A good way people engage every day is by considering each other’s feelings, each other’s sense of security, since this shows some modicum of respect for another. Saying “thank you” when the barista gives you your coffee. Apologizing if you bump into someone on the bus. It’s rewarding, since people generally do not want to associate with those who make them uncomfortable. It feels nice when we’re nice to each other.

As Anthony Zurcher notes, the term “political correctness” is “a derogatory description coined in the 1990s to label those contending, in part, that language was a weapon used by the powerful to deny the interests of the oppressed.” But today, the concept is again making the rounds, aligning with the rise of authoritarianism, white nationalism, and growing anti-progressive sentiment. Those for whom the very existence of the marginalized is a threat find themselves on the defensive. Language, conduct, and attitudes that for so long went unchallenged now are finally being called out by those negatively affected. Instead of acceding or listening to marginalized voices, however, those in power dismiss us, saying we’re only after “political correctness.”

And so, from the pages of The New York Times flow columns complaining of passionate but powerless students saying no to racists and Nazis; prominent men saying feminism goes too far by demanding men stop harassing women or inappropriately touching them; unremarkable academics gaining international notoriety and book deals when claiming laws make them victims of some kind of transgender cabal. All of these are hypersensitive reactions from those with power targeting those without. All claim “political correctness” has gone too far and dismiss, with barely a shrug, the continued, ongoing pain of others.

It makes sense that this would be the reaction: It’s easier for the privileged to dismiss the concerns of those who’ve been marginalized and silenced than to reflect on whether they’re wrong and make the effort to change. The term “political correctness” was invented by the privileged to maintain the status quo, deny the voices of the marginalized, and reject inclusivity for disparate societies.

It’s time we got rid of it.

It’s easier for the privileged to dismiss the concerns of those who’ve been marginalized and silenced than to reflect on whether they’re wrong.
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Trump and the PC Hammer

Perhaps the most famous whiner about the Boogeyman of “political correctness” is the orange menace himself, President Donald Trump. Trump finds every opportunity to chalk up any and all criticism to “political correctness.”

During a debate in 2015 (though what feels like approximately 300 years ago), moderator Megyn Kelly challenged Donald Trump on his views on women. “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees,” Kelly explained. In response, Trump said, “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct… I’ve been challenged by so many people, I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.”

He wasn’t a misogynist, he was just not politically correct.

Later, in response to a policy his administration drafted to ban Muslims from the United States, President Trump told a crowd, “I wrote something today that I think is very, very salient, very important and probably not politically correct, but I don’t care.”

He wasn’t a racist, he was just not politically correct.

After the terrorist attacks in London last year, President Trump said, “We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people.”

He wasn’t a hypersensitive reactionary, he was just not politically correct.

The Privilege of ‘Civilized’ Political Discourse
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Basic respect for women, treating Muslim and brown people not as terrorists, and reacting thoughtfully to a terrorist attack are all “politically correct,” according to President Trump. Note the total absence of humanity afforded by the President to those affected by such actions and beliefs. If it’s politically correct, that’s the problem. Who cares who gets hurt?

But his playing the PC card shows its breadth, which thus reveals its shallowness: If it can be used to reinforce anything then it stands for nothing. Instead of interrogating the individual, complex issues at hand, actually considering whether people are affected, complaining about “political correctness” is a conceptual Napalm attack used to simply eradicate any offending bumps on one’s moral landscape.

President Trump’s use of the phrase shows how, no matter the context, if there’s disagreement with his actions or ideas, it must be because he’s not being “politically correct,” turning him into a noble fighter, a truth teller, unafraid of some mythical force that somehow is more powerful than his administration. Take note of this card. Now see how it’s played.

Complaining about 'political correctness' is a conceptual Napalm attack used to simply eradicate any offending bumps on one’s moral landscape.
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“A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it… People prefer when there’s an outsider who doesn’t have anything to lose and is willing to say what’s on a lot of people’s minds.”

That’s not President Trump. That’s Nathan Larson, who, according to The Hill, is “a self-declared racist and ex-con who advocates for pedophilia and rape… running for Congress in Virginia’s 10th District.” Larson is “open about his pedophilia so as to remain unconstrained by ‘political correctness.’”

The key component of playing the PC card reveals itself: It negates hurt, harm, and wrongfulness; it dismisses other people’s concerns entirely and therefore other people as worthy of consideration. What’s worse, it assumes moral bankruptness on all sides. If you’re upset that someone advocates rape and racism, you don’t actually care about the victims, you’re just trying to be “politically correct.” It’s an easy way to dismiss any criticism wholesale, while flipping the blame onto those who dare suggest people should be treated fairly.

The key component of playing the PC card reveals itself: It dismisses other people’s concerns entirely and therefore other people as worthy of consideration.
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The hatred of facts and freedom

One of the most bizarre aspects of opposing “political correctness” is how it negates both facts and freedom — two things those who spend their time complaining about “political correctness” claim to prioritize.

First, in terms of facts, Rebecca Carroll notes:

“It is not politically correct to object to the gender pay gap; there’s a whole conservative cottage industry dedicated to proving there is no pay gap… It is not politically correct to highlight the fact that black and brown people are violently profiled, discriminated against and underrepresented in government and industry … It is not politically correct to ensure that transgender people are the arbiters of their own experience, and believe that they should be deferred to on matters of their safety and livelihood.”

It’s not “politically correct” to highlight the lived realities of marginalized people, it’s just correct. When something affects them, their views should be prioritized, however much it might offend the status quo which marginalized them in the first place. Second, complaining about political correctness means a large-scale dismissal of an entire people’s basis for being offended or hurt, which stifles communication. When a white man said to me last year that he viewed South Africans of color, especially black people, as being hypersensitive about apartheid, this was not someone I wanted to converse with: It chilled any conversation we could have.

Shunning Sarah Huckabee Sanders Is The Definition Of Civility
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What student wants to learn from teachers or lecturers who dismiss concerns as mere adherence to “political correctness,” rather than basic bridges of decency? What female employee would feel safe with a boss who thinks women’s concern for respect in the workplace is just “politically correct” nonsense? Those who complain about “political correctness” often label it as stifling. But, as Lindy West noted:

“White students parading around campus in blackface is itself a silencing tactic. Telling rape victims that they’re ‘coddled’ is a silencing tactic. Teaching marginalised people that their concerns will always be imperiously dismissed, always subordinated to some decontextualised free-speech absolutism is a silencing tactic.”

The continual dismissal of marginalized people’s voices as “politically correct” nonsense means the status quo never changing, means never having to reexamine your beliefs.

Complaints about political correctness come often from straight white cis men — those who’ve not had to face hardship or dehumanization based on their identity. Those who are encouraged to believe their achievements come from meritocracy, not privilege. With the slow change brought about by technology and more platforms for marginalized voices, white men can no longer ignore and will no longer face zero repercussions for their actions. People will and do speak out. With this changing tide, the status quo warriors have had to grab a new paddle. Instead of moving, however, they’re simply going in circles and we see the ripples.

It’s not 'politically correct' to highlight the lived realities of marginalized people, it’s just correct.
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Stop being lazy

Jonathan Chait, in a discussion on “political correctness” on NPR, said: 

“I would define political correctness as a new ideology that is completely intolerant of dissent on issues relating to race and gender. … even if it’s made in response to legitimate racism and legitimate sexism that people have every right to be concerned about, it shuts down Democratic politics in a way that we should be concerned about.”

In response to this point, writer Roxane Gay argued that race and gender are not hypothetical ideas in an intellectual debate. “When we’re talking about gender and race, these are not things that are debatable. For example, I’m a woman,” she said. “And so if I tell you what my experience is as a woman and then someone tries to contradict it when they have no idea what my experience is, it becomes really frustrating. And I will push back against that. And so when it comes to matters of identity, I think people are necessarily rigid in terms of how we discuss it.”

My humanity, and yours, is not a topic for debate. My lived experiences of racism are not there for a strange white man to interrogate. When trauma victims outline what helps them cope, it’s not others’ jobs to tell them to move on. When women tell us catcalling is harassment, it’s not men’s jobs to declare catcalls compliments.

It’s morally lazy to do nothing and never grow; it’s easier to maintain your beliefs are good than recognize perhaps you don’t know the lived experiences of others. The bubble of privilege has protected some from the toxic drops of oppression that are raining down on everyone else.

Marginalized people’s voices deserve to be heard in a society that fails them by propping up the status quo. Indeed, calls for civility after marginalized or targeted people fight back—sometimes less than cordially—do nothing but uphold the status quo. As Katherine Cross notes in her essay on recent acts of “uncivil” behavior, this is straight out of the abuser’s playbook: “There is merit in the observation that abusers define any resistance to their actions as rude and uncivil, that they apply one standard to themselves and another to any who might raise a voice against them. That’s long been the case here.”

All “political correctness” means is basic decency and respect, an active effort to listen, a recognition our actions affect others. Wanting others to feel welcome should be a basic tenet of being a member of society, since a society where people feel equal is a better society for all. So if that feels like an attack, perhaps it’s time to rethink your strategy of defending your beliefs.

Former White House advisor David Axelrod tweeted today:

Kind of amazed and appalled by the number of folks on Left who applauded the expulsion of @PressSec and her family from a restaurant.

This, in the end, is a triumph for @realDonaldTrump vision of America:

Now we’re divided by red plates & blue plates!

#sad

The only thing that triumphed here is Mike Huckabee-esque anti-humor.

Meanwhile, a more sober take comes to us from the Washington Post editorial board, whose genteel relativism urges us to “let the Trump team eat in peace”:

Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?

It’s not hard at all to imagine what a moral emergency looks like to the extreme right. They’ve murdered abortion doctors and shot up clinics already. We were living in the Post’s grim dystopia for decades before this point. Right-wing extremists, hopped up on their eschatological visions of the world, have indeed taken matters into their own hands repeatedly. They’ve committed massacres at mosques and schools, and from the Pizzagate crowd — deep in thrall to an alternate universe without peer even among the wild fever dreams of conservatism — we’ve only narrowly avoided mass shootings at a pizza parlor and a homeless camp in Arizona.

Thus, I’m less than perturbed at the fact that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was politely asked to leave a restaurant — indeed, she was even told the food she’d already been served was “on the house.” More uncivil, arguably, was the DSA protest that drove Kirstjen Nielsen from a Mexican restaurant in downtown DC, but this involved no violence either and was eminently fair as she’s a cabinet secretary in a public place. By her own claim, she was having a “working dinner” at the restaurant, to boot. So even the Post’s “private time” distinction hardly applies.

The truth is that for all of the recent handwringing about civility, the methods now being employed against the administration’s core supporters are actually quite civil. The manner in which Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave was actually the portrait of civility; it was a communal decision taken by staff, she was informed of the decision in private and politely asked to leave, and was not charged for any orders that had already been delivered. So what happened, exactly? Well, she was shunned. A social consequence was applied to her actions as Press Secretary that served as a powerful reminder: What she does is not normal, and should not be taken lightly.

This seems to be less the embrace of Trumpism than its precise opposite: the enforcement of normative moral standards through the application of polite, non-violent social consequences for immoral acts.

Why Punching Nazis Is Not Only Ethical, But Imperative
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Trumpism, by its nature, is consequence-free. Just witness how Huckabee Sanders herself abused her power as Press Secretary to publicize the incident on her government account, leveraging her status and calling down a rain of abuse on the restaurant. That she used her @PressSec account to do this is a violation of White House ethics policy. It won’t matter.

This is one of many problems with Trumpism. Scott Pruitt’s bizarre, expensive peccadilloes and overt ethical violations as EPA secretary haven’t cost him his job; Kellyanne Conway spruiking Ivanka Trump’s fashion line in her official capacity didn’t cost her hers; Trump himself experiences next to no oversight from the Republican-dominated Congress and routinely positions himself as being above the law — his simpering defenders on cable news argue much the same.

Therefore, an ordinary citizen took it upon herself to quietly, politely, apply a much needed consequence to a member of a government that thinks itself beyond responsibility to anything but Trump’s whims. That doesn’t seem like a validation of Trumpian callousness, but a repudiation of it.

Trumpism, by its nature, is consequence-free.
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Of course, when you use the smooth, overgeneralizing language of the Posteditorial board — the same rhetorical gesture that categorizes even life-or-death political battles as “disagreements” — this can all be effaced. One act of incivility is as bad as another. I’d dispute that the Red Hen owner’s actions were uncivil, but even in a case where a dollop of rudeness was at play, like the Nielsen protest, such things are necessary for exactly the same reason: Without these mechanisms, these people would experience no meaningful consequences for engineering and supporting horrors.

The people are doing the checking and balancing that our government will not. We should be much more worried that we’ve arrived at that point than about the politesse of a private citizen.

But if we must indulge the “civility” discussion, then it’s worth saying that these acts of civic protest remain peaceful. They are a humane response to inhumanity, and, frankly, one more manifestation of democracy and decency. People who support this administration’s cruel Zero Tolerance regime, whether from a White House podium or from a Twitter account spewing memes and hashtags, should be made to experience the power of shunning. It is, at bottom, a peaceful way to say “this is not okay, and you should go away and think about what you’ve done; then you can rejoin society.”

The people are doing the checking and balancing that our government will not.
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Furthermore, unlike, say, “conscience”-driven bigots who wish to use Christian belief to refuse service to LGBT people, the owner of the Red Hen wasn’t antagonizing any class Huckabee Sanders belonged to. She was responding to Huckabee Sanders’ actions as an individual. The very things she, and she alone, are responsible for. In another time, conservatives might’ve called that “personal responsibility.”

Shunning is harsh in its way — we are social creatures, after all — but it is also humane and non-violent. In short, it is civil. Even better, it’s grassroots. Citizens are taking their responsibilities seriously. As the Red Hen owner said, “This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”

That’s more than can be said for Huckabee Sanders, Miller, or Nielsen, who rely on a consequence-free environment in order to do their dirty work.

I’ve often been leery of applying the language of interpersonal abuse dynamics to politics. “Gaslighting” is a word perilously close to being defined out of all meaning, just as “trigger” has been all but stolen from trauma survivors. But there is merit in the observation that abusers define any resistance to their actions as rude and uncivil, that they apply one standard to themselves and another to any who might raise a voice against them. That’s long been the case here.

What Huckabee Sanders experienced was nothing compared to what she’s propagandized for from her podium. She goes home to a warm bed and her loving family, not a cage where she sleeps on concrete under foil; her children will not be parted from her before being spirited through a ramshackle, Kafkaesque prison system that refuses to track its wards.

The Atrocities On Our Border Prove Trump’s Base
Isn’t Worth Talking To
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A powerful government secretary was denied the momentary privilege of eating at a specific nice restaurant. Even if I had tears left to shed, this would be the last thing to draw them from me. If these people are so concerned about civility in restaurants, then perhaps they can more aggressively take ICE to task for incidents like this.

We should not fall into the moral trap of analogizing a children’s prison camp to a principled denial of service. Or, indeed, analogizing the latter to Jim Crow or shops that discriminate against queer people, as a breathtaking number of people have done in the last few days. We must be smarter and more discerning than this. We owe that much to ourselves.

Where The Washington Post sees sorrow, I see hope. If our government cannot hold its leaders accountable, then the people must.