It also seems to me that the so called "pc police" feature more prominently in peoples imaginations than they do in their actual lives. Any time I've seen someone called out (in real life) for issues of cultural sensitivity, it has been in a respectful and reasonable fashion, even if the situation has warranted a much harsher response (and occasionally it has).

The situation online or in a college is a bit different, but at the end of the day I would consider it similar to talking to a stranger at a bar; if you talk some shit, expect to get shit talked. If you have a problem with that, you can go crying to the bouncer, but if they are at all good at their job, they will either nod and ignore you, or kick you out if you are out of line.

I realize the analogy is a bit crude, but as other commenters have pointed out, most of these so called "pc police" are just trying to correct centuries of systemic racism, sexism, etc. by having a reasonable discussion. If they are a bit shrill sometimes, just be thankful that they aren't using the same tactics that were once used to keep them from speaking out.

You: The situation online or in a college is a bit different, but at the end of the day I would consider it similar to talking to a stranger at a bar; if you talk some shit, expect to get shit talked. If you have a problem with that, you can go crying to the bouncer, but if they are at all good at their job, they will either nod and ignore you, or kick you out if you are out of line.

Him: A clarification, before I continue (since deliberate misconstrual is itself a tactic of the phenomenon in question). By political correctness, I do not mean the term as it has come to be employed on the right—that is, the expectation of adherence to the norms of basic decency, like refraining from derogatory epithets. I mean its older, intramural denotation: the persistent attempt to suppress the expression of unwelcome beliefs and ideas.

See? He made a point of defining political correctness in the second(!) paragraph, but it didn't stop you from arguing with your own definition. He even anticipated you would use a different definition.

You: I realize the analogy is a bit crude, but as other commenters have pointed out, most of these so called "pc police" are just trying to correct centuries of systemic racism, sexism, etc. by having a reasonable discussion. If they are a bit shrill sometimes, just be thankful that they aren't using the same tactics that were once used to keep them from speaking out.

Him: Let me be clear. I recognize that both the culture of political correctness and the recent forms of campus agitation are responding to enormous, intractable national problems. There is systemic racism and individual bigotry in the United States, and colleges are not immune from either. There is systemic sexism and sexual assault in society at large, and campuses are no exception. The call for safe spaces and trigger warnings, the desire to eliminate micro-aggressions, the demand for the removal of offensive symbols and the suppression of offensive language: however foolish some of these might be as policy prescriptions (especially the first two), however absurd as they work themselves out on the ground, all originate in deeply legitimate concerns.

See? He made a point to answer people that think political correctness is just fighting systematic bias, but you just zoomed right past it. He criticizes the methods used to fight systematic bias, not fighting systematic bias itself.

How can any conversation on serious topics be worth having if people refuse to listen and respond? Nothing good can come of dumping the same preconceptions into the other persons eyes and ears.

I'd also like to point out that the definition of political correctness, as it's used colloquially, doesn't change just because you say it does. I also don't think that using the term political correctness in the sense that practically everyone understands it constitutes a deliberate misconstrual. Also, to the authors point, I don't think the majority of commenters on the right (when did this become a discussion of partisan politics again?) are talking about "the expectation of adherence to the norms of basic decency, like refraining from derogatory epithets" when they rail against political correctness. More often it seems they are railing against the perceived suppression of their unwelcome beliefs and ideas. Hence my comment to the effect of "don't dish it out if you can't take it."

As for the second passage you copy/pasted, I don't see how that disagrees with what I said.

Of course many of the policies enacted on campuses are what you might call penny smart, pound foolish, but that doesn't mean that the intention is bad, or that we should not even try. It's unfortunate that many of these policies are seen to have a chilling effect on campuses, but I don't feel that asking college students to think before speaking is unreasonable, especially if the net benefit is reducing bigotry, racism, and prejudice. Perhaps these methods are not the most effective, but I don't exactly see the author offering up any better solutions. He seems content to complain about the dozen or so people he's met that were made to feel uncomfortable by these policies, while ignoring the many generations of people who have suffered far worse.

Also, since you seem to have read the article more thoroughly than I, what do you make of the authors closing statement, where he says,

When we talk about political correctness and its many florid manifestations, so much in the news of late, we are talking not only about racial injustice and other forms of systemic oppression, or about the coddling of privileged youth, though both are certainly at play. We are also talking, or rather not talking, about the pathologies of the American class system. And those are also what we need to deal with.

Seems a bit convoluted to me. Is he arguing that we should ignore addressing racism in favor of some sort of attack on the American class system or what?

The banh mi thing was one example out of a dozen paragraphs of examples. It is relevant, but focusing solely on it is missing the forest for the trees. It's cherry picking.

I'd also like to point out that the definition of political correctness, as it's used colloquially, doesn't change just because you say it does. I also don't think that using the term political correctness in the sense that practically everyone understands it constitutes a deliberate misconstrual. Also, to the authors point, I don't think the majority of commenters on the right (when did this become a discussion of partisan politics again?) are talking about "the expectation of adherence to the norms of basic decency, like refraining from derogatory epithets" when they rail against political correctness. More often it seems they are railing against the perceived suppression of their unwelcome beliefs and ideas. Hence my comment to the effect of "don't dish it out if you can't take it."

The term "political correctness" is nebulous. He defined the term because he wanted to clarify what he was talking about. If you read what he wrote using different definitions than he gave, then you're not really being fair to him. You have to accept some premises to understand what he's saying. But if he was defending one definition and claiming to use another, you could call him out on it. For instance, if he was defending your colloquial definition, but pretending to use his definition, then you could say he's being disingenuous, but that doesn't seem to be what you're arguing and I don't think he's mixing definitions either.

As for the second passage you copy/pasted, I don't see how that disagrees with what I said.

He thinks current methods do more damage than aid. He also thinks they're motivated by selfishness. When you read my response to your next point you'll have a better understanding of why he thinks this.

Also, since you seem to have read the article more thoroughly than I, what do you make of the authors closing statement, where he says,

His article is about two religions. The first religion is the political correctness religion. The second religion is meritocracy. He attempts to relate the two. He says that the elite use the religion of meritocracy as an excuse to further their own gain and political correctness as a religion to place themselves outside of their own system. Professors and college students benefit from systematic bias the most, but they use political correctness to feel morally superior by focusing on problems that don't threaten their life style. It's easy to take responsibility for bias. It's hard to take responsibility for poverty.

Along the same lines, the idea that their is some sort of over-arching "liberal elite" belief system that colleges slavishly adhere to is laughable, or it would be, if folks like the author of this piece didn't take it serious. While professors in any given discipline often share a number of "beliefs", colloquially known as "facts", if you get a few of them together in a casual setting, they'll more often than not take to arguing about the finer points of their field. In fact, this sort of behavior is often encouraged, in both casual and professional settings. That's why grad students write and defend a thesis.

I also think that accusing professors and students of using political correctness as a tool to further their own aims and to preserve their entrenched power is assuming quite a lot about the actions and motivations of a huge swath of people.

I didn't say political correctness was a nebulous concept, I said it was a nebulous term. The issue isn't vague concepts; the issue is that it's hard to tell what concept we are talking about. Lots of words have to be defined. If you're reading something about art you better hope there's a definition for the term "art" toward the front. The same is true for terms like "political correctness", "liberal", "conservative", and "culture". Defining vague terms before using them is very common. This should not be so hard to understand. For an extreme case, look at Guy Steele's speech, "Growing a Language".[0] He defines every word longer than a certain length.

Along the same lines, the idea that their is some sort of over-arching "liberal elite" belief system that colleges slavishly adhere to is laughable, or it would be, if folks like the author of this piece didn't take it serious. While professors in any given discipline often share a number of "beliefs", colloquially known as "facts", if you get a few of them together in a casual setting, they'll more often than not take to arguing about the finer points of their field. In fact, this sort of behavior is often encouraged, in both casual and professional settings. That's why grad students write and defend a thesis. I also think that accusing professors and students of using political correctness as a tool to further their own aims and to preserve their entrenched power is assuming quite a lot about the actions and motivations of a huge swath of people.

Rather than argue with my summary of someone else's writings and your own second hand perception of him, why don't you read his work and argue against his own points? Did it occur to you that evidence and responses to your very replies might be inside the text or do you just not care to find them?

Actually, don't even bother. I've been telling you to read the article since my first post and you obviously still haven't. There is no worth while discussion happening here. Turn off the computer. Read a book. Practice listening to someone else for a few hundred pages. Then maybe you can handle ten.

[0] https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/steele.pdf

from the wiki page: In addition to the many unresolved arguments about the construction techniques, there have been disagreements as to the kind of workforce used. The Greeks, many years after the event, believed that the pyramids must have been built by slave labor. Archaeologists now believe that the Great Pyramid of Giza (at least) was built by tens of thousands of skilled workers who camped near the pyramids and worked for a salary or as a form of tax payment (levy) until the construction was completed, pointing to workers' cemeteries discovered in 1990 by archaeologists Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner. For the Middle Kingdom Pyramid of Amenemhat II, there is evidence from the annal stone of the king that foreigners from Palestine were used.[1]

Couple points. You can be both a skilled worker and a slave. Also, if you are working to pay off a tax debt, that pretty much makes you an indentured servant or slave.

When you read a physical book, you can flip through pages instantly and scan the contents with zero wait time. A laptop is much closer to this ideal than a tablet.

All you have to do is eat a moderate amount, wait twenty or thirty minutes (for your stomach to start digestion, send signals to your brain, etc), see if you are still hungry, and eat a bit more if you are. If you reach the point where you feel 'full' you've probably overeaten. Not complicated, although many people, myself included, don't always take the time to listen to their bodies or have the self control to stop eating when they are chowing down on something delicious, even though know they've probably had enough.

You do have to assemble it yourself, but anyone with a cordless drill and a bit of sense should be able to manage. There are a couple things that can go wrong, but they are easy to avoid and/or fix. The desk surfaces that come with these are probably a crappy laminate, like sub MDF quality fiberboard. That means that you have to be careful when screwing the legs into the surface, because if your drill's torque/clutch setting is too high, the screw will just spin and blow out the hole instead of fastening tightly. This is easy to avoid though, just set the drill to one of the lowest torque settings, say 1-3, and work your way up if the screw doesn't go in all the way. Also, there are usually plenty of holes on the legs, so if you blow 1 or 2 out, it's not the end of the world.

The only other thing to look out for is bad leg motors and/or bad control boxes, which are surprisingly common. No worries though, these things are easy to troubleshoot, and I'm sure the company will get you a replacement in no time if anything is DOA, as it's pretty common.

Anyways, my point is, if you don't mind spending around 4 hours of your time to read a manual and put one of these things together, you can save a substantial amount of money.

Also, if you don't want a crappy surface, you can just order the legs and add your own surface, although make sure to check that the legs can support the weight.

woops, here's the link https://www.autonomous.ai/smartdesk-sit-to-stand-height-adju...

also, if you're really a cheapskate, you could probably find all this shit on alibaba or something, and save even more money.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S19022530/

Are you really arguing that desegregation created these problems? Seems a bit backwards to me. I think it's incredibly obvious that race relation issues existed long before the desegregation of schools.

You could argue that desegregation caused problems for white people where there were none before, but even that I find a bit questionable. There are many disadvantages to growing up in a homogeneous society.

I think everyone agrees that correcting racism, or tribalism if you prefer, is a difficult task, and one that we are still grappling with. Of course, there were other methods of desegregation proposed at the time, but very few were proposed in good faith, and none that I know of were as swift or effective as mass desegregation.

Did you read my post? https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston I'm talking mostly about Boston, though I've found the same things when researching other northern cities. I'm not sure about the American south, I haven't studied it enough to either confirm or question the conventional wisdom.

In Boston, there was surely some racial animosity and shit talking before forced busing became a big issue. But it didn't seem to be that bad -- for example there is that quote in my post of the black school teacher who said she never had problems at Southie High before the busing. The busing made relations much worse, and the images we have of people being cartoonishly racist only came after forced busing.

none that I know of were as swift or effective as mass desegregation.

In the northern cities, mass desegregation failed in every single way. It did not improve race relations, it did not make black people better off, it did not result in more integration. Read my post.

So you are arguing that Boston was so racially tolerant in the 70's that they had no racist policies either explicit or implicit, and that a black kid could go to a white school completely unmolested? That they wouldn't be yelled at or beaten? That they would be welcomed with open arms?

So what was the experience like of the non-white kids in a majority white school (or vice versa)? That would vary a lot based on the particular school. I certainly do not argue that all schools would "welcome with open arms" outsiders of a different ethnicity. And especially not Charlestown High and South Boston High -- those neighborhood were quite parochial. When Italians started going to Charlestown High for instance, they were called "Wops" and such and there were fights. I don't have any good information on the experience of any black students attending those schools before forced busing. Most black students taking advantage of open enrollment would have gone elsewhere because Charlestown High and South Boston HIgh were crappy and overcrowded.

There was a voluntary busing program in Boston called Project Exodus in the mid 1960s whereby up to 600 black students were bused to mostly white schools. There was a survey of parents, that found ( https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/downloads/neu:m0... ) : "Other findings indicate that the mothers think that grades have improved, the amount of homework the children have to do has increased, their children have more white friends, that there is not a lot of prejudice or discrimination encountered at the new schools. With respect to this last distribution, only seven (or 10%) of the respondents felt that their children encountered a lot of prejudice, fifteen percent thought their children encountered some, while 70 percent thought their children encountered litttle or no prejudice or discrimination"

That's not to say you're wrong on any of your other points, but I think the reasoning for it isn't so much to prevent players from figuring stuff out and publishing guides, but more to encourage players to experiment and figure stuff out for themselves rather than relying on a guide to tell them the 'right' way to do things.