The perils of political correctness

When former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich stepped down last week, it got me thinking about the notion of political correctness.

Though not directly related to political correctness, Mozilla’s ousting of Eich is ultimately grounded in it since his donation to proponents of Proposition 8 was widely seen as bigoted. And it just goes to show you that sometimes we’re just too damn PC.

First of all, the phrase “politically correct” doesn’t really make sense linguistically. Politically “correct” means different things to different people. For the right, politically correct lines up with conservative values, and for the left, liberal values.
So the idea that there can be this all-encompassing notion of political correctness seems flawed.

I’m not saying that we should be able to go around calling black people the “N-word” and gay people the “F-word,” but I think that it’s important to realize that being PC doesn’t always benefit society.

I’m sure everyone remembers when PC-crazy whackos fought to release a new edition of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” back in 2011, in which all 219 instances of the N-word were changed to “slave.”

We’re trying so hard not to offend others that we’re actually isolating them from society. The only reason the Huck Finn thing happened in the first place was so white people could feel better about themselves.

And the only reason Brendan Eich was ousted was so the straight people at Mozilla could impress the gays by saying, “We’re on your side.”

This cisgendered gay male columnist thinks this is wrong.

I don’t care if Brendan Eich doesn’t want me to get married to another man. It still doesn’t change the fact he invented JavaScript and cofounded Mozilla.

And you know what? I’m pretty sure black people don’t perform the same pearl-clutching at a classic novel having the N-word like the people that tried to censor Huckleberry Finn.  

You see, political correctness is getting so very “correct” that it’s putting a damper on society.

I don’t doubt that the intentions behind political correctness are good. It’s about trying as hard as we can not to offend others. But when we start chastising people because their political beliefs don’t line up with what mainstream society determines as politically correct I think we’ve gone a little too far.

Mozilla’s catching a lot of flack about Eich’s resignation. But had he‘d stayed on as CEO, critics from the left would have continued to assail Mozilla. It was really a lose-lose situation for Mozilla.

I think this is telling of the unnecessary damage being too PC is doing to us. We try so hard to be politically correct that the line between morally correct and incorrect is blurring.

And, I swear, I don’t know how many more letters after LGBT I can handle.

zipperr@indiana.edu
@rileyezipper