Which problems can political correctness solve?
PC deals with issues like racism, sexism, hate-speech and probably some more issues that I've forgotten about. PC is meant to protect us from this, but does it really do the job?
Btw, with "us" I mean the people, ALL people, living in (more or less) secular, democratic, multicultural and diverse societies, which I’ll refer to as “the western world”*, using my white privilege. Sue me! :-P
- “Western” in this context is not a geographical term, of course!
Wikipedia defines hate speech like this: "Hate speech is speech which attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender."
But then, we have all kinds of laws, on national and international levels, that make it illegal to intentionally (or even accidentally) attack, harm or hurt other people.
For instance, in most or all states within the western world there are laws against insulting people. So if someone calls you a slut, or a stupid woman, you can sue him, drag him to court, and if you happen to live in the USA you can probably get some compensation money out of him.
If someone calls you names because of your ethnicity, you can sue her, drag her to court etc..
If someone offends you because you're a muslim, you can sue him, drag him to court, etc..
You get the drift.
So what is it that pc can do for us and the law can't?
Well, it can ban basically every argument, every set of beliefs, every finding of scientific research from all public discussion, from campus, from every open space, even if they are perfectly within the laws, perfectly legal.
And they are legal because they don't do any real harm to anybody, unless offering an opinion you don't like counts as injury. Because all speech that actually does damage is illegal already.
And it can impede scientific advancement, because it bans the discussion of scientific research as soon as it touches issues of gender, ethnicity, or basically any subject anybody feels hurt by. And campus now is turning into a safe space, thanks to pc, when it should be a place of research.
Amongst all threats that there might be to our democratic society at this point in time, political correctness might be the worst, because it damages the most important aspect of democracy: the right to say, and to listen to, all possible points of view; and it thereby takes away the diverse information needed for any valid decision.