Asian American Studies 2 : Week 7

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Week 7

Josh Omoletski

Section 3

This week’s topic of political correctness is probably going to be my favorite out of all of this course’s topics. I say that for multiple reasons. The first and foremost reason being that I am tired of today’s pop culture and its obsession with being “PC.” Political correctness in my opinion is a dead-end street that we’ve been walking down for a long time. We can keep trying to be politically correct all we want and keep walking down the street, but eventually we’ll have to turn around and go back because eventually we will reach the end. Society doesn’t function properly because like “The Coddling of the American Mind” stated, the people being accused of not being “PC” are having their freedom of speech trumped by the sheer amplitude of emotional response from the offended. That is actually my second reason why I like this week’s topic so much. The aforementioned reading says exactly what I have been thinking for years: political correctness is breeding a generation of close-minded individuals who not only can’t take a simple joke involving race or sexual orientation, but who also think that their “right” to a “safe space” is more important than someone else’s legal right to freedom of speech. I remember something a friend of mine had posted on Facebook: “Our parents’ generation was not politically correct enough. Our generation was too politically correct. Hopefully our kids’ generation will get it just right.” I didn’t think much of it at the time (being a high schooler, I couldn’t have been bothered to think about it), but now with political correctness almost dominating our society I think the people who get “offended” by so many little things just need to lighten up. Yes, of course there is a place for political correctness, like telling someone to stop being outright racist or sexist or a bigot. However, the over-saturation of the phrases “That triggers me” or “That offends me” over small things like a light-hearted joke is just too much. Not only does it mean our generation will not be able to cope with the way the real world works, but it is also a matter of trying to take away someone’s freedom of speech by censoring what they say.

Question: Prof. Valverde, what is your take on the current state of political correctness in our society? And who do you blame: the liberals who get “offended” or the conservatives who do the “offending?”

I actually have two videos to share, one serious and one satirical. The first one is a TED Talk about the millennial generation and how it has come to be. The second is a montage of the South Park character PC Principal, who was created as a satirical embodiment of all the political correctness that saturates our society.