IQ2 2017 - Political Correctness Has Failed Itself

The first debate in the IQ2 series was entertaining and thought provoking. Upon entering, we were asked to vote on whether we were For the statement that political correctness (PC) has failed, Against or Undecided. I chose Undecided. While I was leaning towards being Against the statement, (I believe PC hasn't failed and we still need it, now more than ever), I wanted to hear both sides of the argument and make a better choice at the end.

31% were Undecided at the start, 22% were Against and the remaining 47% were For. This means that at the beginning of the debate, most people felt that political correctness was failing, but many weren't sure and perhaps, like myself, hoped it wasn't and wanted to hear an informed discussion that confirmed its necessity or obsoleteness.

There were two speakers on each team who took turns presenting their arguments. At the end, we were asked to vote again and while the votes were tallied, the floor was opened to questions or statements from the audience. I'll disclose the result at the end.

Here are the speakers:

Image via: The Ethics Centre website

Simon Longstaff hosted the debate and immediately summarised the crux of the argument. Is there a conservative backlash against political correctness or is it a failed movement in itself?

Chris Kenny was the first speaker. He suggested that political correctness was a way in which our thoughts are controlled and shaped. He described this as some sort of dystopian or Orwellian nightmare whereby we are brainwashed into thinking a certain way to police our thoughts and words. You know, like how advertising, education, popular culture, television, movies etc. are dominated by a mostly white, male, hetero/cisgender ideal and shape our identities. He remarked that the Left of the political discourse aims to promote a Utopian ideal. So far, Chris was convincing me to vote for the other team. Perhaps PC works to undo the stereotypes and negative representations that all those other bias mediums communicate in order to condition us, and perhaps PC is a way in which we can achieve a balance. Chris suggested that PC as a tool to achieve this balance had gone too far and in its extremity has instead caused the mainstream to resist. PC has become a buzz word whereby its original intent and meaning has been distorted and has thus failed, becoming a "springboard to all it despises". I can see how anything in its extreme can do that. How over policing language can water down the intention, making it seem absurd and how "political posturing" and "virtue signalling" can become antithetical to common sense. But did that mean that we could or should do away with it all together? Chris' main argument was that political correctness had become alarmist and so prevalent that it was now irrelevant and counter productive. He gave examples of how people and governments can opt for preventative responses to serious events and ideas instead of making a commitment to practical action. Some of the examples he gave were the way in which the Lindt Cafe siege was handled. He suggested that in an effort to protect the feelings of Muslim Australians, police and the public responded in a hypersensitive manner (with hashtags such as #illridewithyou), effectively abandoning the actual victims of the crime. He also mentioned the way in which environmental science is often exaggerated, causing excessive preventative expenditure that doesn't address scientific reality, like responding to droughts by increasing expenditure into ventures like desalination, that were then prevented from going ahead due to flooding. 

Mikey Robbins spoke next for the Negative side, arguing that political correctness was not only succeeding, but was necessary and desirable. He asked if PC was such a failure, then why is it still so prominent in our media? Why do we discuss it so often? Surely if it was failing it would have disappeared, like Trotskyism? If there is such a prevalent need to decry political correctness, doesn't that prove that it's working? It provokes debate and shifts apathy. Mikey talked about how the phrase political correctness originally came about. He said it was a tongue-in-cheek description given to the Left, by and to themselves, to make fun of the way in which language was modified in a changing world to reflect contemporary values and agreed upon phrases and labels that respect marginalised groups in particular. Mikey said he was an advocate and regular participant in exercising free speech, even if it caused offense sometimes, but that didn't mean that PC was unnecessary or failing. He was suggesting that the context and intention of our words can make all the difference. For example, being critical of someone's actions is different to criticising their condition. Saying someone is behaving unjustly is not the same as suggesting the colour of their skin is inferior. PC is simply the term we use to describe something that has always existed; a discourse around what is socially acceptable and known and how we progress these ideas with sensitivity, respect and inclusivity. 


Jacinta Price was the next speaker for the Affirmative and claimed that political correctness distracts us from the real issues, preventing real solutions, particularly for Aboriginal people. She talked about the way her people spoke to one another and while in the mainstream, it can be considered politically incorrect, like referring to herself as a blackfulla, it was a cultural way of communicating that wasn't hurting anyone. Again, like Mikey, she was alluding to the idea that context and intention are very important when we consider how we use language and when it is appropriate to call it out as not being PC. She gave the example of how her mother, a respected Aboriginal Elder who participated extensively in elevating the status and well-being of her people, was denied the right to speak at a prominent Queensland university. Apparently she had been on the SBS program Insight and had said to a young person that she didn't think she looked like a blackfulla, inadvertently suggesting she was too white. People were offended and accused her of being politically incorrect and as a result she was denied the platform to speak publicly, effectively silencing her. Jacinta argued that her mother didn't have any ill intent, it was just the way she spoke. She didn't mean to cause offense and wasn't being "racist", it was benign language and its criticism deflected from the real issues that her mother wanted to address. It got me thinking about context again. Surely, most people in that room understood that Jacinta's mother wasn't being abusive and had ownership over that language as a cultural way of communicating. However, flagging those words as politically incorrect, don't necessarily condemn her or her ideas, they simply point out that better words can be chosen in another context. It prevents giving license to people who would use those words to denigrate or abuse people by suggesting the darkness of your skin determines how Aboriginal you are. I think they should have let her speak at the university, but I'm glad the discussion about her words happened. Of course she isn't racist, but it's necessary to talk about how her words can impact on others and what the consequences may be. Jacinta, like Mikey, talked about the place that humour and offense has in delivering often heavy and serious messages and how if we police our language too closely, we risk silencing vital voices. She suggested that in denying fundamental truths because we are afraid to speak about them and saying the wrong thing, we further enforce incorrect stereotypes. So do we say whatever we want to get our facts straight, or do we say what we want in a way that allows us to examine the facts sensitively? Jacinta mentioned the Bill Leak fiasco and how his cartoon about Aboriginal fathers was perhaps taken out of context and blown out of proportion. She said many Aboriginal fathers who did not identify with the derogatory portrayal, still understood its meaning and that the fact is those fathers do actually exist. She noted that nobody suggested that the cartoon was portraying all Aboriginal men as policemen, as the policeman in the picture was indeed Aboriginal. Both Chris and Jacinta suggested that Bill Leak was being unfairly targeted for his controversial cartoons and it was an example of PC being used in its extreme. She didn't talk about the unequal platform that white journalists and cartoonists have in society generally, compared to Aboriginal fathers who are still experiencing the effects of colonisation, poverty, unemployment and attempted genocide. Jacinta also talked about how Aboriginal women in remote areas are being threatened by their own people, with violence, if they dare to break traditional lore. She said nobody wants to talk about it out of fear of being politically incorrect. It seems that in order to be PC, people refuse to acknowledge that black on black violence has taken more lives that white on black violence and this is hypocritical in the face of the #blacklivesmatter campaign. Again, I thought about the context of privilege and discrimination in which violence happens generally. Shouldn't we be asking why and in what circumstances black people are dying compared to white people? Jacinta stated that she believes that racism and political correctness were two sides of the same coin. That's when she lost me.


Tasneem Chopra was the final speaker and argued for the Negative. Her concerns centred around the notion that when the conversation is dominated by a certain group of people and when those whose lives the issues impact are excluded from the debate, PC is a way in which we address imbalances of entitlement, privilege and representation. Political correctness provides boundaries. It defines the checks and balances that keeps the discourse honest and ensures a level playing field. When there is a lack of representation and when marginalised groups are spoken about instead of being allowed to speak, bigotry and misinformation becomes casualised and eventually becomes acceptable and mainstream; sometimes those who hold those bigoted beliefs can even become POTUS or PM (who in the case of Tony Abbott, a white, male, conservative, suddenly and inexplicably to many, declared himself Minister for Women and Minister for Indigenous Affairs). Tasneem pointed out that PC helps us to identify the issues that divide us and eliminates the Us vs Them mentality that often causes bigotry to escalate, as it is currently, despite the influence and prevalence of political correctness. PC is a siren of the non acceptance of hatred and it helps us to ensure respectful discourse. 

The debate was then handed over to the audience. A few people brought up some excellent points. One man argued that PC is a form of self-censorship that occurs when we have freedom of information. It is a way in which we can police our own thoughts as opposed to censorship being imposed on us by the state. Another person talked about stereotyping and how accurate stereotypes are a way in which we make sense of the world around us. It is when stereotypes become inaccurate assumptions that can cause harm, that PC can help us to keep these inaccuracies in check. Another woman reminded us of when words like kaffir, nigger, wog, faggot and other derogatory terms were an acceptable part of the lexicon and how those insults have been eliminated due to political correctness. It made me wonder if political correctness has gone too far, or if in fact it has forced the scum to the surface. When people get defensive about being PC, are they just showing their true colours, indulging in their cognitive dissonance and refusing to admit that they are out of line and learning from it? Is it PC that is stifling debate or privileged people using it to deflect from the real issues? Which is the argument that is twisted around to minimise political correctness. As Mikey said, surely political correctness has done more good than harm. That quote kept coming to my mind. "When you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression". I'd made my decision. I voted Against the statement and went with my initial thoughts. Political correctness hasn't failed. It's working, it's agitating and it's changing the way we see the world, for the better.

The final vote was counted and the results spoke for themselves. It was one of the biggest swings seen in IQ debate history.

Undecided - 13%
For - 18%
Against - 69%

This is what Racism looks like

Image credit: quickmeme.com

I just had an altercation with the secretary at our solicitor's office.

I had to go in and sign a document for the sale and purchase of our property. My signature had to be witnessed so I had to go in person, which was mildly inconvenient, but no big deal. It was the second such requirement and I'd happily go again.

She knew it was inconvenient and apologised profusely for having to get me to come in with the babies, but the excuse she gave me was what made me see red. She explained that all the bureaucracy and paperwork was a problem because of "all the Asians" buying property.

Pardon?

PARDON?

I rolled my eyes and gasped at my husband a few times to show her that that kind of language was not only absolute rubbish, it was unacceptable. She apologised and told me she wasn't racist, but that's what all the real estate agents were saying.

I chose not to let it go. I chose not to stay silent. I asked her which Asians she was referring to specifically - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian... I asked her what she meant exactly. She flustered and blundered about how she wasn't racist and was in fact Indian and had an Asian family member. What? WHAT? Sound familiar? Sonia Kruger anyone? 

I told her that she sounded racist. That as someone with an ethnically diverse background, she should know how hurtful and inaccurate that sort of prejudice is. I asked her if she would have felt comfortable saying such a thing to me if I were Asian, or would she have been ok to say it to another Asian person or her Asian family member. She didn't respond. There's your answer. It's racist, I said. I told her I'm not the type to hold my tongue and when I deem it safe, I'm being that example to my daughters. If you see it, hear it and you aren't at risk, say something. 

This is the sort of racist rhetoric that has been acceptable in Australia since its colonial inception. Aboriginal people, Europeans, Asians and now Arabic people and everyone else who isn't white with an Anglo background has had their turn of being the outsiders. The trouble is, people with diverse ethnicity turn on each other too, to appease the dominant paradigm and maintain the status quo. To assimilate and massage their own egotistical fears. How soon people forget what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

We have to be better than this. We can't just sit there and take it when someone makes a stupid, uncalled for, ignorant and hateful comment that lumps people from a particular background together and demonises them. I thought to myself, since when did Australia become like this? But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that unfortunately there hasn't been a time when Australia wasn't like this. There was always some group of people getting in the way of Australia having a white Anglo identity and that is because Australia has never and will never have just a white Anglo identity.

Australia is a diverse country, but if you want to get technical, the original and current custodians are Aboriginal. Our national heritage is Indigenous. The sooner people accept and understand this, the better. Australia was colonised; brutally and without permission. Without negotiation. Without consideration for the people, their culture and systems, the land or the animals. The repercussions of this theft is still being felt today and continues to blight our national identity with shame, violence and injustice. Australia was then, as it is now, a place that is occupied by people from all over the globe. We come to work, to live in safety, to raise families and nurture friendships, to worship as we please; or not at all, to live full and productive lives and to prosper. 

The notion that one way to be Australian is the only way, particularly when that way was falsely and forcefully established is ludicrous. In saying that, there is a way to be truly Australian. And that is to be free. And freedom comes with responsibility.

Saying that we all have freedom of speech, or that everyone has the right to be a bigot is utter nonsense. That isn't freedom. Freedom isn't about your personal freedom, regardless of the impact it has on others' lives and minds. Freedom is about living in peace and enhancing that peace and all it encompasses for everyone, not just yourself. Freedom is about understanding the difference between your own indulgence, privilege and comfort and the space that everyone has a right to in order to live a life free from discrimination, persecution, judgement and prejudice.

Asians are not buying property and making the market difficult for everyone else. People who buy property for investment purposes, regardless of their race or ethnicity, aren't breaking the law. Maybe we need to look at who the law favours and advantages. Maybe we need to look at the politicians and the corporations who disadvantage home buyers in favour of the wealthy.

Aboriginal people don't break the law, aren't unemployed or addicts as though it's a cultural trait. What a nonsensical assumption. There are people from all walks of life suffering in this way. When people become criminals, use substance abuse to appease their pain and find it hard to maintain housing and employment, regardless of their race and ethnicity, they do so for a number of reasons and the colour of their skin, the language they speak or how they choose to worship, does not determine this. Maybe we need to look at the social systems that force individuals into cycles of despair. What does our education system look like and who has access to it? What are we doing to unite people with their families and their communities? How are we evenly distributing the wealth of the country? What equal opportunities do we give to the disadvantaged? And yes, we need to ask why Aboriginal people are more likely to be incarcerated, addicted and displaced. Just look at the history. What on earth would you expect? But look at the success too. Look at the Indigenous groups and communities who thrive. Who succeed and survive every single day in the face of such adversity. The Aboriginal artists, activists, community leaders, sports people, politicians, business owners, academics and elders.

Migrants and refugees aren't coming here to corrupt our society, cheat our welfare systems, terrorise our security and take over our country. They never did. They mostly come to work. To find opportunity and security for themselves and their children and families. They come to contribute and to enjoy the lifestyle many of us take for granted. And lately, many come to stay alive and as a direct result of the policies of terror that our government and their allies actually inflict on them. 

We can't just sit back and let bogans with a mouthpiece hijack our national conversation. If people like Pauline Hanson and Andrew Bolt continue to have free reign with their hatred, these misconceptions are not going to change any time soon. It gives people permission to be stupid. It is divisive and creates conflict. It does not solve the problem, it only feeds it. We must draw the line somewhere. Some things just need to be universally understood as unacceptable. Zero tolerance. No excuses. And this has to be reflected in policy, the law and through the mass media. You don't have the right to be free, if that freedom is at the expense of the freedom of someone else. It's that simple.

What if it happened to you

The other day my two year old was on the balcony playing with some toys. She threw her doll Sula, the elephant from the show Bing Bunny, over the railing and it landed in the neighbour down stairs’ courtyard. The neighbour was outside and said she’d bring it up later, which she did. For the time that my daughter was without her toy she lamented. She kept talking about Sula and how she fell outside and where was her dolly and why didn’t she have it. She pouted and fussed and regretted. She didn’t cry because we, my parents and I, kept reassuring her that we would get her dolly back and not to worry about it, but to learn not to throw your toys over the railing. When she finally had her toy back in her hands, she cradled it and took care of it. She wrapped it in her muslin wrap and rocked it. She nurtured it and played with it for the rest of the afternoon. Still the next day, whenever we went outside or played with Sula, my daughter remembered that ill feeling of losing something valuable and relived it. She kept telling me and anyone else who would listen, like her dad when he came home from work, in her two year old tongue, that she dropped Sula outside; she was gone and the lady brought her back. She then held Sula close and kissed her plastic head.

The last couple of mornings I was confronted by a horrific and gut wrenching image on the news and social media, one that has captivated the world. The image is of the three year old refugee child who drowned at sea and washed up on a Turkish beach, not far from a tourist resort. He was dressed in ordinary children’s clothing, sandals, shorts, a tshirt. Face down in the sand, almost in a foetal position, exactly the same position that many children, including my daughter sleep. Except he wasn’t asleep, he was dead. The next image is of a Turkish official cradling his body away. I'm not reproducing the image, but if you live under a rock and haven't seen it, look it up.

The first few times I saw the photo I scrolled past as fast as I could to erase the image from my brain, but it kept showing up and I could no longer ignore it. The image. I could no longer ignore the image, not the issue. I know the issue. I think about the issue every day; especially since our country is currently one of the cruelest in the world when it comes to our treatment of refugees. I read about fleeing people and stopping boats and the inane rhetoric never stops; so much so that it has just become a permanent landscape in my brain that I compare everything to. My kids kept me up all night….at least we have a home. My daughter is annoying me and demanding my constant attention….at least she’s alive and well. We are cramped in this apartment and I wish we had a house…..we have a roof over our head, everything in the world we could need or desire, we are warm, we live in a nice suburb, we are safe, there aren’t bombs, we have electricity and running water etc etc.

But this image, this story really got my attention and snapped me out of my complacency. It made me cry. Not much does anymore. I finally couldn’t resist the compulsion to read the story, because the next image I saw was the face of the father of that child, who had to identify his body and that of his wife and his other child. That man lost his entire family. He is only one. There are hundreds, thousands of people losing their families, their loved ones, their babies every single day.

If my daughter at the age of two knows inherently what loss feels like, if that minor event of temporarily losing a toy can affect her so much that she keeps reliving it and feeling the panic and the pain; if we all can only imagine what that feels like, to lose a loved one, a child so unnecessarily; if we can be moved by that image and that story and feel empathy and sadness and anger and helplessness; then WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

When is it enough? How many more children and people have to die? That is one very stark image, but one of many and nothing is changing. No amount of praying (please!), collecting money or clothes or toys, marching with witty placards, writing blogs….none of it is helping. None of it is stopping a small bunch of greedy arseholes upholding systems that displace and destroy the masses. We could try to change things at the polls, by voting with our conscience. Anyone that votes for leaders like our bunch of sorry dipshits, that continue to maintain these policies of exclusion and demonisation and persecution of people who are fleeing danger, created and preserved by these leaders and politicians to begin with, anyone that votes for these arseholes is complicit. What are our choices though? In Australia, whether you vote for the blue team or the red team, it doesn’t matter, they are one and the same. We can vote for the green team, but really….not everyone is going to do that and I guarantee that team isn’t rich or strong enough to dig us out of this hole.

This is a great quote from Russell Brand’s book Revolution. He thinks we shouldn’t vote at all. For a long time I disagreed with him. We can’t throw that right away. If we do we have no right to complain. We have to keep participating in the system if we want to change it. Or do we? He makes a very valid point. We can’t change the system if we keep feeding it. We need to destroy it and establish a new one.

“A Revolution is where a political system is overthrown from outside the formal political structures that already exist. The 1997 UK election that swept Tony Blair’s New Labour into power, jolly though it may’ve been, wasn’t a Revolution; it was at best a refurbishment. It was comparable to the election of Obama or Clinton: a bloke with a nice smile and an angle is swept into power after a more obviously despicable regime and then behaves more or less exactly like the predecessors. We shouldn’t be disappointed. No version of ’bloke with nice smile’, or different colour skin, or accent or vagina, will work. True change has to subvert the system that produces these people.”

It applies in Australia too. Abbott’s government are monsters, no doubt about it. What is Labor going to do differently? How different were they when they had the chance? They came up with Nauru! What are the Greens going to do if by some miracle everyone voted for them en masse?

Nothing, that’s what. The people who get into politics are a certain kind of animal. They are people who are born into privilege. Politics and private school education run in the family. They come from old money and old notions of class and ideology. They were political in school and at university and after that went straight into political jobs. They’ve never worked in a factory or been unemployed and had to struggle on welfare payments. They are on scholarships and trust funds and easy street pretending they know what ‘the people’ need and want.

So how do we expect them to represent us. They don't. They represent themselves and their mates in big business. 

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know that photo broke my heart, but didn't surprise me and I know one thing for sure. If it was my family being bombed and at risk on land, I may make the same choices refugees make when they get on boats and risk their lives in the ocean if there was a slim chance at a better life.

Maybe we should all think a bit harder next time we have to vote. These people, the politicians, they work for us. We are their employers whether they like it or not. We have to unite and demand they do a better job. There are more of us than them. We are so powerful together. Maybe we need to start understanding our strength and acting on it.

For now all I can do is hug my kids tighter and be grateful every day that it's not me and my loved ones out there, as selfish and heartless as it feels. Because it doesn't take much for the tables to turn. Who's to say the thin veil that is our stable civilised country isn't thrown to the dogs by a pack of selfish bastards one day. They don't care. They'd sell us down the river in a heartbeat if it meant a greater profit. 

All these photos have achieved is reflection and navel gazing and a whole bunch of words on the internet in the comments section. But maybe if each and every one of us chose to demand more from our leaders, maybe some day the tide will turn. I hope it happens in my lifetime or at least my children's.  

Here's something we can all do though. Get on this website and read, learn, donate, get involved. These people are the beginning of something.

http://www.asrc.org.au/