It might be amusing to track down the origins of the term PC on the left. It's certainly true that at least around 20 years ago there was a lot of right wing play to use the term and the concept to put down leftists. ( -- Carrol, Woj is cranky, like you, but not right wing; he has nonstandard beliefs for a leftist, but then so do I, and it's been a while since you called me a cop.) My impression is that this trope has gotten tired; it was biggest around the time of Bloom's Closing the American Mind, it seems to me.
Chomsky and others have repeatedly emphasized that right wing policing of the boundaries of political discourse, patriotic correctness, whatever, is far more pervasive and effective. You cannot say, "US invasion of _____," much less "US aggression," etc. You must profess faith in God, and so forth.
At the same time there really is something tedious and boring that can be called left wing political correctness that has nothing to do with allowing hitherto disadvantaged groups an opportunity to speak and be heard. It tends to be confined to certain (humanities, ethnic, women's studies, and cult studies departments, and contexts (university administrators are highly susceptible.
It's not a power outside these limited fairly marginal contexts, unless you are a professor or grad student who crossed a line and brought the deans down on your head, but it can be annoying at conferences and on mailing lists where you hear people get razzed for got including the proper laundry lists or deferring to the Epistemic and Moral Authority of the More Oppressed. People who want a taste and can stomach it should check out some the debates on black (or should I say Black? African-American? People of Color?) women's feminism on Bitch/Lab, where you can hear static that is still playing like it was 1987.
God forbid an XY person of the Caucasian persuasion should refer to XX type people as "girls," which I do (guilty! guilty! guilty!) (of course I also refer to XY types as "boys") rather than Women. But mostly this is annoying rather than oppressive, unless you have the bad luck, as I say, to get caught be the Deans.
--- Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Doug Henwood wrote:
> >
> > On Aug 15, 2007, at 9:45 AM, Robert Wrubel wrote:
> >
> > > political correctness is a
> > > sarcastic term coined in the late 20th century
> by
> > > righties to slur liberals as mindless
> conformists.
> >
> > Though actually I think it originated in CP
> circles as an ironic usage.
>
> Probably the origins are lost, and this is certainly
> one possibility,
> but I believe it was used within the womens'
> movement of the '80s partly
> in irony, partly as comradely joking, and partly as
> warning against
> various kinds of excess -- but it was not until Bush
> Senior used it in a
> Commencement Address at the University of Michigan
> that it was seized on
> by right-wing bigots such as Wojtek for purposes of
> stroking their sense
> of self-importance.
>
> Carrol
>
> ___________________________________
>
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