With thanks to jfs for pointing this article out

[kathbad]

The British are not in thrall to 'political correctness'; they just tend to temper prejudice with tolerance

Will Hutton
Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer


Prejudice dies hard. Scratch British society and the not-so-pleasant instincts of our forebears are just below the surface. Or not below at all. Women wimp out and suckle kids (Neil French, top advertising executive); homosexual love is unacceptable (Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Great Britain); Arabs are limb-amputators (Robert Kilroy-Silk). Ethnic minorities, women and gays routinely encounter sexism, homophobia or racism.
These attitudes run deep. Women in positions of authority know that men do not contend with anything similar to the sexism they encounter daily. After the July bombings, Muslims were sharply reminded of how atavistic racism can be; never forget Anthony Walker, killed with an axe by white teenagers in Liverpool. Nor ever-present anti-semitism. The allegation is that political correctness irrationally protects these minorities. Last week some newspapers delighted in the story of the black royal bodyguard who was allegedly over-promoted in the cause of 'political correctness', and had subsequently to be compensated by his police employers. These are easy sneers.

Which is why, up to a point, I defend political correctness from its multitude of detractors, the latest being Conservative think-tank Civitas last week. Words matter. It is how we transmit, embed and develop our culture. Talk of blacks as niggers, gays as queers, women as bitches, Jews as part of an international conspiracy and the words become part of our collective, reflex view.
Derogatory words laden with prejudice not only degrade those they describe, who find themselves categorised in ways they do not deserve - they degrade the social currency. The aggressive, dysfunctional language of hatred of the American South, Nazi Germany or Mao's China helped both to create and sustain those societies. Words were crucial to the governing ideologies.

There is nothing wrong with taking care over what you say and how you say it. It is a basic courtesy and makes a statement about what kind of society you want to live in and how you expect to be treated yourself. It's because I want to live in a liberal society, respect others and believe words count that I try to choose them carefully.

The Civitas pamphlet marshals the usual counter-argument; we are living under the liberal jackboot, self-policing our thoughts, denying ourselves free expression and privileging undeserving minorities etc. All this is paranoid nonsense. Even its author, Anthony Browne, acknowledges the advances in tolerance that 'political correctness' - i.e. courtesy - have fostered. But he adds a twist to the standard conservative criticism. Minorities are increasingly sheltering under the protection of political correctness in order not to confront truths about themselves.

Thus, he argues, many blacks label indictments of their poor behaviour racist. Champions of women's equality claim that sexism blocks their promotion when the reality is a more complex story about trading work responsibilities against the pleasures and duties of family. Muslims are too quick to identify prejudice in others and so do not confront the anti-semitism, sexism and homophobia in their own culture. And so on.

Browne has half a point. If what I call courtesy and he calls PC becomes an excuse for reality-avoidance, then we would be colluding in dishonesty. But that does not mean we should give up on courtesy; rather, it means being more alert to lazy thinking and braver about challenging it.

And Browne, the self-declared custodian of 'truth' against PC 'untruth', can be guilty of lazy thinking.

If women are given 'ever more rights' that damage their employment prospects, as he argues, then we are entitled to ask which rights he has in mind and where is his evidence that they are damaging women's employment prospects.

Equally, if Browne believes that the 'politically correct' argue that African poverty is the result only of lack of Western aid and not of corrupt governments, then he and the custodians of truth should deliver chapter and verse to support their case.

But they don't, on these or any other of their charges, because they are politically correct conservatives, in thrall to their evidence-free shibboleths. The reason liberal attitudes have such force is not because of the thought police or the BBC; it is because the British generally try to cap their prejudices with tolerance and accept the case for courtesy.

Browne is right to declare that Western minds must reassert their commitment to reason. The unthinking critics of political correctness will be the first casualty.