of all races on the right and left dislike what they call “political correctness”—not because they don’t value fairness. (End)
