I have come to the conclusion that the perm politically correct (and more often politically incorrect) to declare in equal parts the speaker’s lack of empathy and the de-humanizing of the subject.

Politically correct is almost always applied in the negative or at least cast in a negative light; “It may not be politically correct but….”, “That’s just politically correct garbage”, etc. It strikes me that all politically correct means, once removed from the political point the phrase is trying to make, is to have empathy for a group that is Other. By denying political correctness as a positive is to deny having empathy for the subject of the speech.

Take an example like “It may not be politically correct but I think affirmative action is bunk.” It seems to me that could be re-written as “Since I have no empathy for poor blacks I think affirmative action is bunk.” That isn’t to say the only reason not to support affirmative action is due to a lack of empathy, but by applying the political correct marker that is the suggestion. A belief that affirmative action doesn’t work to relieve the problem is not a lack of empathy, however, employing the political correct phrase is to say that there is not problem to begin with. That is a lack of empathy.

A lack of empathy is usually a less than admirable quality in a person, if a person is sufficiently lacking in empathy we call them a sociopath and we lock them away in a cage (One of the more extreme forms of de-humanizations). So an admission of a lack of empathy needs to be disguised and further it needs to imply a de-humanization of the subject for which the speaker has no empathy. This de-humanization is needed to make the speakers opinion acceptable. It is okay to not have empathy for a group that has been identified as less than human (it is how racism, classism and xenophobia has flourished for years.).

The same old racist, sexist, classist, xenophobic, etc screeds get rehashed under the politically incorrect moniker thus pretending the dehumanization of these screeds is not the speaker’s lack of empathy but some horrid self-censoring in the extreme. It re-enforces the de-humanization of the subject of the speech thus allowing the speaker and anyone he convinces to have even less empathy for the subject thus perpetuating there position as Other.

I guess I am suspicious when ever anyone invokes politically correct or incorrect, it seems that someone is trying to describe a perfectly good human as less than that because they would prefer not to care about fellow human beings who are different.