A new NPR-Marist poll finds that 52% of Americans don’t think the country should become more politically correct. Only 36% think that more political correctness is needed. The rest are either unsure or don’t care.
That response is not surprising, since politically correct has always been a negative term. But two things about the NPR poll are bizarre. The first is that NPR, which has long promoted the idea that carrying its tote bag was the right-thinking, liberal thing to do, had replicated a 2010 Fox News poll, Fox News being the network that attacks anyone with a public radio tote bag as politically correct. The second is that the question NPR asked is long, confusing, and designed to produce a negative response:
In general, are you in favor of the United States becoming more politically correct and like when people are being more sensitive in their comments about others or are you against the country becoming more politically correct and upset that there are too many things people can't say anymore?
Good pollsters write clear questions that don’t favor one response over another. But by ending the question with “there are too many things people can’t say anymore,” NPR is practically begging responders to answer, “No, I believe in free speech. This PC stuff has got to stop.”
In contrast, the 2016 pilot American National Elections Survey—the gold standard for political studies research—fielded two versions of a question about diversity. One used the phrase “political correctness” neutrally, the other didn’t mention it at all. Neither mentioned speech bans. Half of the respondents got question one; the rest, question two:
1. There’s been a lot of talk lately about “political correctness.” Some people think that the way people talk needs to change with the times to be more sensitive to people from different backgrounds. Others think that this has already gone too far and many people are just too easily offended. Which is closer to your opinion?
__ The way people talk needs to change a lot [1]
__ The way people talk needs to change a little [2]
__ People are a little too easily offended [3]
__ People are much too easily offended [4]
2. Some people think that the way people talk needs to change with the times to be more sensitive to people from different backgrounds. Others think that this has already gone too far and many people are just too easily offended. Which is closer to your opinion?
__ The way people talk needs to change a lot [1]
__ The way people talk needs to change a little [2]
__ People are a little too easily offended [3]
__ People are much too easily offended [4]
The ANES questions don’t frame political correctness as negative, and instead of fulminating about speech bans, the survey asks whether things are good the way they are or change is needed. Even so, the ANES questions produced the same result as the NPR-Marist poll: 52% opposed political correctness; 38% favored it. Mentioning political correctness in question one had no impact on the results.
Overall, political correctness is perceived to be a bad thing. Analyzing the responses to the ANES poll, the policy specialists at Demos found that those who believe America is too politically correct tend not to have experienced discrimination personally and don’t think there’s much discrimination any more. In contrast, members of groups that do experience discrimination feel that they have been silenced and disrespected. They want discrimination to stop and the language associated with it to go away.
But what about the term itself? Politically correct, in the modern sense of ‘knee-jerk, over-the-top, doctrinaire obedience to an extreme political agenda,’ is an insult flung by conservatives at anyone who disagrees with them, whether radical, liberal, middle-of-the-road, or simply not-conservative-enough. A Trump supporter might call you politically correct if you support single-payer health insurance or a path to citizenship; if you worry about the unusually-warm winter or ask them what their pronouns are; or if you deny the earth is flat. The earth was made in seven days, they’d tell you. There was no time to make it round.
But historically, politically correct was a charge hurled by lefties in the 1930s at the ultra-lefties they considered too orthodox, the Stalinists who blindly followed the “party line.” Then, as now, political correctness was something to be shunned or made fun of.
Considering that no one seriously claims to be politically correct themselves, and that courageous journalism is under attack, instead of replicating a flawed Fox News poll, NPR should do a piece exploring the loaded nature of the term politically correct, beginning with how an insult once used by the liberal left for the doctrinaire left has been co-opted by the doctrinaire right to critique or distort the words of anyone, left, right, or center, who disagrees with them.
Today’s ulta-conservatives abbreviate political correctness as PC because, since the death of William F. Buckley, they’ve shunned long, foreign words and championed English as their official language. And they condemn any attempt at open-mindedness—including the open-mindedness that used to be found on NPR—as “political correctness run amok,” even though amok is a short, immigrant word, borrowed from the Malay language and naturalized without hesitation because of the valuable contribution it makes in the fight against liberal thought.
As the pollsters might put it, NPR now “strongly agrees” with its critics that liberalism, inclusivity, and fairness are bad ideas. So they ask a survey question calculated to prove that no one wants to be politically correct, and no one wants a list of “things people can’t say anymore.” This despite the fact that, when it comes to shutting down free speech, the right has been aggressively censoring all sorts of expressions it disagrees with, and shutting up all sorts of people it thinks don’t deserve a voice. Like when a conservative Congress threatens to pull NPR’s funding, all while howling that the politically-correct left won’t let anybody speak.
Now, about that tote bag . . . .
