Hey Dummies: Political Correctness and Being Nice Aren’t Mutually Exclusive
Someone recently got really angry with me for asking why I shouldn’t use the word ‘retard.’ I know it’s wrong, I’ve blogged about thinking it’s wrong, I just get massively frustrated because no one can explain to me why it’s wrong. No it’s not the same as being racist or saying “that’s gay.” I guess because given the option I’d rather not have a mental disability. I don’t think this preference makes me a bad person. If you think it does, please explain it to me.
Anyways, I felt really hurt that trying to have a conversation to better understand why this is wrong resulted in such a dismissal. I felt hurt and like I was probably being a huge ignorant bigot. But I was trying to understand, wasn’t I?
Talking to the other Lolz Doll about this she brought up a conversation we’d had the day before in reference to the latest episode of The Challenge where a contestant puts on Nutella blackface in an extremely flawed effort to make a joke. She asked me in earnest why exactly blackface was racist. I feel like if you asked this in regular society the reaction you’d get would be like “OMFG why are you so racist you don’t even know that blackface is VERY offensive.” I don’t doubt for a second that blackface is very offensive but the right way to answer someone asking a genuine question about a sensitive subject is to explain.
I think blackface is offensive because I think it’s awful when straight guys pretend to be gay guys for a joke (cf: every high school and college talent show ever) and when men dress up like women. There’s nothing comedic about it, it doesn’t come off like satire, it comes off like straight up mocking.
Sure, you can shame people with political correctness but they’ll never carry the banner of your cause. Explain your case with charity and patience and you’ll get converts, people who will exponentially aide the growth of awareness of your concern. As it turns out, empathy is a better motivator than shame.
From personal experience of the field, I really disagree with the logic here about using the term ‘retard’. Disability is not any different from race or sexual orientation just because it has a still-accepted value judgement associated with it, such that one can reasonably state that you’d prefer not to have a disability (though I don’t see why you couldn’t say you’d prefer not to be gay or not to be a woman, or even to be white, other than it reinforcing existing senses of inequality). Rather the concept of ‘ableism’ and (dis)ability rights is about disconnecting that ‘objective’* lack of ability from the right of all persons to respect and dignity, regardless of your view of their situation. That’s not meant to be a criticism of your viewpoint - none of us have, or are ever going to have, total understanding of everybody else’s experiences, but we can separate that knowledge from recognising their humanity and personhood. For example, gay people don’t deserve equal rights just because their sexual identity is of equivalent value to that of straight people, but because they are already people in the first place.
As for blackface and the wider question of promoting understanding of offence, I completely agree that it is unhelpful and unproductive to immediately accuse someone of being a bigot. I’m reminded of this very good explanation of ‘How To Tell People They Sound Racist’, or in other words, how to address potential issues of racism without making people defensive about being called a ‘racist’ - because the latter is about intention, whereas the effect is really what is at issue. That said, it’s probably a good idea to be aware that if people think you sound bigoted then their response, if it’s honest and communicative, is quite likely to make you feel bigoted. Which sucks, but at least you have the ability to explain your statement and maybe clarify what you meant - if you’re on the receiving end, it’s harder and psychologically more damaging to explain away someone else’s statement that strikes you as offensive.
To look at your follow-up post, it’s something I largely agree with:
“My point is that the last thing you said “if someone says something is offensive don’t do it” is a really poor rule to follow. You need to understand why things are offensive or else you are just going through the motions. There’s a kind of censorship by shaming that goes on when people want to learn about feminism or whatever else and are told instead to check their privilege and read a book first. Let’s talk about it openly pls.”
Complete relativism - and letting everyone decide what is legitimately offensive against themselves, to be followed as rule by everyone else - is obviously not the way to go, if simply because very few people will agree with it (and it makes criticising power or privilege pretty much impossible). Nor is ‘going through the motions’ conducive to much except a sterile kind of politeness. However, there’s an aspect to understanding which I think is crucial to recognise - offensiveness is rarely a logical, coherent act (that would to be assume most conflicts in society have a wholly rational character), so it’s not necessarily amenable to a logical, rational solution. Something is offensive frequently because people of an otherwise discriminated-against group find it so, and outside of that group it might be difficult to understand why.
Our reality is a case of competing rationalities, and until or unless we construct a wholly shared conception of values we’re always going to have to say ‘well, they find it offensive, so we shouldn’t do it’. The idea of objective - or objectively identified and understood - offensiveness is perhaps not just nonsensical but itself offensive, as a hegemonic attack on subjectivities. As it happens, I also disagree with your interpretation of the offensiveness of blackface - the mocking in the present is to me connected with the subjugation and physical discrimination in the past, or is perceived as such, and with the continuing legacy of structural inequality in the present. Perhaps that’s true for gay guys and women, too, but not quite as sharply? Truthfully, establishing the reason for something’s offensiveness is not an end in itself, but a means to further dialogue - so that’s why I support this call for political communication as well as correctness. Also, some tips on how to be nicer would be helpful - some of us aren’t built for empathy in our argumentative reasoning (or communication generally), but it doesn’t follow that our intention is to shame.
*this isn’t really the place to go into the concepts of the ‘social’ and ‘medical’ models of disability, but it might help to think of it not just simply as sociological or a clinical question of ‘ability’, but an epistemological one as well: how do we assess what someone is capable of, when those capabilities are shaped not only by their own bodies but the structure and attitudes of their surrounding environment, including our own ideas of their capability?
