- Position‹2 of 3›
- Political correctness is detrimental to society
Political correctness has made our young people incapable of dealing with controversial or offensive ideas.
The argument
The phenomenon is most visible, on this account, on university campuses. Proponents of this position point to a pattern in which students confronted with an idea that departs from mainstream thought respond not by arguing against it but by protesting the speaker's presence and calling for them to be no-platformed, on the grounds that airing the view violates the safe space to which they are entitled. The objection is not that the argument is mistaken; it is that hearing it constitutes a harm. What troubles proponents is the development that response forestalls. A university is, on the traditional understanding, where a person learns to sit with an idea they dislike long enough to work out why it is wrong — a skill acquired only by practice, and only on material that is genuinely uncomfortable. Where discomfort is treated as injury and removed, the practice never happens, and the capacity it would have built is never acquired. The consequence, in this framing, is a cohort poorly equipped for a world that will not accommodate it. The world is not a safe space: workplaces contain colleagues with unwelcome opinions, public life contains arguments made in bad faith, and adult disagreement generally proceeds without an authority to whom offence can be reported. Young people who have spent their formative years inside a bubble of political correctness, proponents argue, arrive at that world without the tolerance for friction it demands, and are left woefully ill-equipped to deal with controversial ideas. It is on this basis that the position holds political correctness to be detrimental to society — not because civility is undesirable, but because a norm treating exposure to opposing ideas as harm produces a generation less able to engage with them.
Context
Political correctness has left our youth unable to cope with controversial ideas. Rather than confront offensive or outrageous ideas, they would rather avoid the discussion and bar people speaking or attempt to ostracize them by branding them un-PC without having a debate.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Political correctness isn’t about getting hyper-offended over small micro-offences, it is about acknowledging marginalised groups demands for inclusion. For example, when Trans women protest the limited definition of “women” as “people with vaginas”, they are really marginalized people calling for their right to inclusion. They are not hypersensitive “snowflakes” who are offended by an outdated definition of the word “woman”, but a marginalised group having their legitimate concerns stifled by a majority group using political correctness to trivialise their demands.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] This is not detrimental to society. Young people are right to be sensitive to the needs of marginalised groups.