What is wrong with Political Correctness in some cases?

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Ok, but that’s Animal Farm. That story illustrates the progression from one form of statism to another. Orwell’s tone there was that you had an oppressive majority (human beings) that ran a sort of benevolent dictatorship. The pigs shifted the hegemony to the oppressed minority, who in turn were never morally superior to their predecessors. In many ways, they were much, much worse.

I don’t recall PC speech issues in Animal Farm, but it has been a while since I read it. 1984 describes reinventing language to support a narrative. For example, absolute morality is destroyed by eliminating the good/evil dichotomy. A thing is either good or ungood. Without language to describe something as evil, the Party can only be thought of as good. At worst, the Party exists at some level of good, but cannot be thought of as evil.

But as to minorities trying to control language, yes, it absolutely does happen. Majorities haven’t been active in shifting narratives through language. The reason why is majorities usually prefer the status quo, meaning conventional language. See, nobody ever complains when you refer to a white school as a white school. But talking about a black school makes people uncomfortable. So we make up words to avoid saying “black.” Instead, we say “predominantly minority.”

The only reason this isn’t more commonplace is that it’s known to backfire. If you study CRT, you know that words created to replace racial slurs or uncomfortable references are not any better. In my second teaching gig, I taught high school AND middle school, and when I got visibly uncomfortable addressing cultural topics, the kids said “We’re black. It’s ok. You can say it.” And I haven’t gone back to PC language since. The reason why is I figured out that dancing around the culture to avoid offending someone is just an insult to those you’re trying to be sensitive to, as though there is something wrong with being gay or black. Basically, if you MUST use PC language because someone MIGHT be offended by what you’re going to say, is it worth saying in the first place?

But it does happen. One example is how Confederate symbols have quietly disappeared in southern town. States removing Confederate symbols from their flags. Efforts to remove names of slave-owning presidents from street names, etc. Pretty much any/all examples of erasing evidence or remnants of the Civil War. There’s a lot of memory-hole kinds of things that happen rewriting language and history. Or commonly-used words like f4g_0+ become “slurs” used by “bigots,” and people using them go from “boys being boys” to “bullies.”

I’m not exactly nostalgic for the good old days because, yeah, I got targeted a lot. I’m not in favor of using racial or gender slurs. I’m not defending anyone. But I remember over the course of maybe about 3 decades the majority of folks used that kind of language to it being practically non-existent. Even these private school snobs I teach don’t use those words. More people used the word f@g to refer to homosexual guys than there were homosexual guys, there still aren’t THAT many homosexuals out there, and the word has largely dropped out of use. On the other hand, you CAN still say “queer” though the meaning is different (it used to mean the same as f@g) and is more a badge of honor than a slur. And referring to non-heteronormative people as a whole means using the neutral LGBTQ+ which in context is a positive term. Terms like cis-gendered and hetero-normative seem to carry a negative tone. But what's interesting about these terms is how they establish a relationship between straight and gay rather than dividing the two. It's undeniable that the overall perception is that the majority is more favorable towards the LGBTQ community while such was not the case when I was little. I don't believe there is any question that minority influence on the language is one causative factor in shifting the narrative.

Whether the narrative adequately to reflects reality is another matter. But consider this: 30 years ago nobody worried about getting sued for refusing to bake a cake.

Yes apologies, I was referring to Animal Farm. But even 1984 the language imposition (newspeak) was imposed by an authoritarian/totalitarian government. Again the model/analogy doesn't quite fit the scenario of "wokeness"

Reading about your experiences as a teacher it strikes me you are i) conflating language with culture and ii) associating propaganda with culture. For example many southerners bemoan the erasure of confederate symbolism in their states but what they carefully avoid is that confederate symbolism was in itself a form of propaganda to perpetuate an evil system of human bondage (the institution of slavery). The removal of this propaganda is no different to West Germany removing all symbolism of Nazism. But the difference is the German people want to remove evidence of their brainwashing due to the pain the symbois cause. For white southerners there is a myth perpetuated about the civil war to this day that it was about state rights which is an outright lie. Much of the symbols (flags, statues, monuments art etc) you wish wasn't removed was paid for by donations from the families of slave holdings whose descendants created confederate organisations who wanted to keep /perpetuate the memory of the antebellum plantation/slave culture. Most famously the United daughters of the confederacy who paid statues at war cemetries etc.

On the matter of language, conservatives pretend language is static when infact our language is always evolving. How it evolves is based on a kind of consensus rather than imposed. The n-word or f-word or r-word are no longer appropriate to use in modern civilised society. No sane person wants to go back to an era when using inflammatory language designed to cause psychological harm to oppressed minorities.

The issue isn't minorities who want respect and equality (and why shouldn't they get it?) or their allies in the progressive movements (labelled woke or SJWs by conservatives). The issue is with laws and how they are applied. The legal system isn't controlled by the left. That's as stupid as saying the education system is controlled by socialists (one of the dumber thing the right has come up with).

Finally with language and its use. People should be willing to learn how to be respectful to all members of society. If that means stand up comedians or cis-straight-men in bars can't roast trans people like they used to I don't necessarily see that as some type of tragedy. It doesn't take that much effort to learn to speak in gender neutral language to a classroom to respect non-binary individuals or men who identify as women etc. The issue (magnified by the right) is largely a storm in a teacup.

The first step towards getting to the Truth or at least a "truth" is to have agreed upon set of definitions to our terms. If we can't agree upon what terms mean then no meaningful discussion or debate can really happen.

Being politically correct can be an issue if the person uses it to hide the truth.

It’s often rehearsed and there are no genuine emotions attached to it.

In order words, it allows people to “act” and therefore, we can’t tell if the person is being honest or not. The body language can sometimes give some insights, but some are good enough to also act accordingly so that the acting is perfect.

It can be easy for some people to “say the right things” in order to obtain what they want from other people.

The easy solution is to use critical thinking, Don't just blindly believe what you are told or read.

Yes. I think the use of PC language and actually being benevolent can be two very different things. So a kind person can get condemned just because they didn't know the intricacies of PC speech, while a cruel person who's mastered PC gets away with it.

Well, yes that can happen, but its not a reason to cancel PC

That's probably why I never advocated doing so.

All completely irrelevant. You have to accept that your feelings on certain issues are shaped in some part by the culture you've grown up in. At one point some had the attitude that African slaves were better off in America than in Africa. Objectively, there is a certain amount of truth to that--it was the effects of British colonialism that led to institutionalized slavery in the first place, so at least in the Americas African slaves could live free from fear of invasion. Of course, enslaved humans cannot really be said to be alive in an objective sense, either, since human existence depends on possessing the freedom to act in one's own self-interest. What is most unfortunate is that their descendants remain enslaved.

The way Democrats, including Southern Democrats, caused this narrative shift is a stroke of postmodern brilliance. First, Democrats oppress blacks by supporting racist behavior among their voters, the Klan representing one arm of Democratic oppression. Through so-called progressive policies, a rift formed shunting conservatives to the Republican Party. This allowed Democrats to magically and mystically "solve" problems they created in the first place. Sharecropping was a disaster fueled by Democratic party hatred. FDR, a Democrat, enacted Depression-era policies that made Americans dependent on the federal and state government welfare programs. As economic problems eased with the conclusion of WWII, white Americans moved to the 'burbs while blacks were forced to depend on subsidized housing. Enforcement of policies requiring section 8 families to be single-parent families destroyed nuclear families and sealed the fates of many to be lifelong dependents on public assistance. Once again, Democrats to the rescue with affirmative action to help young black people seek their fortunes in the public university system--which isn't fundamentally BAD if it hadn't shifted the role of the University as a place of advanced learning with students enrolled based on their academic merit to a focus entirely on enrollment by skin color. This devalues education as a whole. Not only that but the idea that enrollment is based on skin color and not merit is racist and repugnant. It suggests that blacks cannot be intellectually adept to get into college in the first place, that they are somehow lower than their white peers and incapable of succeeding on their own.

That idea is not a new one. African slavery was often justified by the belief that Africans were incapable of independent thought and needed white owners to care for them. Nothing has changed. Integration? White children weren't bused into black school zones--blacks were bused into white zones. Blacks were not given a say in how to resolve segregation--white policymakers made those decisions for them. A positive effect of segregation was that blacks could be safe from violence from whites. Forced integration has resulted in black communities being policed by whites and subjected to discriminatory treatment--white people don't have to worry about being shot by police for going out on an evening jog. In recent years there has been a movement (Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police) NOT to integrate blacks into society, but to further isolate blacks away from whites and white communities. It wasn't Republican policies that created the problem, unless you count ending slavery in the first place. It's always been Democrats working overtime to keep blacks on the proverbial plantation--not trapping them in a physical space or territory, but seeking to negatively influence the mind into believing the black person is hopelessly trapped. And by forcing (or at least making the effort) black and other minorities dependence on the government and racist politicians, Democrats have managed to maintain a permanent power base that they ALMOST lost at the conclusion of the American Civil War (early efforts at disenfranchising black people allowed them a temporary hold on power before they could manipulate blacks into supporting them).

If you don't believe language has emerged to keep minorities under the control of an even smaller group of power-brokers, I suggest you check your privilege. Had you grown up in a different time/place, you almost certainly would have used certain words without reservation. My grandparents and father frequently used the n-word, and I thought it was perfectly normal and appropriate until my mom said something about it. A few of my classmates were especially fond of racial slurs. It's not that I think we should go back to using that language--I don't think racist language is helpful in ANY society at ANY stage, nor is hate something I believe should be normalized. But at the same time, it is foolish to say that minorities haven't effected changes in language for desired outcomes and that such isn't effective. The n-word at one point in time was commonplace, or among polite society in the south might have been pronounced "NEE-grahs." So what happened that something that was ordinary and not necessarily a hateful term but a general-purpose term to refer to blacks became prohibited hate-speech? I'm not THAT much of a history expert, but undeniably a common term that was not intended as a hateful term became perceived as such to the point that even in the south white people frowned on using it. In fact, a variant of the word is sometimes used to denote solidarity within urban culture. Something that was a one-time symbol of pride among blacks was made a symbol of hate by white people, resulting in the cultural decay of black people as though it's a mark of shame to be what they are. It's an erosion of black people's ability to even refer to themselves, resulting in ceding more control over their own thoughts and identity to "progressive" white people.

Progressives seem to establish victim class warfare by first inventing victim classes, concocting language to describe victim classes, and then turn descriptive language into racial slurs making it shameful for minorities to be what they are. I say why even bother identifying as anything else than a unique individual? If you have a problem with me for being black (if I were), that's a "you problem." I am a person, not a skin color. Rather than inventing language such as "Black Lives Matter," we should just say "MY Life Matters." Instead of inventing labels and forcing minorities to depend on public assistance, we should be concerned with affording people opportunities to succeed, reward those who make productive effort, punish people who cause harm to others. No mind control needed.

I love how you're so concerned with people's agency and freedom that the only conceivable way they could disagree with your political priorities is brainwashing.

They've all been brainwashed, they're incapable of having valid reasons to disagree with me doesn't sound racist in the slightest.

Straw man. While I might disagree with a lot of CRT, there's no denying that many valid points have been made. I never said a thing about anyone disagreeing with me.

Why, for example, are attitudes in urban or urbanesque communities so bleak? When I taught in the Delta and asked kids what their college plans were, pretty much IF they planned to go to college it was the community college. I'd ask, why not this state university or that state university? And pretty much the answer was it was too far from home and they'd never get into those schools, anyway. Or if I asked the guidance counselor why more wasn't done to help them get into college. She'd say, "all our money is for our tech prep site. We don't get paid to send kids to college." I was heavily criticized for helping a girl get into a public arts boarding school.

I got to know another young person who worked at a bank. Her family had ostracized her because she got a good-paying job at a bank after finishing college. She was a single mother, yes. She lived in a house that had bullet holes in the walls and kept warm by leaving the oven open. Her own mother and other family wanted nothing to do with her because she was "trying to act white." Perhaps they thought she was "bougie." IDK. I don't understand what's so shameful about self-love and care and wanting your daughter to grow up in better circumstances than you had.

But there it is...it is a culture driven by some artificial requirement that the only reason to live is to make babies and stay on welfare.

You tell me. Which is it? If someone says that blacks have long been brainwashed, even if that happens to be true, well, that's racist. If it's not that, then it's that blacks must stay on welfare because they aren't intellectually capable of taking care of themselves. Which is it? I say how about white Democrats get out of the way, let blacks think for themselves, and learn to see them as people no different than they are rather than a way to keep their grip on power? I'm not wrong. This is a pattern that goes all the way back to slavery and the Civil War.

Out of curiosity, I'd like to know how many people on this forum ACTUALLY HAVE REACHED OUT to the black community to help them? I took a private school gig two years ago after working in a predominantly minority Catholic school for 5 years. Even I worked in public schools, I never shied away from teaching students regardless of skin color to the best of my ability and helping them find opportunities to reach their educational and career goals beyond high school. Even if I disagreed with affirmative action, it was always an OPTION for some of these low-income kids. I'd tell them never to hesitate to take what's offered, but to also work hard to earn degrees and jump-start their career. Do you want out of the Mississippi Delta? Pack your pillow and bedsheets, 14 changes of clothes, and never look back. Even though I'm not black, I felt trapped there. Eventually, I took my own advice. If you want to criticize me, fine, but I've got lived experience on this!

Before engaging in long discussions, it might be relevant to ask what/where/how/why/where you disagree with CRT?

The "CRT in school is bad for white kids" is a strawman argument since we know CRT is not taught in highschool.

Therefore I assume you object to CRT in college level courses?

Oh boy you don't get it do you. The first problem is treating black people like they need "special help". Watch black comedians or listen to black activists. The number one thing they hate is white folk who think they can come into a ghetto as "saviours" teach the kids like Michelle Pfifer and return back to their "white bubbles". As if they don't have teachers who can't do the same thing

Black people don't have "special needs". They just want the same opportunities for their kids.

Who's being a savior? I'm just a teacher doing his job.

And you are part of the problem if that's the way you feel. Why can't I just want the best outcomes for everyone I teach? The idea that it's somehow wrong to at least expose kids to diverse experiences and opportunities whether they take me up on it or not is a negative and bigoted one. And that's exactly what I mean when I point out progressive hypocrisy and racism. You don't believe black people deserve to be well-informed of the opportunities they have!

It is in some cases, so your assertion here is untrue. Not My Idea is a book that is already being taught in a few schools. Schools in Buffalo, New York, taught students that “all white people” perpetuate “systemic racism” and had kindergarteners watch a video of dead black children, warning them about “racist police and state-sanctioned violence.” And in Arizona, the state’s education department sent out an “equity toolkit” to schools that claimed infants as young as 3 months old can start to show signs of racism and “remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness” by age 5. It's defo a thing pre-college.

You were challenging members on this forum to go out and help black people. I was pointing out that is condescending to say "Black people need out help". They need opportunity. How is that controversial?