With respect to political correctness

By Rita Parikh

When Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski’s now infamous antigay comments were aired to his public shame earlier this spring, federal opposition parties and the Canadian public reacted swiftly. Offensive, distressing, homophobic, unconscionable, they said of his remarks found on a recently unearthed video made 17 years ago.

But it was one response in particular that gave me pause. “Politically incorrect”, a national-newspaper letter to the editor stated, as if it were only the passage of time that made those comments unacceptable today. And as if there were any question about the intent behind, and damage rendered, by remarks in which a person can call gays “faggots with dirt on their fingernails that transmit diseases”.

That people should continue to confuse the hate speech espoused by individuals like Lukiwski with politically incorrect language deemed offensive because of its tendency to stereotype, should come as little surprise. For political correctness, a term that represented the best intentions and goals of social progressives in western society, has been so ridiculed and distorted that people have long since forgotten its essence and purpose.

Political correctness was, and remains, a powerful movement to transform our language, ideas, and policies in an effort to make participation in social, cultural, and political life more equitable for all. And as Haitian-born, Governor General Michaí«lle Jean reads the throne speech in the House of Commons, as women comprise close to 50 percent of cabinet positions in Quebec’s Liberal government, and as people with disabilities—from Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan to Ontario’s lieutenant governor, David Onley—are becoming more visible in positions of political power, we would be hard pressed to say that the struggles for reform have not been successful.

Indeed, one might argue, it is because of political correctness itself that those who were once victims of the hatemongering so prevalent years ago experience it so rarely today.

It’s been more than two decades since the term political correctness became synonymous with censorship. Decried equally by those on the left and right as a bizarre and even dangerous effort to control freedom of thought and expression, political correctness became the object of ridicule in work places, newspapers, and even on late-night talk shows. Domestic technicians, the follically challenged, sanitation engineers, calorifically enhanced—the list went on, and on, and on.

And though books such as James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, in which Cinderella sports a ball gown made of “silk stolen from unsuspecting silkworms”, and the princess in The Frog Prince is transformed into an “eco-feminist warrior”, are cause for laughter, the relentless trivialization of serious issues—of hate speech, systemic discrimination, outright bigotry and prejudice—by labelling them politically incorrect, is surely not.

It should be noted, though, that while the effect of hate speech and politically incorrect language has often and tragically been the same—that is, political and social marginalization, poverty, and the destruction of self-esteem —political correctness was never about eliminating hate speech from public rhetoric. Our federal criminal code serves that purpose.

Instead, political correctness was about, in part, asking people to stop for just a second to think about language, and about the power of language as both a limiting and enabling force. Language, proponents of political correctness maintained, in its unique ability to categorize and stereotype, limits creativity, productivity, boldness, and imagination, not only among those who are the object of those stereotypes, but also within broader society itself. But, they argued, just as racist language, for instance, can lead to racist practices, more inclusive language can lead to its opposite.

Thus political correctness challenged us to think about the possibility that labelling a person in a wheelchair “disabled” might reinforce the belief that she is somehow less capable at performing a job than someone more mobile. That using First Nations instead of Indian to refer to Canada’s earliest inhabitants may serve as a powerful reminder to all Canadians of our history and obligations. That agreeing to call someone a woman of colour instead of a visible minority might help her build personal pride instead of setting her apart from everybody else. The language of political correctness challenged us to put people, as opposed to the qualities that separate us, first.

And, in doing so, political correctness demonstrated how changing our language, far from being repressive or censorial, can be an act of liberation, freeing our minds to shape new ideas and probabilities that ultimately challenge those typically diminished through public discourse to aspire to and achieve things otherwise unimaginable.

Out of this language challenge has come new ideas, policies, programs, law, which in turn, are giving rise to new thought regimes: one day our children will laugh out loud at the absurdity of banning gay marriages, and at the thought that there was ever any doubt that a woman could be prime minister.

Equally important, as it becomes more possible to imagine these realities, it may just become impossible to imagine its opposite: with the demise of exclusionary programs and practices may come the end of exclusionary language and ideas. Possibly, political correctness’s greatest achievement could be the end of the kind of hatred espoused by politicians like Tom Lukiwski. Indeed that kind of language would be, simply, unthinkable.

It is true that the language of political correctness has been inelegant at times. Its euphemisms are often awkward, obfuscating, and, yes, ridiculous. But let’s be clear about one thing: political correctness has taken us to a social higher ground, and for that it deserves our deepest respect.

Rita Parikh is a woman of colour and freelance writer living in Victoria.

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