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