I’ve been watching the articles about “callout culture” and “political correctness” come rolling out for a while now in frustrated fascination. I suppose it’s fitting that it takes a week in which both Jonathan Chait’s piece deploring “political correctness” and Jeet Heer’s accounting of The New Republic’s record on race were published to move me to write about it.
This isn’t because “Someone is finally speaking about this.” We’ve never stopped. As long as traditionally disenfranchised people have advocated for more power, the ways in which they exercise that power have been fodder for discussion and condemnation.
No, the reason I need to write about this topic this week is that the irony is killing me. Watching Chait argue that people like him are silenced by (in part) the speech of others—particularly women of color—is annoying. Contrasting that argument with the acknowledgement of how thoroughly the institution that protected and promoted Chait’s voice excluded the voices and interests of black people is painful. Seeing the impetus for that acknowledgement reduced to “intense arguments, mostly carried out online” instead of crediting the—often black—intellectuals and activists who made this accounting necessary…well. Continue reading “Power and "Political Correctness"”