Is political correctness anti-scientific?

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This is a spinoff of the recent racism thread here. I am of the opinion, based on what I have read and studied, that race is a real thing, but I also believe that no race is superior or inferior to another (though certain races, on average, do excel at certain things) and that because people are individuals and not averages, the reality of race in no way justifies racism or discrimination.

The reason I believe race exists and is not just an abstraction is because if you look at the physical features of people around the world, they tend to cluster into certain geographic areas where people look similar, then sharply over a relatively short distance, you encounter another general type of physical appearance. An example - people from China, Japan, Korea and Indonesia all have a fairly similar appearance, but travel from Tibet to India just 200 miles and you suddenly encounter people who look nothing like Chinese or Japanese people. I would mostly attribute this to small 'bottleneck' populations of original ancestors of a race that came to populate a large geographic area.

It makes no sense that groups with phenotypical differences would not have some mental differences as well, or physical differences. It might be politically correct to say that on average, every single ethnic group excels equally at everything, but it's not scientific. Of course, it's also unscientific to say any race is superior or inferior to another, because different races on average have different strengths, and which strengths are more or less important are totally arbitrary.

The same is true with sex, religion, any other category. It's scientifically proven there are differences on average between men and women. I agree, a woman should be able to do whatever a man can, and vice versa, but I disagree that on average men and women have equal talents at everything. There are certain things women are better at on average and certain things men are better at. I agree that often stereotypes and generalizations are broken, but it's just unscientific to say that on average the sexes are equally skilled at everything.

Religion too, saying all religions really preach the same thing, or at all religions are equally peaceful or humanitarian, again, it sounds nice but it's just not true.

IMO, political correctness is just as unscientific as so-called scientific racism.

Yes political correctness is unscientific since science is about questioning things rather than putting them up on a pedestal and making sacred cows out of them. I agree that gender isn't merely social construction. It is to some extent but let's face the fact that women tend to be nurturers, men tend to be more risk taking, men have better spatial skills, and women have more balanced activity in both hemispheres which makes them better at communication.

These are some of the superficial differences I spoke of. But you have it backwards, people didn't cluster with others who looked similar, isolation led certain groups to have different appearances from others at a geographic distance.



This is where you stop being scientific. What mental differences are you even referring to? You have to at least provide examples if you are going to make this claim. Are certain races "smarter" than others in this view? In reality what you might think of as "mental differences" would amount to well known cultural differences and differences in the environment of the Human's upbringing. It isn't scientific to simply state "there are mental differences between 'races' bases on genetics" without at least clarifying what you consider these differences to be, and also ruling out that these "differences" are not actually the product of well established cultural norms in this society



There are actual differences between male and female brain structures, based upon the distribution of white and gray matter and probably some other structural differences. However in this case you can look at all species and see there are obvious differences between male and female- the most obvious being below the belt, the differences in hormones, etc. So here we have a clear example of some differences that are evolved characteristics. However these characteristics are also shared by every human genetic group. In any case I think this is an overall generalization as many careers and options were simply not open to women even half a century ago and there is still a remnant of the feeling that women were not "meant" to do certain activities



They're all equally wrong but you're right, you cannot use the same standard for every religion. A good example would be religions that involved human sacrifice- we look at them now as abhorrent (with some justification), but some of them no doubt involved willing sacrifices who considering their death a great honor. Who are we to judge really? Nothing wrong with observing and categorizing, though



Any intrusion on science by politics is a travesty, and that includes politically motivated racism (whether it is "for" or "against" a group, based on ignorance, prejudice, or favoritism)

"Political correctness" covers a wide range of activity.

If we are talking about funders making decisions about which research projects to support based on extraneous criteria about the political perception of the field of research, then yes, it is most certainly anti-scientific. A psychologist studying the issue of whether or not there are correlations between race and other psychological indicia should not be denied a fair opportunity to compete for funding.

But if we are talking about the changes to oral and written communication as we try and make our expression more gender neutral, then I see no particular conflict.

"Political correctness" seems to me to be a reactionary label applied to 'change' by people who are resistant to 'change.' Sometimes that resistance is entirely appropriate, other times it is not, but by lumping all change under the single label of "PC" we start to muddy the discussion.

That's what I meant actually. Asians, Europeans, Middle Easterners, Africans, Aborigines, etc, have similar appearances because they mostly originated from one small genetic stock. 'Race' is derived from the Latin word for 'root', and what I mean by 'race' is a cluster of ethnic groups that have a common origin/root in a small population.



That's a good question. I don't have a degree in anthropology or anything, so I can't really give you a truly educated answer. Intelligence is a term that encompasses a lot of different types of skills. Populations of people would generally develop forms of intellect that helped them survive in their environment and there is no reason not to think this wouldn't be heritable to some extent.



To be fair to us men, men are still not encouraged to do a lot of things. Watching after children, for one.



What about religions that idealize harming other people? I agree with your human sacrifice point, but I don't think you can apply the same relativism to say, Westboro or the anti-gay churches in Uganda, or to certain strains of the Taliban that are known to oppress women and murder infidels.

"political correctness" is a right-wing bug-a-boo
so old ladies (and the "tough guys" that act like them)
will have a something to b***h and moan about.
It does not exist except in the minds of crack-pots.
check out the "science" behind racism it falls short it fails review.
There is such a thing as politeness and not being an a**hole though.

To some extent I agree that certain forms of what is called PC is actually just progress and improving our language, however my problem comes when untruths are repeated just because they sound good. PC is good until it becomes a series of white lies.

oh like the Chicago school of economics?
or are we talking about gender studies?

What exactly do you mean?

The Chicago school was built as a sort of intellectual bulwark against communism
as a non-marxist "scientific" economic school the problem is if the best solution to
a problem involves a non-market effort they don't have the framework to understand
it and label it heterodox, politically incorrect etc. (the same effect happened in the U.S.S.R.)

every field has its sacred cows.

Anything not based on fact is anti-scientific.

ruveyn

"She remarks elsewhere that John always was careful to conduct himself in a politically correct manner as an American Citizen." New Catholic world, Volume 171, page 27 (1950)

Felix Grundy (1775-1840) was the first "politically correct" U.S. Congressman.

"From the same rostrum where Roosevelt a few weeks later made his acceptance speech, Ding twice addressed the GOP delegates. Each time he was on the losing side, but on the side realized later to be politically correct. He tried to make the Republicans go all the way wet, and he tried to nominate for vice-president a young Legionaire instead of Dolly Gann's brother." Business week, Issues 305-330 (1935) page 16.

"The inaccuracy of political conception was fostered by inaccuracy of common speech. 'Is a toast asked? "The United States," instead of "The People of the United States" is given. This is not POLITICALLY CORRECT. The toast is meant to present to view the FIRST great object in the Union. It presents only the second." The Pennsylvania magazine of history and biography, Volume 45 By Historical Society of Pennsylvania (1921), page 29. (Also in U.S. Supreme Court reports, Volumes 1-4, and before in 1882).

"hon. and learned Gentleman to be practically correct, though legally incorrect — whether it was politically correct or not — that was to say, whether the Tripartite Treaty was or was not looked upon as binding by the Government ? " Great Britain Parliament 1880.

"The minister did not contend that this mode of reasoning was politically correct, but reminded his auditors that it was undoubtedly honourable to those who entertained it. In his official eulogy upon the great military hero, ..." "Life and Campaigns of Arthur, Duke of Wellington (1841), page 150.

"That his lordship was either morally or politically correct, in an opinion which tended to perpetuate political incapacities on account of religious tenets, would, perhaps, be difsicult to" prove ; but that he acted on that occasion, ..." British Public Characters of 1798-9 (1801), page 271.

The phrase "Politically Correct" has been pulled inside-out, as a hundred years ago it involved fundamental "patriotic values", and over the last few decades, it has been manipulated with propaganda campaigns into something "anti-patriotic" by groups that have done the same to such concepts as "entitlements" now "bad", and "rights versus privileges" inversed. The "Where's the beef?" buzz with "Politically Correct" has worked so well in propaganda land, that it is often applied to the sciences (including mathematics, as in Politically Incorrect Prime Number Theory in encryption programs being silenced by brute force, medical sciences, geology, etc.). Don't worry, whale oil was replaced with petroleum, and petroleum will be replaced by, well, maybe whale oil. Burning food seems to result in food shortages for some overly difficult to deduce reason, but it makes Arnold's Hummer really Humm (the sex (without a charity-credit) was what was politically incorrect, not the mass starvation).

Most all of art is not based on fact, and per se, art is usually not "anti-scientific", though most "scientific" attempts to analyze art end with just some pseudo-science bunkum distant from any science (mass advertising arts come the closest to being accessible by science through radical behaviourism models). Vladimir Nabokov's work with the rather bizarre pure aesthetic, such as "Pale Fire", seems as if designed to frustrate all attempts of any model other than "as is" of a successful hylephobic (a fear of materialism, a very modern distemper, which afflicts, now and then, a philosopher with a horror of contact with the fresh facts of science so necessary to his survival in the world of modern thought, and impels him to try to purge every element of matter from facts he cannot escape, but this is often regarded as another sacred madness (1887, Hall, Titchener, & Dallenbach)).

Tadzio

Some aspects of political correctness are unscientific. But aspects of political correctness's opposite (which has no nickname) are also unscientific. Both try to remake facts so that they will fit a particular world view. It is unscientific to say that all people are the same. People can be grouped according to features of their DNA. There is an ongoing anthropological project to do just that- to group these features and use that data to figure out how populations migrated. This led to the recent discovery that plenty of people around the world have bits of Neanderthal DNA but that none of these people are long-time locals of Africa. That's a fascinating genetic difference with interesting implications, discussed to death in other threads.

It is equally unscientific to make assumptions about groups because "it just makes sense"- such as the un-PC assumption that different groups have genetic (rather than cultural) mental differences. If science has taught us anything, it's that "it just makes sense" rarely leads you to actual facts. Only unbiased inquiry will get you those.

Plus everything else Vigilans said.

Why would there not be differences though? Do you think evolution made every human population on Earth equal in every field, just so nobody's feelings would get hurt? I highly doubt it.

Oh dear, you need to read and study some other materials...

Lets start with skin colour.

Once up on a time we were happy monkeys, we were hairy and had light skin just like all the other monkeys. Then we evolved improved sweating to remove excess heat from our bodies. This was a good thing as it allowed us to be more active. Overtime we lost our hair so that we could sweat more and do more. This caused a problem, the sun at the equator is pretty harmful to your health if you are white and running around naked all day so we evolved darker skin to combat this problem.

When some of us left Africa and set up home in the north, the dark skin became a problem, the sunlight is much less intense the harsher seasons require you cover up or spend a good deal of time to avoid cold related deaths and so we were not getting enough light exposure, the black skin went and back came the white skin.

There are of course a few other local climate specific adaptations around other than skin colour, the shape of noses and eyes etc.

Non of the genes that control these phenotypes have ever been shown to play any role in brain formation or development so why exactly do you think this:



Race is based on skin colour (a tiny portion of our genome) and recent geography, when you take DNA samples from people all over the world and compare them something becomes very clear very quickly, almost all of the genetic diversity in the human race is to be found in Africa. A decade ago the figure was at about 90% of human genetic diversity, today it has been pushed higher as more research is undertaken in Africa and in the future will probably end up somewhere between 95%-99%.

So genetically speaking, there is Africa and then there is the rest of the planet who are practically identical to one another by comparison yet if you look at racial classification there is only one or two categories of 'black' and dozens of categories for everyone else.

The two don't correlate, race is meaningless on a broad genetic level.

I didn't say there are no differences. But it is unscientific to assume there are. The whole (PC) concept of feelings getting hurt doesn't enter into it. The scientific way to investigate that question is to investigate actual physiological and genetic differences between groups and control for culture. With mental differences this would be exceeedingly hard to do. This is an autism board so many posters have had actual neurological (thus mental) differences assessed by clinicians trying to be culturally unbiased. Nevertheless, the many debates about Theory of Mind (in the General forum) show how much NT cultural bias gets unwittingly introduced into these assessements. There have been attempts to assess intelligence between groups with IQ tests (the infamous Bell Curve) but again, massive cultural bias was there so there's no way of knowing if any actual genetic differences were found, even though the authors think they proved just that.

Also, what DC said, making the whole idea of "race" squishy at best. That was one of the problems with the Bell Curve. They compared IQ test results of different racial groups around the globe. Asians scored extremely high, the highest in the world. Native Americans scored extremely low. That in itself should have made them them think twice about calling the IQ test score differences genetic rather than cultural, given how closely related by DNA Native Americans are to Asians.