Political Correctness In American Culture

There are two sides to a story. There are reasons why people do certain things, either to prove a point or to hurt someone. When someone says something hurtful to another individual, it is usually intentional. Within the past century our culture has changed by the way we speak to each other, and the outcomes of what can happen when we say certain things. When we are concerned about what we say about a group of people, it is called “Political Correctness.” The concept of being politically correct is generally new to the American culture. It began to show itself around the beginning of the 60’s and 70’s when more and more people began to join activist groups, fighting for certain causes (something common during pre-war eras) (Lind). So what really is political correctness, and why is it concerning? Well, again, political correctness, or “PC” for short, was and is still being defined by our current generation as we become

College campuses around the country are the strongest victims of PC though, due to the diversity of students and the availability of social media to offend or “crack a joke” about a certain group. Regardless of right and wrong, forcing someone to be PC is infringing on that individual’s freedom of speech, as in once case at Eastern Michigan University where a group of students bashed a Feminists United Club. They were using some questionable language towards the group and its members, via Yik Yak, an anonymous posting app common among college campuses. Within this case, the members of the Feminists United Club threatened the posters to take down their “vulgar comments” and the posters refused. After many complaints with the university, the Feminists United Club demanded that they track down and punish the posters of the comments; the university refused to do so due to the right-of-speech of the anonymous posters