Political correctness is going too far

Political correctness is intended to help us use language that helps instead of harm and discrimination. Whether the discrimination comes from religious bigotry, sexism, or tribal bigotry, the bottom line remains the same.

Being politically correct just means you understand that your actions affect people who are vulnerable to discrimination.

Did you know nitty-gritty was a racially charged word, someone asked me recently. I didn’t. Apparently it has unpleasant origins in a slave ship.

To many people, political correctness seems like a tripwire laid across language, you never know what innocent word will get you into trouble. A male friend called a female friend hysterical on a social media group. Did you know that means a disease of the womb, and has been used to deny and silence women? 

Political correctness is a familiar punching bag. To people who haven’t experienced any systematic exclusion, it can seem like others are quibbling over words and exaggerating their injuries. Some have a more fundamental opposition. They reject the very effort to include everyone and make sure nobody feels small. Across the West, right-wing populists from Trump to Le Pen and Wilders are aggressively anti-PC. They will no longer be held back from speaking bluntly; no liberal human being can tell them what’s offensive.

But such a liberal stranglehold is an even more unlikely idea in our hierarchical society. Look around you – have people stopped being offensive? Curse words and jokes based on religion, gender, tribe, looks and disability are all around us. Here, your free speech is more likely to be shushed for reasons of political affiliation and status, than to keep you ‘politically correct’. Now assaults to peoples’ religious faiths are occurring daily on social media.

All group-based labels aren’t equally bad – if there is no real difference in their social power, a Muganda’s mean jokes about Basoga are not damaging. You can joke with and about your friends. The sting of a word lies in its context and social effects. Would you want to be contemptuously called “nigger” in a white majority nation, or would your sensitivity be justified? 

Often, it is not that a word is inherently offensive, but that it has a freighted history and associations. ‘Coloured’ was a dehumanising label imposed by others. ‘African-American’ is a reminder of a certain heritage and identity, ‘black’ has a political clarity, and these are words chosen by people to describe themselves. ‘Nothing about us without us’ is what the disability rights movement wants, yet we still have words that glorify them but denies them full humanity.

Any movement towards the recognition of equality is rocky, any challenge to a dominant order is registered as an affront. Your daughter marries who she pleases. A young person whose family laboured on your lands is more sharply dressed and has a better job than yours. A domestic worker seeks her due, rather than speak in appeasing tones. 

A man, bossed around by other men, feels his only power threatened by his wife’s lack of submission. This impulse to lash out isn’t alien to most of us; as a child, I remember feeling violent rage at my little brother’s ‘insolence’. 

The first unpleasant shock may be understandable, but the second reaction, as adults, is to hear others, try to see where they’re coming from. Try to find out why a believer would rather listen to Mbonye’s summon and not your preferred man of God’s summon. Then you either carry on with the name calling, or you choose better words.

When well-meaning people complain about ‘political correctness’, it could be because those calling them out make no distinction between ignorance and deliberate bigotry. For instance, whenever Kyagulanyi calls out the injustices suffered by his people, the Ugandan police labels him ridiculously tribalistic. We didn’t all grow up knowing about ‘cis-het’ and ableist assumptions – explaining these things simply is important. There are many things that people with social advantages are screened from knowing, and educating them is not anyone’s else’s duty. For some utter radicals, though, there is only conflict; there is no possibility of mutual understanding. That doesn’t help.

It boils down to this: If we care about civic respect, we can’t help but notice troubling words and assumptions.

It is not about trendy terminology or virtue signalling, but the need to include. If you think everyone is of equal worth, then it’s not a big deal or great effort to adjust your vocabulary accordingly.

Phillip Kimumwe, Socio-political commentator. [email protected]