Privileged Progressives Champion ‘Politically Correct’ Culture

Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness, and race isn’t either, writes Yascha Mounk in The Atlantic. But wealth and privilege are.

Mounk also writes:

And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are. With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country.

Delving into the meaning of political correctness, Mounk writes:

In the extended interviews and focus groups, participants made clear that they were concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could lead to serious social sanctions for them.

And this:

It turns out that while progressive activists tend to think that only hate speech is a problem, and devoted conservatives tend to think that only political correctness is a problem, a clear majority of all Americans holds a more nuanced point of view: They abhor racism. But they don’t think that the way we now practice political correctness represents a promising way to overcome racial injustice.

And while on the topic of political correctness:


Related: Thou shall not joke about the sacred Facebook holiday. Katie Herzog writes:

Under my status, an old friend’s ex-partner, someone I’d met once, commented that my “privilege was showing.” A surprising (to me) number of my actual friends agreed that my privilege was, indeed, hanging out. … What happened to us? Queer people used to be funny.

11 Comments for “Privileged Progressives Champion ‘Politically Correct’ Culture”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    “So what does this group look like? Compared with the rest of the (nationally representative) polling sample, progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated — and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree.”

    Not a bad description of the Founding Fathers — rich, highly educated and white. And, as political philosophies went in the age of monarchy, wild-eyed, dangerous progressives.

    • posted by Matthew on

      It is an insult to compare the Founding Fathers to a bunch of gay-bashing Israel-hating Muslim- and transcult-worshiping thugs who are against everything the Founding Fathers stood for. For one thing, the Founding Fathers had better clothes and actually managed to know how to properly groom long hair.

  2. posted by MR Bill on

    Meanwhile, right wing “intellectuals” impose their own form of Political Correctness: ” On Friday, a day before the Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh, former Evergreen State professor and Intellectual Dark Webber Bret Weinstein tweeted that the idea of Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice and the idea of Kavanaugh withdrawing his nomination were “both… completely unacceptable.”

    “If confirmed Kavanaugh should step down,” Peterson chimed in on Twitter.

    If confirmed Kavanaugh should step down. https://t.co/UwsH52ts3b
    — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) October 5, 2018

    Peterson’s Twitter feed soon filled up with more than 10,000 responses, many of them from disillusioned fans who felt Peterson had betrayed them”
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/intellectual-dark-web-frays-after-jordan-peterson-tweets-critically-about-brett-kavanaugh?ref=home

  3. posted by Kosh III on

    Get rid of PC. Trump should be free to call Obama an uppity nigger with no danger of repercussions.
    Let’s go back to the good ol days: kike, jungle bunny, wop, poor white trash and so on. Free speech! First amendment!

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      Unless you’re strictly talking about “no danger of [government] repercussions”, then you’re not talking about getting rid of PC, you’re talking about getting rid of Freedom of Speech and Association.

      Or to put it another way… people boycotting Papa Johns because the CEO said something racist might be PC, but it’s also entirely consistent with our notions of Freedom of Speech. And the only way to “get rid of PC” in this context would be stopping people from exercising their Freedom of Speech and Association and prohibiting them from boycotting a company.

      So again, unless you’re talking about “no danger of [government] repercussions”, you aren’t talking about getting rid of PC, you’re talking about getting rid of Freedom of Speech and Association.

    • posted by Matthew on

      You’re the one projecting your own racism onto Trump while black support for the GOP keeps going up.

  4. posted by Jorge on

    Not a bad description of the Founding Fathers — rich, highly educated and white. And, as political philosophies went in the age of monarchy, wild-eyed, dangerous progressives.

    That is very succinct and not all that dissimilar to my own skepticism of the study’s conclusions, albeit in the opposite political direction. Why is it that the study finds that the “wings” that are very far from mainstream consist of 8% of the country on the left and 2 groups comprising 25% of the country on the right? How is 25% very far from mainstream? That to me is a central tendency all on its own, and gives credence to the idea–far from removing it–that this country is in fact split between left and right. Perhaps far-left, center-left, and right is more accurate.

  5. posted by Matthew on

    When did it become morally acceptable to demean homosexuality by using a word that means “abnormal and disordered” to refer to it? NEVER!

  6. posted by MR Bill on

    meanwhile….in Conservative Political Correctness:
    Conservative “mob” casts out alleged Philosopher J. Peterson for not supporting Kavanaugh:
    “On Friday, a day before the Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh, former Evergreen State professor and Intellectual Dark Webber Bret Weinstein tweeted that the idea of Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice and the idea of Kavanaugh withdrawing his nomination were “both… completely unacceptable.”

    “If confirmed Kavanaugh should step down,” Peterson chimed in on Twitter.

    If confirmed Kavanaugh should step down. https://t.co/UwsH52ts3b
    — Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) October 5, 2018

    Peterson’s Twitter feed soon filled up with more than 10,000 responses, many of them from disillusioned fans who felt Peterson had betrayed them. ”

    https ://www.thedailybeast.com/intellectual-dark-web-frays-after-jordan-peterson-tweets-critically-about-brett-kavanaugh (the link is deliberately defective: delete the space between https and : to activate)

    • posted by Matthew on

      This is why I never got the idea that Jordan Peterson was somehow this ultra-far-right Bete Noir of the Regressive Left, just another middle-aged white guy sick and tired of guilt by association.

  7. posted by Matthew on

    Thanks to Auntie Beeb, I guess Helen Reddy’s going to have to rewrite that anthem of hers to “I Xm Womxn, Hexr Me Roxr.”

Comments are closed.