Has political correctness actually gone mad?

[bishblaize]

Another social media 'race storm' after Alan Brazil said 'non-whites' in a discussion about the Rooney Rule regarding football managers. Deary me, it doesn't take much to light the social media touch paper.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/alan-brazil-embroiled-race-storm-5826391

I can't seem to find what he actually said, context can make a difference in these things. The term itself isn't offensive, but of course he may have blundered it out in some daft way.

 

[Jippy]

I can't seem to find what he actually said, context can make a difference in these things. The term itself isn't offensive, but of course he may have blundered it out in some daft way.

Agreed and the quote in which he said it would have helped. People are getting enraged without hearing the context though, which is half of my point.

 

[Nick 0208 Ldn]

http://talksport.com/radio/listen-again/1433480400#

Select 0730-0800, then forward to 12.00.

It isn't the original piece of dialogue (which i am yet to find), however Alan Brazil does again use the term "non-white" and explains why he did so.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Another one bites the dust.

 

[Sweet Square]

Another one bites the dust.

I'm one of these lefty Stewart Lee fans who argue that Political Correctness has been a very good thing. But the last couple of years there's clearly being more stories of Political correctness(Mostly from online pressure and social media campaigns)leaking into the 'real' world and having a negative impact on people. Jon Ronson's book and recent interviews have been a real eye opener in just how much of a effect Political correctness can have on people.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I'm one of these lefty Stewart Lee fans who argue that Political Correctness has been a very good thing. But the last couple of years there's clearly being more stories of Political correctness(Mostly from online pressure and social media campaigns)leaking into the 'real' world and having a negative impact on people. Jon Ronson's book and recent interviews have been a real eye opener in just how much of a effect Political correctness can have on people.

That's exactly where I'm at too.

 

[adexkola]

I don't think political correctness has been a great thing. Not when all it does recently is shame and punish, instead of teach and correct.

The Bruce/Caitlyn issue recently. Society isn't at the point with transgender issues as it is with racism and homosexuality. There are a lot of people who will be weirded out, baffled, and/or discriminatory about the issue. The reasonable solution is to engage and teach. Not the shaming and "let's get this dude fired!!!" you see on social media. And nothing changes.

 

[Silva]

You guys are mistaking political correctness, which is just a way of using language, with online witch hunts. Which themselves tend to be mean spirited.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

You guys are mistaking political correctness, which is just a way of using language, with online witch hunts. Which themselves tend to be mean spirited.

I used the words "political correctness" in the title as a play on the moaning you used to hear about it "going mad". The type of censorious moralising we're talking about now comes from the same place, though. It's reasonable concerns about people doing something immoral or offensive taken to ludicrous extremes. Most of these witch-hunts have been triggered by someone saying or doing something that wasn't politically correct.

 

[LeChuck]

Another one bites the dust.

I was really annoyed by this. I graduated from the Life Sciences department at UCL, and although I wasn't taught directly under him, it was clear how respected and intelligent he was just from the way other staff spoke of him or cited his work. What he said wasn't even offensive. This is definitely UCL's and science's loss.

 

[Jippy]

Feel sorry for his wife too. Presumably she is quitting UCL too? This underlines my dislike of twitter and vindictive people deludedly acting under the banner of morality.

 

[The Mitcher]

Feel sorry for his wife too. Presumably she is quitting UCL too? This underlines my dislike of twitter and vindictive people deludedly acting under the banner of morality.

Its funny, when he was talking about gender segregated labs, there are loads, loads of the same people criticising him who advocate for things like that. Hypocrites.

 

[Arruda]

It's insane. Our biggest newspaper had an article about it and, despite the distance and it being a second-handed out-of-context quotation, people went berserk in the comments. The title of the article left little room for further interpretation any way, in a few words the sentence was made. I suppose to many it's more a thing of keeping up with what they "hear" is correct these days than properly understanding the issue and having a genuine opinion.

I did think it was prone to being misinterpreted, but without a context, an indication of his mood, etc, even room for an apology it's extremely unfair.

To me the falling in love thing seemed more like self depreciating nerd humour than sexism. But even after that initial opinion, I almost got carried away with the conclusion of the article and the succession of comments. That's how influential and threatening this new trend is.

 

[berbatrick]

Sexism in science is a big issue, and it's there at all levels, from a bigoted postdoc to a professor choosing gender over talent. I thought it's bad in India but the stories from here are comparable to what I've heard about the west. The Guardian itself did a piece on it, I thought some of those were obviously jokes or harmless or just the blunt truth, but many are horrifying.
That said, it's insane that they fired him without a hearing. He also got support from many female colleagues so it looks like the university really overreacted.

I don't like the generalisations in this article (I'm a male but I have no confidence in my research, the most confident student I know is female) but the research they've quoted is damning.

 

[Jippy]

Its funny, when he was talking about gender segregated labs, there are loads, loads of the same people criticising him who advocate for things like that. Hypocrites.

Bloody hell, gender segregated labs? My brother and is wife, who is a Phd, both work in the labs at UCL. Shame I don't speak to them or I could have tried to get some gossip on it.

 

[berbatrick]

Bloody hell, gender segregated labs? My brother and is wife, who is a Phd, both work in the labs at UCL. Shame I don't speak to them or I could have tried to get some gossip on it.

I have never heard of anything like that, and I looked through approximately 300 (genetics) labs in ~30 universities in the US for deciding where to apply for my phd. A few were all-male (maybe 10-20), fewer still were all-female (~5).

Some of my friends applied in theoretical chemistry and it's far more male-dominated there, but (I think) most labs have 1-2 women in ~15 total students.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Another one bites the dust.

I saw this story breaking on the news when it did, and it's all fine being critical but it seems we've stopped accounting for people saying daft things anymore. Also, it's amazing how strong a force Twitter seems to be for the collective thickness of our society.

 

[Penna]

I saw this story breaking on the news when it did, and it's all fine being critical but it seems we've stopped accounting for people saying daft things anymore. Also, it's amazing how strong a force Twitter seems to be for the collective thickness of our society.

I honestly feel that this man has had a raw deal here. I am not offended at all by his remarks about women, it's just a bit of a daft thing to say but it's nothing at all that should warrant losing your job. In the 'old days' if you'd heard that you'd have replied with an equally silly quip about geeky male scientists who don't know how to boil an egg, and everyone would have had a good laugh.

I see from the link Pogue posted that his wife has also been dragged into it, and that's not right at all. He didn't name any female scientist in particular, iirc.

 

[LeChuck]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-33135293

Not a solely PC issue, more 'elf 'n safety.

 

[The Mitcher]

Bloody hell, gender segregated labs? My brother and is wife, who is a Phd, both work in the labs at UCL. Shame I don't speak to them or I could have tried to get some gossip on it.

He said something about them. But all those people who have criticised him basically believe in it, its what "safe spaces" translates into isn't it?

 

[Mockney]

Just got Jon Ronson's book. Really looking forward to reading it. I do admit to feeling a disconnection from the more extreme elements of the left since Social Media kicked in. I still think it can be a great force for good, and is easily demonised, but it does tend to entrench opinions into ever more intolerant parodies of themselves.

Though I also partly agree with @Silva that the term is being misappropriated wildly. It's mainly about language and politeness. Ideological harassment is another thing entirely.

 

[Silva]

You could probably argue that twitter mobs tend not to be politically correct themselves.

 

[Mockney]

Complex ideological matters aren't particularly suited to black and white soundbytes. Even the famous, often quoted philosophical idioms are usually cherry picked from long tomes on the subject that most have no intention of reading (something I'm certainly guilty of myself)

 

[The Mitcher]

Just got Jon Ronson's book. Really looking forward to reading it. I do admit to feeling a disconnection from the more extreme elements of the left since Social Media kicked in. I still think it can be a great force for good, and is easily demonised, but it does tend to entrench opinions into ever more intolerant parodies of themselves.

Though I also partly agree with @Silva that the term is being misappropriated wildly. It's mainly about language and politeness. Ideological harassment is another thing entirely.

I think PC started off as politeness, but as you said its also to do with language. Which inevitably means people who are higher up are going to want to control it. Its what George Carlin always said.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Just read a review of what looks like an interesting book on exactly this topic. Written by a leftie too. It's called Trigger Warning, by Mick Hume. The premise is about the impact of all this preciousness on free speech. Apparently more people are being jailed or arrested in Britain today for what they think, believe and say say than at any time since the 18th century.

 

[The Mitcher]

Just read a review of what looks like an interesting book on exactly this topic. Written by a leftie too. It's called Trigger Warning, by Mick Hume. The premise is about the impact of all this preciousness on free speech. Apparently more people are being jailed or arrested in Britain today for what they think, believe and say say than at any time since the 18th century.

I'm interested in this book now. It seems its all gone full circle, its hard to believe that a lot of the students you see that are sending Jerry Seinfeld letters about political correctness sound exactly like Mary Whitehouse, yet on paper are politically diametrically opposed.

 

[Sweet Square]

Guardian Article (Comment's is free) on the Tim Hunt resignation - http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...tractinglysexy-not-blame-tim-hunt-resignation

Spoiler

Last week I started the hashtag #distractinglysexy, in response to Nobel prizewinning scientist Tim Hunt’s ill-advised comments about men falling in love with over-emotional women in laboratories. Despite claims that the response to Hunt’s comments constituted an online “march of the feminist bullies”, no one who was part of this humorous attempt to highlight the varied and complex work of female scientists called for Hunt’s resignation or hounded him online, but that was the way it was framed.

There were undoubtedly unpleasant people on social media crowing about the man’s downfall but as far as I could see the discussion was largely jocular and – owing to the fact that many of the female scientists were posting photos under their own names – mostly professional.

The Hunt controversy continues to make headlines, with Boris Johnson and Brian Cox wading in this week as the backlash to the backlash. I even heard it said on Radio 4 this morning that “Tim Hunt was hounded from his job by a Twitterstorm”. This is patently not the case.

As Jon Ronson’s excellent book So Now You’ve Been Publicly Shamed deftly illustrates, outrage has become the currency of the internet. A person can go viral as the result of an ill-advised remark and it can leave their real life, their career, in tatters.

It is tempting to think this was the case with Hunt’s resignation. In actual fact it was clearly embarrassment on the part of the scientific community at his retrograde sexism, and that sexism being splashed across the media, which led to pressure on him to resign. University College London, where Hunt held a professorship before his resignation and which was the first university to admit women on the same terms as men, would have no truck with comments such as Hunt’s. No doubt concern about an international PR disaster played a part, but anyone who knows anything about the university’s founding principles would have expected this result, whether justified or not.

“Outrage” cases such as Hunt’s so often follow a predictable, almost formulaic cycle. I have long felt that the mainstream media overestimate the importance ofTwitter, perhaps because it seems to mainly comprise journalists and influential people. Someone says something ill-advised and social media will respond accordingly, with some users making jokes, or indulging in a gentle ribbing, and others being altogether more unpleasant. Said person will then lose their job, or apologise. This is when the second outrage wave, declaring the first outrage wave to have been disproportionate, kicks in like clockwork. Throughout, there is an assumption that social media are some kind of homogeneous entity, with news stories presenting tweets as though they are part of a cohesive, linear narrative rather than the tangled wordcloud that they actually signify.

Twitter also gives the illusion of reversing the normal power dynamics. Suddenly powerful people – often men – and corporations, cannot ignore the outraged voices of the “rest” of the population. Yet this is an illusion. By blaming the downfall of Hunt on mobs of internet feminists, the media are ascribing them power, transforming everyone on social media with feelings about sexism into a dangerous monolith that threatens free speech. They must then be criticised and undermined, rendering them even less powerful than before. Lift the emerald curtain, however, and it’s just a load of men and women with opinions on stuff, in the same way that people have been having opinions on stuff for thousands of years. It’s just that now they are being published.

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I’m not saying that public shaming hasn’t become a problem on the internet – it absolutely has. But as these stories appear again and again, it may be time to ask ourselves who benefits. How much money have media organisations (often run by powerful men) made from social media activity regarding the sexism of other powerful men, for instance? It has generated headline after headline, yet sexism hasn’t stopped.

In voicing their genuine frustrations about sexism, women are providing media outlets with “clickbait” content, largely for free. And it will continue, at least until the media start taking women’s stories seriously by hiring them and allowing them to shape the news agenda in more profound ways.

Until then, going viral is often our only recourse. But ask how much power it really wields, and the answer is probably much less than you think.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Sounds like someone's feeling a teeny bit guilty about being a ring-leader of the latest witch-hunt.

 

[Sweet Square]

Sounds like someone's feeling a teeny bit guilty about being a ring-leader of the latest witch-hunt.

Yeah I don't agree with the article myself. It does slightly feel like someone backtracking someone or someone pretending they have no idea how the internet works.

To blame Hunt's sexism(Unless I've read wrong he was joking at the time)and the 'media'(Which twitter is now apart of)as the real factors in Hunts resignation is passing the buck really. While Traditional media can still be a bigger influence than social media's like Twitter unless I'm the mistaken again the 'traditional' media carried this story because of the fuel it was getting on social media's like Twitter. That argument doesn't hold any weight in this particular story.

Underselling the effect social media's like Twitter had in this story is the biggest mistake of this article.

Still with that being said looking at the hashtag on Twitter there clearly was a lot a very positive messages about Women in science and most of it(I scrolled down a few times)seemed positive and somewhat harmless but not a lot of that matters because it all started from criticizing an individual comments(Rightly or wrongly)there was a target of the message, so every comment(no matter how light hearted) using that harsh tag was added fuel to the fire and putting pressure on the individual who made the comments.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Agreed. At the very least she's being massively disingenuous in pretending that twitter can't can have any real world impact on people who are the subject of thousands of self-righteous tweets. Which is all the worse for her admitting she's read Jon Ronson's book, which has a number of very good examples of exactly the type of twitter-fuelled ruining of lives she's trying to claim can't happen.

 

[adexkola]

Sexism in science is a big issue, and it's there at all levels, from a bigoted postdoc to a professor choosing gender over talent. I thought it's bad in India but the stories from here are comparable to what I've heard about the west. The Guardian itself did a piece on it, I thought some of those were obviously jokes or harmless or just the blunt truth, but many are horrifying.
That said, it's insane that they fired him without a hearing. He also got support from many female colleagues so it looks like the university really overreacted.

I don't like the generalisations in this article (I'm a male but I have no confidence in my research, the most confident student I know is female) but the research they've quoted is damning.

The hilariously depressing thing is that the typical modern reaction (outcry online, someone gets fired) does nothing to help solve the underlying issue.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

The hilariously depressing thing is that the typical modern reaction (outcry online, someone gets fired) does nothing to help solve the underlying issue.

It's paradoxically having the opposite effect, where people like me who would always have spoken up in favour of political correctness end up being more inclined to have sympathy with the "political correctness gone mad" crew. So moderates are more inclined to give bigots the benefit of any doubt than they would have before.

 

[Sweet Square]

The hilariously depressing thing is that the typical modern reaction (outcry online, someone gets fired) does nothing to help solve the underlying issue.

Reminds of Bill Burr's bit on Conan.

 

[Mockney]

Agreed. At the very least she's being massively disingenuous in pretending that twitter can't can have any real world impact on people who are the subject of thousands of self-righteous tweets. Which is all the worse for her admitting she's read Jon Ronson's book, which has a number of very good examples of exactly the type of twitter-fuelled ruining of lives she's trying to claim can't happen.

It seemed to be namechecking Ronson if anything, to cover herself. "I've read it, because I'm clever and balanced and stuff, so I admit it can be bad. Just not the one I did. Definitely not that one. That's completely different."

 

[Mrs Smoker]

The hilariously depressing thing is that the typical modern reaction (outcry online, someone gets fired) does nothing to help solve the underlying issue.

Yeah, even so many Caftards were on those three morons from Leicester calling for them to be fired (which they have been, just recently). Seems like a default answer these days.

 

[berbatrick]

Yeah, even so many Caftards were on those three morons from Leicester calling for them to be fired (which they have been, just recently). Seems like a default answer these days.

Well, when the case involves racist abuse...I'd say it's good that it's a default answer.

 

[Mrs Smoker]

I'm sure someone could found some alternatives to termination of contracts. Bans, fines, education courses (like one United legend recently got), slap from dad,...doesn't have to be straight dismissal.

They probably did deserve it, not saying it's unfair, but it's not the only thing applicable.

 

[The Mitcher]

@Pogue Mahone I got the trigger warning book, its a good read so far.

 

[Sir Matt]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/the-university-of-california-s-insane-speech-police.html

Administrators want members of campus to avoid the use of racist and sexist statements, though their notions about what kinds of statements qualify are completely bonkers. “America is a melting pot,” “Why are you so quiet?” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” are all phrases that should raise red flags, according to the UC speech police.

...

Saying, “There is only one race, the human race,” is offensive because it denies “the significance of a person of color’s racial/ethnic experience and history.”

“America is the land of opportunity,” implies that “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.”

Asking an Asian, Latino, or Native American “why are you so quiet?” is tantamount to giving the order “assimilate to dominant culture.”

And stating the opinion, “Affirmative action is racist,” is a microaggression by default.

I hate identity politics so much.

 

[adexkola]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/the-university-of-california-s-insane-speech-police.html



I hate identity politics so much.

Amazing that this is being implemented on a university, the last place that should infected with this rubbish.