A few days ago I downloaded an mp3 file from a site called Philosophy talks, which is a radio show dedicated to philosophical subjects. The show is hosted over in Chicago and has links to Stanford University. The file I downloaded was called Existentialism and after listening to the show, I was hooked. I then proceeded to buy all 200 episodes of the shows past programs. I rate the show highly and it covers philosophical topics in depth. You can listen to reports, phone-ins and a guest lecturer on the show on various subjects such as money, terrorism, relativism, luck and so on.
Well the episode I listened to today was on political correctness. The show’s hosts Ken Talyor and John Perry broke down the subject and always starts off pondering what political correctness is. After firing a few questions at each other, they then ask a reporter to go about looking for students to find out what political correctness means to them. After the report is done, a guest lecturer or specialist on the subject advises the hosts about the topic. Next we have a phone in session where the public will phone in and ask questions or give their opinions.
The thing I found out about the subject political correctness is that it’s not so easy to define to begin with and a lot of the public seem to hate being told what to do or what to say. I will not spoil the show for you, but there are a few points that I agree with, which Ken Taylor pointed out. I feel political correctness has been used as an excuse to cover up intolerable behaviour. For instance, if something told a member of the public to get lost because they were of different colour and used a racist word, then we can argue that this is racism apart from being politically incorrect.
If someone came up to a young lady out of the blue and kept asking her to show them her assets (you figure it out), then it’s not only politically incorrect, its sexual discrimination. We need to note that discrimination and sexual discrimination has been around far longer than the notion of political correctness and these are far bigger issues, which can be a whole lot more complex, there is little excuse for a racist or bigot to state that they are not allowed to say certain things because that it is politically incorrect.
Still the problem with politically correctness is that people may abide by the rules, but still feel the same way they did about others before, the problem of discrimination is just hidden and on top of that we have arguments of censor of free expression.
My final conclusion is that in the end, no one is fully stopping someone from saying something, but in the end if someone goes out of their way to offend without cause of respect, then they must reap what they sow, hence they are to be shown what they said, who they said it too and why. The worse the derogatory comment, the harder it is for the discriminator to hide, which all bigots love to do is hide behind their true intent.
I recommend you to listen to some of philosophy talks shows. You will not be disappointed. I hope to cover more of the past episodes of the show.
No comments:
Post a Comment