Ok, I’ll give my contribution. I’ll do my best to avoid the wall of text, but it won’t be easy. I’ll write freely here, then I’ll write separate answers to some quotes, to make it easier to follow.
I want to make it clear again this: I DO NOT hate the concept of “politically correct”. I think that a global awareness to many social themes is really important in our society. I hate the dumb application of its principles.
And, most of all, I hate the paradoxical effect this dumb application might lead to.
It is not easy to elaborate what I’m trying to say, but I will try.
It is good to have some conventions.
For instance, take the “N-word”. Why is it conventionally banned? Easy, because black people find it offensive. But why they find it offensive? Easy. Because it was used by white people with bad intention.
I wrote this in italic, because I want to analyze the statement, it might be long.
My first comment is “conventions are determined by intentions”.
So, it is understandable that if I accept that convention, I will ignore the intention, and I will blame the use of the “N-word” in ANY context.
So, I feel compelled to avoid the “N-word” to be respectful towards black people, even if I don’t have the intention to be offensive. But, wait a minute. Is it respectful to underline the dichotomy between “black” and “white”?
Now that I think of it, my skin is not white. And “their” skin is not black at all.
I actually don’t like when people call me “white”, and I would not like to be called “black”, too. If we are trying to be inclusive, why this “us” and “them”, labelled with opposite hues of the chromatic scale, even if those hues aren’t representative of our beautiful respective skin tones?.
This is the real “blackfacing” to me. I hate calling african or african american people “black”. I hate the “B-word” more than the “N-word”. The N-word reminds us of the hate of the past, but the “B-word” is the symptom of the hypocrisis of the present.
And when I said I would not like to be called “black”, too, I wasn’t talking so hypotethically. I’m Italian. My skin is pale as a weisswurst, but I definitely look italian. So I am “black” to a lot of people.
This “us” and “them” contraposition often leads to the equation “white”=“WASP”, so sometimes “non-WASP” becomes equal to black.
This is the truth. I am italian. So If i travel in India or Africa, i am “white”. I’m just a WASP for them. If I travel to USA, I might be “black”.
This is why I mentioned “american” rules of politically correct, stating that I hate those rules.
My point is: we are all different, and that’s beautiful. Let’s just try to respect each other.
My impression of the american way to address the matter is: we are the WASP, and that is the “norm”. Then there are “the others”, and we must try to avoid offending them, because we are more privileged. We have to “accept” them. We have to “welcome” them in our Land of Freedom because they were born in unprivileged realities.
This is part of the “sense of guilt” of being privileged.
So, to sum up: privileged people, with their bad intentions and their hate built a contraposition between “them” and “us”. Then felt guilty about it. So “they” built conventional rules to avoid offending “us”, and we are expected to respect thos rules in order to avoid offending ourselves.
What’s the worst reaction I could have, being part of a minority? Accepting it, and making distincions. “Ok, I’m african american. So I can use the N-word, and nobody else”. “Ok, I’m gay, so I can say “fagot”, and nobody else”, “I am italian, so I can mock my people, and nobody else”. And so on.
Because since I am part of that minority, I’m not moking myself, but the stereotype.
But encouraging this I don’t have the impression we’re getting more and more inclusive.
I have the impression that every “minority” is closing on itself: we’re together, so we’re stronger". Like if every minority was a “city-state” behind walls. And the “respect” every city-state has towards each other is just to avoid fights.
That’s what I meant saying that respecting some conventions in public but being themselves in their echo chamber doesn’t make some people better.
I will take as another example the “cancel culture”.
Ok, I have made this bad thing in the past. I offended someone. So, from today on, let’s erase this".
This is the best way to ensure my descendants will make my same errors one day. You have to learn from the past, and not to cancel the past.
Or, speaking about being inclusive, take this:
“LGB” was conceived to be politically correct.
What a clumsiness. I immediately hated that acronym. I felt it divisive, and, most of all, discriminatory. Obviously, someboy felt immediately the need of adding a “T”.
LGBT. Ok, much better. Oh, wait a minute.
LGBTQ. LGBTQI. LGBTQIA.
Does this make any sense to you?
The only way of being INCLUSIVE is in our mind and in our hearts.
We have to accept all these compromises that makes us confident we are beahving respectfully, but in my opinion we are just doing this:
we are giving racist, sexist, homophobic people or general haters a simple decalogue they can respect in order to survive in our politically correct society, meanwhile we let them behave like pigs in their private homes and their echo chambers.
We need to teach and to educate, more than we need to regulate. But I’m a known dreamer.
I always thought he was just short.
