In Praise of Political Correctness.

I'm sure plenty of you will have heard of comedian David Baddiel's BBC Radio 4 program entitled 'Heresy', which not long ago finished its fourth run. The conceit is that, each week, Dave and a few other members of the celebrity pop-intelligentsia attempt to argue in favour of a proposition that is, in the modern political/social/cultural climate, the equivalent of heresy. Some have been fairly high-brow topics that genuinely sought to set out the case for unpopular arguments ("New Labour is not all about spin"), others provided for interesting discussion, but were largely semantic ("there is no such thing as something that is 'so bad that it's good'") whilst others were a bit disappointing, and only served to dredge up discussions which get plenty of balanced consideration anyway ("we are not on the brink of environmental disaster"). I always found the idea of the show odd, really, in that surely most good journalism should seek to say the things that other people are too lazy to? Providing a safe environment in which challenging received wisdom is kosher seems almost counter-productive. "Don't worry...what's said on 'Heresy' stays on 'Heresy'."

But I don't want to meet the person for whom contrarianism (and I'm not talking about the Burchillian 'good war lads, keep it up!' variety) holds no attraction. And that brings me on to political correctness, an issue about which the scales of public opinion are unbalanced to a decidedly gaudy degree. Left and right, collectivist and free-marketeer, 'Guardian' reader and 'Sun' reader...people of all shades rally round to decry the demon of Political Correctness. Especially when it, as is allegedly so often its wont, 'goes mad'. On a side note, that claim always bothers me, and not just for the obvious reason that it's cliched sensationalism. It also seems to imply that the barely-functioning ameoba trotting out the trope supports 'political correctness' to some degree, but not in its 'extreme' forms. Which jibes with the anecdotal observation that the only people likely to make the remark are probably just flustered by the fact that they can no longer say 'paki' without getting funny looks.

What are we really talking about when we speak of 'political correctness'? Strictly, the argument is a linguistic one. To advocate political correctness is to advocate the displacement of potentially 'offensive' vernacular terms with less 'offensive' neologisms. I think this issue is one that reasonable people can disagree on. However, detractors of political correctness are determined to drag the debate into areas where it has no place. Political correctness becomes less about language and more about providing a convenient saftey-in-numbers smear for any move towards cultural inclusivity. Last term, I took a 'Historians and Race' module at university, which incidentally was one of the few areas of the course so far that I've found to be actually quite interesting. During a discussion about school admissions, I made the point of using the term 'affirmative action'. "Ah," my seminar leader said whilst wearing that insufferable look of world-weary wryness so often sported by people labouring under the misapprehension that they are 'cutting through the bullshit', "that's the politically correct term." Well, not really...that's just what it's called. That's just neutrality. The tabloid media-supported label, 'positive discrimination', is the dangerous term, seeing as it is loaded, debate-closing and just begs to be read out in that smug, raised-eyebrows intonation that provokes the reader's jerking knees -- "wait a minute... discrimination is never positive!"

And that's the thing...worry about causing offense isn't the only reason for supporting 'politically correct' terminology. Sometimes the concern is only for accuracy. Perhaps I don't want to describe the indigenous peoples of the Americas as 'Indians' based on a five hundred year old navigational error made by a shifty-looking old cunt with a bald patch the size of the Bullring. And Edward Said would have good reason to spin in his grave if I insisted on referring to anyone born east of Dhaka as an 'Oriental'. Why so eager to embrace the legacies of cultural ignorance? It's all well and good for people like us to say "well, sorry about the centuries of Eurocentrist hegemony, lads, not much we can do about it now, though, obviously...", but we're rarely the ones whose identities are under threat. I just don't understand the support for vernacular qua vernacular, born out of a sense of linguistic convenience. It seems to me that persuing that line of argument is just an example of the Fallacy of Bruce Hornsby's Greatest Hit. Tee hee.

There's a related contention that, while peddling to das metal on the euphemism treadmill, we're unlikely to catch anything but our own tails. And I can see the point, but so what? I write this post in the full knowledge that, a hundred years down the line, some hard-working etymologist will probably discover that the root of the word 'Inuit' actually comes from an old American slang term meaning 'right bunch of prannocks, if you ask me'. But what of that? It's hardly reason enough to suspend the whole project.

All this aside, I think the most dangerous thing about political correctness as a notion is how it can be misused or misinterpreted by right-wing arseholes to create non-existent taboos. I mean, it's rough going for racists these days, where Tony Blairs has taken from them their right to call Sikh people 'towelheads'. They'd speak of your hopes and fears with unmatched eloquence, would these puffy, reactionary half-wits, if only they were permitted to open their mouths to the working dolts of this fine country. This talk about 'doublethink' and 'thought crimes' is absurd sensationalism to me. It seems that we live in a time when censorship is not only quite limited, it can actually be difficult to enforce. For all the lily-livered, limp-wristed, bleeding-heart PC fascists seeking to throw the Jyllands comics into the boot of a Mini Metro and drive the whole shebang off the end of Wigan Pier, I still saw them. And so did you, if you had access to what kids are calling 'the internought'.

To return to David Baddiel, I once read a Guardian article of his in which he, whilst struggling to ward off an impending orgasm brought on by his own misplaced sense of rebelliousness, dared to suggest that quite a lot of immigrants into Britain from the sub-continent own shops. This, I guess, was Dave daring to say what we button-down conformists would only think about thinking. Except that no-one with a shred of intelligence believes that its 'offensive' to comment on certain economic and social trends forcing particular waves of immigrants into certain business sectors. He had locked himself into a politically correct cage of his own construction, had D.B., and he isn't the only one. Self-emasculation is a terrible thing.

Remember, we're constantly on the brink of going mad, us hard-left softies. If yer no' wi' us, yer probably agin us. And that means you're over there in the corner with a bunch of twelve year olds getting cheap thrills from saying 'nigger'.