I for one am getting sick of the latest Republican talking point regarding political correctness. It’s just not that hard to keep up with the preferred language for describing various groups of people. From reading or watching the news, even Fox News, it seems clear to me that some additional accepted descriptors for African Americans are People of Color or sometimes Blacks. You also have Native Americans/Indigenous Peoples and Asians. Of course, every one of these descriptors is entirely too broad and I expect that folks in these groups would prefer to be known as Korean, Indian, Lakota, etc. I can remember a few times in my long life when I or someone else has used a descriptor other than what was currently preferred. While there was perhaps some mild embarrassment suffered over being corrected, there were no racist or prejudicial intentions behind the usage and no hard feelings. Just recently, I was mildly surprised to hear someone use the term “Orientals” to describe Asians. This person grew up in another country, and there was certainly no racist intent so I made no ill assumptions. On the other hand, many years ago, I heard a public speaker use the accepted descriptor “Asians” to describe a certain group, but the context of the usage and the insulting tone left many listeners shocked and convinced that the speaker was a racist.
If you really think about it, how often does a person need to use any of these broad descriptors? I believe the frequency one uses any of these descriptors in everyday conversation is an indication of that person’s tendency toward prejudice. Do I really have anything to say about African Americans as a group? What intelligent thing could I possibly have to say about “the Chinese”? I know many Chinese people and have even traveled to China, but every person I know or have met is unique in the same way that all of my fellow Caucasians are unique. When someone gives me an opinion about “Russians” or “Mexicans” or any other group, even if it is to say something complimentary about this group, I immediately assume that this person has a tendency to irrationally prejudge people. In my opinion, this kind of prejudice is a serious character and intellectual flaw; I would have great difficulty hiring someone with this flaw as I believe it would seriously impact their ability to make rational decisions.
The problem for those people afraid of political correctness is not so much the supposed challenge of keeping up with the accepted and respectful descriptors for various groups of people, but the fact that they somehow feel the need to use these descriptors in the first place. When Cliven Bundy stated for the cameras “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro”, it wasn’t his use of the out of fashion term “Negro” that proved he was a racist, but rather his obviously prejudicial attitudes leading him to believe he could make a blanket statement about African Americans as a group. All the “political correctness” in the world cannot hide the seething racism of someone like Cliven Bundy and many of Donald Trump’s supporters.