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OP
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Term means different things to different people.
There are some who say that PC does not exist, that it is a bugaboo phantasm of the fanatical right-wing, that PC is really nothing more than common politeness.
OTOH, it's used by some people to encompass just about anything with which they disagree. So the ACLU is PC (yea, I know, but I'm talking about how I've heard people use the term) and
Here's my take. I think there's something right about both of these views.
To the extent that people police their own actions, it's a good thing. Such and such a term I suspect will cause acrimony, so I choose not to use it. Then there's the police who want to make sure that no one else use's that word either. Miss Manners at msn.com had a question today on how a person should have reacted to a certain rude behavior.
She had a great response
"How, pray, were you planning to fight back against rudeness? By bawling this person out? Slamming his laptop into his chest?
"Thank you so much, but Miss Manners does not need that kind of help in the fight against rudeness. You only add to the amount of rudeness in the world when you behave that way, and the object is to reduce it. Vigilante etiquette patrols are part of the problem, not of the solution.
"Members of the public are not authorized to go around teaching one another manners; even Miss Manners does not do that."
(You can catch the whole thing at http://womencentral.msn.com/firstperson/articles/manners_0610.asp)
I think that Miss Manners' point is that the best way to spread your values is to set an example of them.
On the downside is the tendency with PC to attempt to associate people with opinions they do not hold, ideas they have not expressed, and actions they have never considered performing. Even worse, if someone speaks up about it, they're accused of being right-wing bigots or worse. ("You only say *that* because you're insensitive!")
Interesting thing. My wife has always used the word oriental to describe herself and other asians. I have always used the word asian. I told her once "You know, Honey, people say that using that word is insensitive." Her response was immediate and expressed extreme impatience and disgust, "Who say dat? Dat stupid!" (And a 10 minute tongue-lashing on the subject.) In fact, of the dozens of asians whom I've been lucky enough to count among my friends, I've only known one who objected to the term "oriental" (to desribe people) and he was pretty vocal about it. OTOH, about a year or two back I met an asian fellow who was extremely vocal about prefering the term oriental and utterly detesting the word asian. Since I very seldom use the term oriental except parenthetically, this is not an issue for me.
My vote for the most idiotic term is "people of color" to describe non-white people. (This is an issue for me, because I refuse to use POC terminology.) Those who insist on its use say that to use "non-white" defines people in terms of some other group. The problem (aside from the fact that white is a color) is that they're trying to name a group of people in a way that hides the basic definition that they're starting out with. Craziest thing I've ever heard of.
BTW, the thread below is moderately interesting for the following reason. We commonly think of PC as tool of the left, but in reality it seems to arise pretty commonly from the left, from the right, and even from the middle.
Frankly, I do find myself a little sympathetic to some of these educationists. Teachers on the front line and the bureaucrats and administrators behind the scenes (many of them) just want to teach the blasted subject and here they have to worry about people taking them to the school board (or even to court) for reading from Twain or Salinger or Woolfe. I can almost sense what they're thinking: "PLEASE DEAR GOD JUST LEAVE ME ALONE AND LET ME TEACH THE DAMNED CLASS! I'LL DO ANYTHING! JUST LET ME DO MY JOB!"
k
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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One of the issues I've had in the past with being in meetings with 'elitists' is their propensity to distinguish between classes, sometimes regardless of race and sometimes 'irregardless'  . When I hear the term "white trash" coming from anyone's mouth, my usual first comment back is "would you care to substitute the color "black", "yellow" or "red" in there and use it to describe the similar *demographic... ... how widespread a word is used often "softens the blow" just as one groups' ability to make fun of themselves helps. Sensitivity, my ass! Get over it! 'Oriental', as a description, is referring to the "far east", and still does to the *Orientals. Go ahead and call a Russian an "Asian", and see what their response is... 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The problem with some of the words that are now labelled politically incorrect is that
they have been infused with venom by ignorant slobs who think they can build
themselve up by tearing someone else down. So the "white trash" built themselves
up in their own estimation, by venomous use of the "N" word, which in the beginning
was merely properly descriptive. The proponents of PC have merely over-reacted in a
self-defeating way to try to correct widespread insensitivity. Maybe someday "Wasp"
will really be a dirty word that my great-grandchildren will have to cringe at.
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old hand
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I'm a member of the anti-PC police.
When I do something dumb, I tell people I'm deeply in touch with my inner blonde. My blonde friends laugh at this as much as anyone.
A black man once called me "white trash" because I had the effrontery to disagree with him about something.
Black and white are actually non-colours, or, if you prefer, all-colours (see what happens if you colour a paper napkin black halfway up, using a felt-tip pen, and then suspend the black part in a glass of water - popular science fair project for the little 'uns; see what happens if you take a colour wheel and spin it fast enough). Black absorbs the entire spectrum; white reflects it. (This doesn't really have to do with the discussion at hand but it's interesting, yes?)
I remember how flabbergasted I was to learn, when I lived in Toronto, a very mixed-race city, that racism is not a black-white issue. Naive of me to think it was, but I guess it just hadn't occurred to me that racism runs from one race to another, regardless of colour or lack thereof. I learned this while travelling on the subway one day; a black woman, clearly a little off her nut, was standing in the train ranting and raving about "the Chinkees" etc. It was most disturbing and all the Orientals (I like that better than Asian - find it a more aesthetically pleasing word, and it does differentiate from the Russians!) on the train were looking studiously ignorant of what was going on - I really felt for them.
I'm sick of the PC "movement" - whether it exists or not! - the very concept is irritating. At the same time, self-regulation is a must - and some instances in which people have NOT been self-regulating, wind up just driving the wedge of misunderstanding further between the parties involved. I'm thinking specifically of the man-bashing and woman-bashing jokes I've heard and seen on the Internet (through email). I despise these. This isn't being able to laugh at oneself; some of these so-called "jokes" actually condone violence against either men or women. I have no patience with such an attitude.
But gentle fun-poking at foibles belonging to either sex - why would anyone get their knickers in a twist over that?! Sometimes a good joke lets you breathe easy - you can think, "Yes, men/women DO do that - but I can laugh at it/laugh it off."
And just to round out my rambling diatribe on all the things the OP made me think of - a joke about national characteristics:
Heaven and Hell
Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian and it's all run by the Swiss.
Hell is where the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the police are German, the lovers are Swiss, and it's all run by the Italians.
(Kinda nicely sums up the best and worst of each nation mentioned, doncha think?!)
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I think overreaction is part of it, but also there's an attempt to frame any further discussion in terms favorable to one party or the other. "Groups of bad people exist. I belong to a group whose members are mutually exclusive to that group. My group fights for truth and justice. Anyone who disagrees with my group is therefore opposed to those things. You have made some comments which are very, VERY similiar to the people in that bad group, insofar as you do not agree with me unhesitatingly and unreservedly. You are therefore a member of that group of bad people and we can safely ignore anything you have to say. Not only that, but no right-thinking person would listen to anything you have to say because you are a member of that bad group. Anybody caught consorting with you will be given evil stares by everyone in my group."
Kinda reminds me of when I was a kid and I also used to fight with one of my brothers in particular. My mother would break up the arguments and never take sides. But I wasn't having any of that. I recall quite vividly once telling her that she couldn't possibly love me and M. "If you love me, you have no choice but to hate him!" Of course, I think back on it now and even though it's been more than thirty years, I still wish I could take them back. The moving finger.
I guess I'm not sure whether I consider PC "a movement." I certainly don't consider it anything new. Rather, I think it's just a manifestation, whether on the right or the left, of the use of shibboleth to identify people as belonging to the group of people who agree with me or those who don't.
BTW, I haven't confirmed this and you should consider it as rumor unless I can find a reference, but I heard on the radio news yesterday that a company quit advertising for a position because their classified in the employment section was asking for a friendly candidate to answer their phones and they were contacted by some government agency who told them they couldn't do that as it was discriminatory. (Many people would classify affirmative action and particularly extreme cases as this one may be as being examples of PC, but I think regardless of whether these things are good or bad, that these are distinct notions, neither subsuming the other.)
k
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old hand
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Hmmm. You remind me of a college/university in the UK that stopped advertising for "nude models" for its art courses, because (this is different from political correctness, but still shows a lack of acuity) you must not advertise a job that requires the employee to work in the nude. But....but but but!
(butt butt butt!)
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rumor unless I can find a reference...a company quit advertising for a position because their classified in the employment section was asking for a friendly candidate to answer their phonesHi FF, Yeah, this was another example of admittedly over-zealous political correctness from the good ol' UK Department for Work and Pensions (who I didn't even know existed until now): http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/uk/england/newsid_2031000/2031350.stmYou're dead right about the "if you're not with us you're against us" attitude and how such black-and-white (negative? ) thinking works. And naturally, if anyone were to champion a more flexible shades of grey middle way then that in turn becomes something we're for or against. "I can tolerate anything except intolerance."  Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose.FiskP.S. OK mea culpa - wrong forum, maybe wrong Board, even wrong language in part. So sue me. 
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