Two Quotations

[browngirl]

Two things people said that I had to write down.

I've seen this process happen over and over all my life, and this is the most succinct explanation of it I've seen in a long time. From What Tami Said, 2010.

Disdain for "political correctness" is often positioned as a concern that some important truth is not being spoken for fear of offending someone. But that concern is nothing but smoke and mirrors. To invoke "political correctness" is really to be concerned about loss of power and privilege. It is about disappointment that some "ism" that was ingrained in our society, so much that citizens of privilege could express the bias through word and deed without fear of reprisal, has been shaken loose. Charging "political correctness" generally means this: "I am comfortable with my privilege. I don't want to have to question it. I don't want to have to think before I speak or act. I certainly don't wish to inconvenience myself for the comfort of lesser people (whoever those people may be--women, people of color, people with disabilities, etc.)"

I view this next one as a wider case of, among other situations, the above. And oh, I need it.

And when they tell you life is not like this, life is never like this,/life will never be like this, insist that the sun/has always found a time and a place, the moon too knows when and where to enter,/and you too have your stories,/and you too have your place. -- Shira Erlichman, from exceptindreams, after this funny poem

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Yes. The idea that being polite is not useful, that it should be more acceptable to be blatantly -ist than to at least put a veneer on it...

Ick.

[sethg]

As a further aggravating factor, a lot of Americans can’t seem to hear the word “politeness” without hearing something like “prissy Victorian formality”. They are perfectly capable of applying the rules of etiquette that they have absorbed (since every culture has rules of etiquette, just like every language has rules of grammar), but they are inihibited from talking about those rules, which makes it an uphill slog to convince them to consciously adopt new rules.