The Wonderful World of PC - Political Correctness or Popularity Contest?

Pretty much everybody wants to be popular. At some level, people want to be liked and admired by the people in their lives, and that's natural and even healthy, to a point. But we all know the dangers and pitfalls that seeking popularity can lead to. The all-too-familiar peer pressure most associated with junior high and high school students is usually driven by a hunger for acceptance and love from others, and often leads to behavior that is destructive, immoral, and reflective of poor character. It is my belief that this desire to be accepted and popular can also lead people into a related pitfall, that of political correctness.

At its root, political correctness stems from a desire to be popular, to be looked upon approvingly by others for the opinions one expresses. I think an example can be used to best demonstrate how this works. Most people are aware that the United States has experienced many problems due to the large influx of illegal aliens from other countries, primarily Mexico. Now the sentence I just wrote would be considered politically incorrect by what I'll call the PC (politically correct) crowd. This group has decided that the term illegal aliens, especially as applied to Mexicans who have entered the U.S. illegally, is demeaning, and perhaps even racist, toward Hispanics. Now why should this be? "Illegal" is an adjective used to describe an action that is against the law. "Alien" is a noun that means a foreign resident of a country who has not attained citizenship in that country. So the term "illegal alien" describes the movement of immigrants from one country to another country in a way that breaks the immigration laws of the destination country. And that is exactly what we have experienced in the United States over the past 50-65 years, as millions of Mexicans (and some others) have entered our nation without following the immigration requirements of the U.S. government.

So why accuse people who refer to these people as "illegal aliens" of being anti-Hispanic, insensitive to minorities, or even racist? I think it's pretty obvious: those who want large numbers of Mexicans to be able to live in the U.S. without following U.S. immigration laws have an agenda, and that agenda is made smoother if the opposition is squelched. No one wants to be accused of being a racist or a bigot, so, in an attempt to be viewed as more accepting of others and less outside the orthodox, accepted way of thinking, people are encouraged to give in to the PC crowd's call for acceptance of people who are here illegally. So what does one call "illegal aliens" so as not to offend the sensibilities of the PC crowd? How about undocumented immigrants? That's one I hear a lot. Foreign-born guests of transitional status - I just made that one up, but it sounds so sweet! But if someone, God forbid, uses the term "illegal alien," then he is dehumanizing people in a bigoted and Nazi-like manner.

Here's another example. I think affirmative action is downright stupid. The idea that employers should seek to hire a certain number of people from different racial, ethnic, and religious groups in order to reflect their proportion in society is bigoted. People should be hired or not hired based on their qualifications or lack of qualifications, and for no other reason. If I need to hire 25 people to fill positions in a company, and the top 25 candidates I interview happen to all be white men, then I'm hiring 25 white men. Does that make me racist? Or does it make me a good businessman? But the PC crowd would not waste a minute in accusing me of bigotry and racism if such a situation were to occur. Personally, I want to be well-liked and popular, to be viewed as "acceptable" by the "crowd" around me. But if I were to use affirmative action as my guide, I would be using race in a way that might hurt my business and which discriminated against certain people simply because they come from a majority group. Personally, I would hire 25 blacks, 25 whites, 25 Hispanics, 25 purple people...I don't really care what color or ethnicity a person is, I'm hiring the 25 best people I can get, end of story. Well, the PC crowd would not be happy with me!

One more example. On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by an organization known as Al-Qaeda, which consists of radical followers of an extremist Muslim ideology known as Wahhabism, which promotes a violent agenda of jihad (holy war) against infidels (non-Muslims) who are seen as oppressing the Muslim world and preventing the establishment of a world-wide caliphate (Muslim-governed region) ruled by Sharia law (Islamic law). Now, it's true that most Muslims do not follow this radical, extremist agenda and are normal, peaceful, productive members of their societies. Most Muslims in the United States and in the world were horrified by the murderous attacks of 9/11. But it's also true that almost all terrorism in the world, especially of a religious nature, is carried out by radical Muslims. Whoops, that wasn't very PC of me, was it? I just revealed myself to be an Islamophobe! Or did I? During World War 2, could you imagine someone referring to the enemy as "German Nazis" being accused of being Germanophobic? Everyone understood that we were anti-Nazi, not anti-German. Once the Nazis were defeated, our fight with Germany ended. In the same way, Americans can be anti-Muslim extremists without being anti-Muslim. But the second someone refers to present-day terrorists such as those in Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other like-minded groups, as Islamic terrorists, the PC crowd immediately issues statements decrying such remarks as anti-Muslim bigotry.

So, what is my conclusion? It is to promote the idea of being truthful in what one says, even if it doesn't increase one's popularity. The PC crowd has a totalitarian instinct to control what people can say and do by pointing an accusing finger at those who dare to break from their orthodox views of the world. It is up to each individual to resist the urge to be part of the crowd, part of the popular group, when doing so conflicts with truth and what is right. The PC crowd uses political correctness as a form of intellectual blackmail: we can shut up those who disagree with us by threatening to blacklist them into the "unpopular" or "outside" group; this is simply a repeat of the McCarthyism of the 1950's used to blacklist so-called communist sympathizers. They also use political correctness as a way to be lazy in their thinking: we don't have to win debates on different topics based on the merits of our arguments; rather, we simply accuse the opposition of harboring racist, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, sexist, or some other unacceptable viewpoint, and the argument is over. In the final analysis, the PC of political correctness is really another form of a different PC, a popularity contest. And I thought grown ups were supposed to leave behind the immature peer pressure of their youth and join the adult world, where ideas can be expressed and discussed without fear of being relegated to the status of pariah. Let's hope our culture catches on!