ess of the terms used to define it--what is "demeaning," and how is it to be ascertained when a given phrase is demeaning or not? The words considered demeaning can range from racial epithets to "sexist" language to words that may have lost any demeaning reference long ago but that are being thrown out today because of past sins. The response to these regulatory efforts can range from avid support to fears of the end of freedom as we know it:
Some dismiss political correctness (PC) as an irrelevance hyped up by the right; others see it as a leftist danger to the very fabric of American life; still others argue that it is plain passe ("An all American industry," 1993, 27).
Proponents of PC believe that it is a necessary way of avoiding hurt to a person who would be offended by certain types of speech, but more than this they believe it is an active way to redress historical grievances and injustices. History simply looks different to the descendants of slaves than it does to descendants of slave owners, and it also appears different to the descendants of conquered natives, exploited migrant workers, or Chinese railroad coolies, as we in Canada know quite well. One commentator notes this in terms of U.S. history:
To them the vital history lesson is not the myth embodied in the Statue of Liberty but the reality of immigration laws that sharply restricted the chances of Hispanic and Asians. They value less the dazzling engineering feat of the transcontinental railroad than the abuse of laborers. They see the culture that shaped America not as a desirable legacy to be embraced, but as at best an alien heritage and at worst a tainted pattern for elitism (Henry, 1993, 74).
The PC movement relies heavily on the rhetoric of guilt, and proponents insist that the new thinking promotes only innocuous inclusion rather than the traditional exclusion of women and minorities. University of Chicago literature professor Gerald Graff wro...