When trying to find an appropriate name for our age group, “PC Generation” seems to be quite fitting. Contrary to what one might think, this title is not meant to denote our love for technology, but rather a growing obsession with political correctness.
The concept behind being politically correct — or “PC” — is a matter of learning to categorize people, things and even abstract ideas in the least objectionable manner so as to avoid offending as many people as possible. It has become so ingrained in our culture that we find ourselves constantly renaming nouns under the notion that previous generations were much too ignorant and uncultured to find appropriate labels. Being PC does not always deal with serious topics. Many times it finds its way into the most mundane aspects of everyday life.
Take, for example, the case of the brainstorm. Thanks to this unwritten doctrine, students no longer have to run to the basement for safety in fear of the dreaded brainstorm every time their English teachers mention how to begin writing a paper. That’s right, according to a former instructor, some teachers have banded together and agreed to refer to the pre-writing process as the much more peaceful “thought shower” to soothe anxieties surrounding the relentless fury of figuratively colliding cerebellums. This may seem like an absurd example, but this is just one of countless cases in which we trade freedom of speech to spare people’s feelings or to avoid ridicule from being deemed insensitive. Perhaps there is a group of students out there who feel marginalized by the abrasive terminology used by English teachers, but it seems the real issue at hand is that we live in constant fear of appearing offensive.
This dilemma becomes infinitely more complicated when the notion of political correctness is applied to identifying and categorizing people. Despite good intentions, the problem with defining race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and even gender categorically is that the category itself remains. No matter how euphemistic a definition you slap on a supposedly homogenous group of people, someone will always be offended. This is because boiling someone’s entire identity down to a single label completely ignores a person’s core, defining qualities.
What does it mean to be African-American? What does it mean to be Asian? What does it mean to be white or Caucasian, and why are categories that denote skin color often comparable to classification based on geography? Perhaps it is more favorable to classify someone by geography rather than skin color, but the term still makes huge generalizations and does little for an individual’s specific identity. Africa and Asia are huge continents and identifying someone as African-American or Asian based on appearance is a very broad statement that undercuts a rich and varied history.
Attempts to be more specific, however, lead to further discrepancies and more potential for offensiveness. In an effort to be more PC and avoid the very general term Hispanic, one could mistakenly assume someone is Cuban when the person is actually Mexican or Native American. But wait, aren’t Mexicans descendants of ancient Native Americans, considering America does not just refer to the United States but two large continents with the word “America” in the name?
What we can learn from this is that no matter how PC we try to be, there is no perfect way to classify an individual. Maybe our propensity for political correctness stems from some subconscious knowledge that it is wrong to categorize people. Perhaps we merely want to avoid lawsuits. Either way, we try to compensate by finding euphemisms that do little to advance our understanding of each other.
It seems clear that for the most part we do not categorize others out of spite, but out of a desire to make sense of the world around us. When we see someone who does not look similar, act similar or carry the same beliefs as us we seek to place them in a neat little box. In compartmentalizing one another, however, all we do is distance ourselves from others who really are not so different from us. Politically correct or not, labeling people does little to break down barriers. It merely reinforces stereotypes. It is time to put an end to the name calling and recognize each person as both a unique individual and a member of one human race.
Holly Hartung ([email protected]) is a sophomore with an undecided major.
