Regular readers know that I often express irritation at the use of certain terms that I consider to be symptoms of lazy thinking. Over the past week the Paul Henry saga has brought me (and many others) back to one phrase that I’ve hated for years but have yet to comment on in writing. That phrase is “political correctness” and its henchman “PC gone mad”.
I hate those phrases when they’re used to criticise some policy or opinion that aims to identify with the feelings and needs of minorities and disadvantaged. Why?
First, it’s lazy. When you invoke “PC” you’re saying that you don’t need any form of rational argument to justify your opposition. It becomes so easy simply to dismiss a viewpoint you don’t agree as politically correct if it comes from an angle of human rights or sensible democracy. It says: ‘I want to keep my simple, monochrome view of life and avoid having to think about anything that doesn’t fit with it’.
A civilised society works best when all people, even those with starkly different viewpoints and cultural backgrounds, can at least see others as equally entitled to personal respect. There is nothing “politically correct” about doing the right thing, it’s simply a matter of what works best for us all together. (It’s not just politically correct to drive only when sober, or on the lawful side of the road – it’s the right thing for society as a whole.) A need to marginalise and denigrate others different to ourselves shows immaturity and insecurity rather than boldness and cleverness.
Second, dismissing a person or viewpoint as “politically correct” is a tactic used by a person or group of a dominant culture, to assert or maintain that dominance. Usually it’s an unconscious behaviour, but sometimes it’s very conscious – an attack weapon.
I’ve never ever heard the term PC used by a member of a minority population. By the very nature of them being a minority, they are unlikely to see laws that favour the majority and pander to their sensibilities as being PC. To disempowered minorities, such policies and attitudes are just the way things are.
“Anti-PC” people are happy to dish it out, but are often the first people to complain when they are on the sharp end of some disrespectful or unpleasant criticism. They consider saying what they want as proudly “calling a spade a spade”, but usually cannot handle similar bluntness aimed at them or their beliefs.
On some occasions when listening to an anti-PC tirade, I’ve tried to imagine switching the roles. This person complaining that they cannot say racially denigrating things without being jumped on from a height by the “PC brigade” – what if they themselves were the target of constant denigration and offensive references, in reverse? (Look at the reaction of many people to Hone Harawira’s occasional outburst about whites!)
Imagine if this person, who so boldly asserts the right to say whatever he thinks about other cultures, has a special needs daughter whose name in India sounded like a word for “stupid half-wit” and was therefore being ridiculed on Indian TV?
In fact, I know people who proudly say they are non-PC in that they believe they have the right to say what they want, offensive to others or not, but who are very quick to be offended (even outraged) and to think in terms of litigation if they are the subject of someone else’s non-PC comments. (Remember the calls for Harawira’s resignation from parliament?)
Being considered non-PC works fine for you when you want to be able to offend others without feeling a twinge of conscience, but it’s not so great when you’re the offended party.
This article is inevitably leading to my view on TVNZ presenter Paul Henry’s fearless sally into the realms of saying what he really thinks about India and its people and culture. Has the reaction of New Zealanders who complained to the broadcaster been “PC gone mad”?
I’m not the first commentator to note that one good thing that has come out of the whole incident has been that it has brought to the surface once again attitudes of unconscious cultural superiority in NZ, and our unrecognised racism. For it is the public portrayal of these attitudes by Henry that has offended so many non-Indian Kiwis.
Take the incidents themselves. The Governor-General blunder begs the questions: Who are we New Zealanders? Who is “one of us”? Who has the right to say we are “us” and those not physically like us cannot be “us”? Aren’t we all a mix of migrant arrivals here – even Maori?
It’s a sad reminder of all the “us and them” messages that crop up whenever white New Zealanders feel threatened. The National party’s 2005 “Iwi versus Kiwi” election campaign message; the letters to the editor that talk of us New Zealanders and them Maori (or them migrants). Just because Kiwis of European ancestry are numerically dominant, that doesn’t make “us” refer to our group only and “them” to all others.
The apologies by Henry and TVNZ were typical and expected, sadly, which tells us so much about ourselves. The suggestion that Henry was saying what we all think but are too PC to say. The usual “apologise if I have caused offence” (and not apologising for saying it at all).
Then the Dikshit incident. Initially to me Henry’s behaviour on screen ran like the little 8-yr-old boy running around saying “poos” and “bum” at the top of his voice and laughing his head off, assuming he’d have an audience of others laughing even harder and thinking him so daring and so clever.
TVNZ would then play the parent who gives the child a bit of a telling off for appearances sake, but privately feels pride that their lad is a bit of a character and popular with his friends.
Of course, like so many others who first heard the name of the Indian politician on serious radio news reports about the Games, I grinned and said something like “unfortunate name, that one”, as I would if I heard the name of a butcher as Mr Porker. No-one could be offended by that. I’m only human! But to do what Henry did publicly on nationwide TV?
To that point it was merely childish and disrespectful. When Henry went on immediately, without thinking, to link the pronunciation to India and hygienic conditions there, it suddenly became either cultural supremacist or racist or both.
What would our reaction as a nation be if a similar thing happened to us on a popular Indian TV? If a popular New Zealander in the news had a name which in an Indian dialect had an “unfortunate” meaning, such as (suggested above) “a person of low IQ”. Imagine our reaction if half the Indian nation was laughing at what this name said about the IQ of New Zealanders in general. Then we’d see the Kiwi cringe in action!
Offence given is easy, if you feel culturally superior. It’s harder to take when it’s reversed.
Later:
It’s two days since I wrote this post, and I want to add a brief account of an incident yesterday which is very relevent, though not connected to my posting. A person I sometimes work with (and who hadn’t seen my post) often brags that he’s “not PC”, and it’s certainly true that he often goes out of his way to offend people – and enjoys it.
Yesterday he was complaining about the rather ungracious but nevertheless (in my opinion) factually accurate comments by Jim Anderton after losing his bid for the Christchurch mayoralty, which he probably would have won had it not been for the earthquake.
I pointed out that the sort of speech Anderton was expected to give – that the better man won and he was beaten squarely and couldn’t blame the earthquake – would have been the politically correct speech. Instead, Jim expressed his disappointment at his bad luck. Jim was calling a spade a spade, being non-PC – much to the disgust of his non-fans, many of whom decry PC. My work associate went away to think about it!
Posted by David Armstrong 
