CHS is an extremely diverse school. Starting in Kindergarten, students are taught to understand and respect other cultures, until acceptance becomes second nature. However, the obsession with being “politically correct” has become far too powerful a force in dictating the interactions between students; it is a hindrance rather than an asset to life at CHS.
It is common knowledge that some words and phrases are simply “off-limits.” However, as time has gone on, this list seems to have grown exponentially.
The attempt to remain politically correct has thus created a culture in which every questionable word one utters can be considered offensive, making it nearly impossible to engage in a controversial debate.
According to Principal Joan Benz, political correctness has a strong base at CHS, where it is a means for creating respect for everyone in the community.
However, in the halls of CHS, students themselves select the groups in which they discuss certain topics in order to minimize offense. This results in the slow separation of students, creating more harm than that which the original intention sought to avoid.
Depending on the conversation, students can be segregated in a variety of ways. There is an age-old law of humor: all comedy is based on misery. Consequently, some of the most successful jokes, tend to push the most boundaries and draw laughs at the expense of someone or something. These jokes, however, also tend to be the most offensive.
For people who want to be funny and who like to make friendly jokes, this causes a dilemma. They now have to make different jokes with different people, and because of this they will want to associate more with those with whom they can be the most open.
We are not by any means condoning distasteful jokes or significantly degrading a single group. However, stereotypes do exist and jokes that merely highlight an existing stereotype should not be silenced. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is taking place.
This is where the segregation happens; when people are afraid of what they can or can’t say, they begin to settle with those who they are least likely to offend.
In this respect, political correctness functions as an indirect form of censorship in students’ daily lives. Society’s suppression of certain topics deemed inappropriate to discuss directly limits a student’s expression of his or her ideas. A fear of being thought of as racist, homophobic, or rude prevents a student from asking questions or making observations.
When people cannot voice their opinions to other people because of a fear of offending, they have to watch every word to be certain that they are not hurting somebody’s feelings.
However, joking is only the beginning of the issue. Political correctness becomes infinitely more dangerous when it starts being implemented in everyday conversation.
This is where political correctness begins to act as societal censorship. When people cannot say what they want to say, when one cannot disagree with another person because that person is a member of a minority, it stifles debate and it creates boundaries between people.
This has two effects. First, it reduces the public discourse to lowest common denominator – the things that everyone can agree on, which tend to be the least important issues and the least important topics that one can discuss; if everybody agrees on them, there’s nothing left to talk about. Second, it breeds animosity between the members of a majority and the members of a minority.
The power of one person to veto the speech of an entire group is never well-received. When we say to a white person, “No, you can’t talk about violence in the inner cities, you have no idea what it’s like,” that person will, rightly so, get angry. He’s being silenced, being told that his opinion doesn’t matter.
So what does that person do? He stops associating with those silencing him. He starts to only communicate with those just like him, and the ones most likely to be just like him tend to be of the same ethnic group.
This is a sadly common and terrible scenario and it contributes to a complete sterilization of our public discourse; all opinions are no longer debated, all disagreement is immediately stifled, all ideas are now limited to those that already agree with them.
Now, each idea has its own faction, and each faction is only familiar with its own idea. This engenders conflict as each group, acting on extremely limited knowledge and with a very dogmatic position, tries to simultaneously impose its own doctrine upon people.
Furthermore, each group is now afraid of accepting the ideas of other groups and reacts aggressively to any attempt at communication because now, everyone gets offended by everything.
This may seem like taking an idea to its logical extreme, but it’s not; it’s already happening. Look at #CancelColbert or at #GamerGate. Look at the controversy surrounding the Mike Brown case, where you are either pro-Mike Brown or a racist. Finally, look at our own school.
People aren’t ever going to stop saying offensive things, so the best thing to do is to stop getting offended by them. Political correctness is nothing more than censorship under a different name. It’s time to stop it.