I still say Dan Moller should rethink his views on political correctness. Here’s my point-by-point reply. Moller in blockquotes, I’m not.
My view of political correctness is one of those in-between positions that everyone ends up hating: the left is wrong in ignoring PC run amok, the right is wrong in thinking PC is always and everywhere crazy.
I also have an in-between position. But frankly, so do most full-blown social justice activists. Who’s the most prominent thinker who denies that PC “runs amok” once in a while? I object to your position because your criticisms of PC are not only overly mild, but directly contradict your moral framework.
PC is a kind of tax on certain forms of discourse, just like other “taxes” coming from other directions. For instance, there’s a mild taboo against certain forms of unpatriotic speech and conduct, like spitting on the flag or saying you hate America. You can say these things, but you may pay a price, if only not being invited to someone’s party. This can take a pathological form as when antiwar criticisms are delegitimized by being branded unpatriotic, but there’s nothing wrong with the tax itself, in my view. Encouraging mild patriotism is okay.
Standard politeness norms have put a mild tax on racism, sexism, and such for decades. Advocates of political correctness are obviously asking for much more. Specifically: (a) They want to make many questionable views unquestionable – no matter how politely you speak; (b) they want a double standard that allows them to mistreat anyone they disagree with. And in Governing Least, it sounds like you want to grant them both demands. Consider this passage from your book:
Proponents of PC norms aren’t confused to think that racial pseudoscience has had enormous, damaging effects in the past; they aren’t mistaken to regard any revival of racial science as potentially disastrous and in any case accompanied by huge costs.
I’m worried about the misuse of IQ research, too. But this sounds like a thinly-veiled endorsement of the suppression of a wide range of inquiry, starting with IQ research. Call me paranoid, but if we regard “any revival” of vaguely-defined “racial science” as “potentially disastrous and in any case accompanied by huge costs” the science of human intelligence dies. Would you consider that “PC run amok”? How about protests against Charles Murray?
The idea behind PC is to make it harder to say stuff that threatens the status of groups that have often had their public standing imperiled in the past. This can take pathological forms, as when it shuts down important debates over college admissions or the like. (And it’s worth noting that in the book and article I describe and criticize PC run amok at length, with concrete examples–I don’t take the pathological forms lightly.) But the mere existence of mild social sanctions for mocking gay or handicapped people at work, say, doesn’t seem so bad to me.
Mocking the handicapped has been widely reviled by almost everyone for ages. Mocking gays is a different story; I’ve seen major social change over my lifetime, and I agree that it’s for the better. But this evolution perfectly fits my plea for simple politeness. How does PC differ? Most obviously, because it also legitimizes public efforts to dehumanize and demoralize non-gays (such as repeatedly echoing the phrase “straight white males” with contempt).
Here’s a concrete example: in the bad old days, a female colleague might leave the room and be subjected to demeaning sexist commentary by a group of men remaining. Obviously this still happens, but in my particular work-environment and in many others, this would now likely be seen as a norm violation even in the room itself. (There would be that sense of, “Wait, what??”) I disagree that this is merely politeness –it’s a mild form of benign PC, and it makes it easier for talented people to contribute, which is good for all of us. We can accept this and still criticize PC run amok, which is, alas, a serious problem, especially on campus. And again, I’m clear on this in the book; e.g., I describe how PC can threaten airline safety!
Why? “Mere politeness” is exactly what it sounds like to me. Here’s how I’ve explained it:
Every child knows the basics of politeness. Talk nicely. Don’t yell. Don’t call names. Listen and respond to what people literally say. Don’t personally insult people. Don’t take generalizations personally. If someone’s meaning is unclear, don’t put words his mouth; ask him to clarify. And of course, don’t escalate. If someone’s impolite, the polite response is to end the conversation, not respond in kind.
How does PC go further? First, PC misanthropically looks for offense where none is intended. Second, PC embraces a double standard of ignoring or even praising demeaning sexist commentary by women about men. And strikingly, Governing Least lays the intellectual groundwork for condemning both forms of overreach. Not only does your book strongly oppose overly demanding moral claims. You also take a brave stand against the “Gallic shrug,” reminding even the vulnerable of their residual obligations. Taken seriously, these two insights would end PC as we know it.
READER COMMENTS
Phil H
May 15 2019 at 10:33pm
@ Brian Caplan
As a mild supporter of PC, what I find frustrating about your arguments is their lack of empirical or historical grounding. You claim that every child knows the basics of politeness (a claim without very good empirical grounding); but every adult does not adhere to them. Moreover, adults fail to adhere to the basics of politeness in patterned, biased ways.
We are presented with a patterned, biased problem. Sometimes such problems can be solved with unpatterned, general responses. But sometimes they cannot. It seems (1) blindly optimistic to simply assume that prejudice and discrimination are in fact the kind of problems that are amenable to generalized solutions; and (2) it flies in the face of real experience.
Third, I am genuinely confused about what your purpose is in opposing PC, on libertarian grounds. PC is a form of social sanction, not a legal one. You may think that I am mistaken to choose not to listen to Charles Murray, but why on earth would you want to impose restrictions on how I respond to him?
Nick
May 15 2019 at 11:29pm
There exist adults that are bad mannered. If you’re claiming that the existence of any adult that does not conform to polite social manners disproves Caplan’s assertion about the current populace teaching mild and polite manners to kids, I must object. All social phenomena have exceptions.
OTOH, if you’re claiming that kids are not in general not being taught the manners described above, I’m afraid you’re wrong.
Neither of your assertions are true. People are usually polite, it is a rare exception when adults go around shouting slurs.
He’s not opposing it on libertarian grounds. If I’m understanding it correct, he’s opposing it on cultural grounds.
A libertarian, technically, would understand that you’ve done no wrong in your (perhaps unfriendly) response to Charles Murray. No one, however, settles issues in a technical manner. Economists, Social Scientists and casual observers of Social phenomena frequently go beyond the technicalities and analyse from there. We’d all be staunch Rothbardians otherwise.
Phil H
May 16 2019 at 6:04am
Hi, Nick. To the extent that I understand you (I have no idea what Rothbardian means, I’m afraid!), I would have no argument with what you’re saying, but I would also have no desire to read Caplan. He has no cultural capital (sorry, BC, that’s not meant as a personal insult, just as a statement about what I read you for). He is an incisive economist and analyst of social institutions. So if he isn’t presenting a liberty/economic-based argument, then I will happily click away. But I thought the point of this series was that he does regard opposition to PC as an important point for libertarian thinking.
(Or perhaps: If BC thinks that many of those people who have recently been shouted at by progressive/”liberal” activists are worth reading, he could say so as a personal recommendation. But I thought he was doing something different.)
My point about kids is it’s quite hard to say what they “know”; and some adults do misbehave. Saying that they ought to not misbehave because the rules of politeness are simple doesn’t solve the problem.
Nick
May 17 2019 at 12:15am
Hi Phil,
A ‘Rothbardian’ refers to a person who espouses the distinct line of economics propounded by the 20th century economist Murray Rothbard, who insisted that none but voluntary, free market transactions were in any definable sense, “optimal”. The form of libertarianism he advanced is considered to be the most radical and is known by the names ‘anarcho-capitalism’ or ‘free market anarchism’. His arguments were absolutist, uncompromising and in some sense, “technically correct”. While Caplan is similarly radical, he presents a non-absolutist defense of free market anarchism that does not rely on what are perceived to be controversial assumptions.
I’d agree with you. But most people who advance the PC culture have strong Marxist class struggle inclinations and hence go to any lengths to bully those who commit minor transgressions in politeness. I (and many on this blog) would claim that the class struggle has no solid basis and is a sketchy method (it’s, at its core, authoritarian) to construct ethical intuitions. And since members of the PC culture usually have no comprehension of this, I find it unwise to go along with them.
Chris
May 16 2019 at 6:52am
Caplan:
Nick:
Hazel Meade
May 16 2019 at 12:11pm
Bryan, you write:
Advocates of political correctness are obviously asking for much more. Specifically: (a) They want to make many questionable views unquestionable – no matter how politely you speak; (b) they want a double standard that allows them to mistreat anyone they disagree with.
As I’m sure you know, there’s a spectrum of opinion on both sides, and I think here that you might be characterizing your opponents according the the most extreme elements on their side, while turning a blind eye to some of the extreme elements on your own. I have heard alt-right commenters, for instance, declare that it should be totally socially acceptable to judge people according the average statistical behavior of their racial group, based on the argument that obtaining information is costly, and using visible race as a marker for intelligence, or criminality, is a cheap and efficient heuristic. Including, say, throwing resumes with names that “sound black” in the trash without reading them. I’ve also heard people say that immigration from “low IQ” countries ought to be restricted to prevent them from lowering the average IQ of the American gene pool. (Is calling those ideas “racist” a kind of mistreatment?)
When it comes to the science of human intelligence, there’s a difference between having open public debates about it and having scientific inquiry. In fact, having heated public debates about a subject may make it harder to determine the objective scientific truth of the subject. On race differences in intelligence there are many people who are deeply emotionally invested in the idea that they are genetically superior to other racial groups. Other are emotionally invested in there NOT being any genetic differences in intelligence. Whatever the case is, getting large groups of laymen into a heated public debate about who is genetically superior or not isn’t going to advance the science of intelligence. There is a lot of science that constantly goes on, quite out of the public view, and is largely the better for it. The public debates about intelligence furthermore don’t seem to serve any positive purpose, other than to advance the narratives of warring cultural tribes, and pit them against each other. What public policy is going to change based on the outcome? If we find out that whites are on average more intelligent than black, what difference does it make? Are we going to have different laws for black people? No. Are we going to make it ok to start treating black people as inferiors? I certainly hope not.
I think Charles Murray made a mistake in publishing a book in laymans terms for popular consumption about it. Perhaps his goals were benign, perhaps in 1994 he thought that race relations had reached a point where people could have a polite clinical discussion about the subject, perhaps he thought that there weren’t that many overt racists left in US society. But in 2019 it now seems that he was wrong about that – there are still quite a lot of overt racists, they were just in the closet all this time, and it’s still not possible to have a dispassionate civil conversation about which racial groups are the most intelligent (if it ever will be), and publicly airing this research really just fuels the narratives of people with racist agendas.
In my opinion, it is better for both the science and society if we operate on the assumption that all racial groups are created equal, and let the science quietly continue in journals and forums that are largely out of the public view.
Mark Z
May 17 2019 at 2:05pm
I don’t think Bryan is mischaracterizing the mainstream of his opponents. Is disdain toward white males as a group not the norm among, say, Democratic presidential candidates? Did the New York Times not recently hire an editor despite her having repeatedly and openly expressing hatred of white men? The positions Bryan is criticizing are the norm. They’re not extreme. I spend almost all of my time around people of progressive orientation, and hardly 5 minutes goes by without a broad disparaging (sometimes facetiously genocidal) remark about white people or white men. Those who are nuanced on avoid making generalizations are a minority, and even they rarely criticize their compatriots.
Regarding intelligence research: tell me, why shouldn’t we also apply this “ignore the science” attitude toward evolution? There are certainly potential moral implications that we might want to avoid from that as well. Indeed, the entire stud of biology – especially neuroscience – routinely upsets our moral and political frameworks. Race and intelligence isn’t exceptional in this respect. In fact, if one believes (I think reasonably, though it’s not certain) that popular political attempts to remedy climate change tend to be more harmful than helpful, perhaps we should just all pretend it’s a myth. There’s a pandora’s box you open when you accept that people have a ‘social obligation’ to pretend things are true that aren’t or might not be. On the matter of race, I think you should also seriously consider that it’s not simply a matter of there “still” being a lot of racists: the US government and many other institutions actively engaging in racial policy in favor or preferred groups, or putative anti-racists (like the defenders of PC) defending the social acceptability racism against white people have contributed to a backlash. Double standards like the kind you’re defending are themselves a cause of racism, among white people as among others, not a remedy to it.
The standard of political correctness is one that ignores the necessity of compromise. Everyone (or at least the vast majority of people) must feel they have a stake in the standard. Each affords the respect to others he expects he can get in return. Most people will chafe under a system that insists on something else. Unless you have the ability and willingness to resort to highly draconian efforts to force compliance (and event that would probably only worsen the backlash), symmetrical standards are the most plausible ones. So, for it to work, “PC” people will have to accede to the social unacceptability of saying horrible things about or discriminating against white people or men. I don’t for the life of me understand why that’s such a hard concession for them. I think it’s because, really, none of this is about making anyone’s life easier, but just about punishing people one disagrees with. I see no evidence that the asymmetric standards of political correctness have been productive in an way.
Mark Z
May 17 2019 at 2:09pm
“In my opinion, it is better for both the science and society if we operate on the assumption that all racial groups are created equal, and let the science quietly continue in journals and forums that are largely out of the public view.”
I’ve made this point before, but it’s worth making again: as long as disparities between races are considered relevant in the public sphere, than trying to explain the etiology of those disparities is fair game. You cannot honestly insist that we should wring our hands over disparities in income or other variables, then get angry when someone offers a plausible explanation other than racism for why such disparities may exist. So, sure, let’s have a society where no one really cares about race. But that also means not caring if one race or another is disproportionately incarcerated or earns less money on average.
Hazel Meade
May 16 2019 at 1:16pm
There’s another aspect of this I want to discuss.
I think over the past 30 years, due to the development of the internet, many people have developed a new understanding of aspects of society such as “network effects”. We can now observe social networks and the effect that social connections have on people’s lives in ways that we couldn’t before the internet. As a result, many people have reached a new perspective on race relations, wherein people now recognize how divided social networks along racial lines help to reinforce economic disparities. Thus, it is no longer considered sufficient to remove only formal legal barriers to racial integration – instead, mainstream “white” society needs to informally “include” people of color in our social networks. In other words, informal self-segregation (which has continued since the end of formal segregation), is now understood to create racial disparities, and thus must be remedied by creating a more inclusive culture – as in actually becoming racially integrated by overcoming the forces causing self-segregation. Those forces including long standing resentments and feelings of mutual mistrust on both sides.
Now doing that is a difficult project and it requires a certain amount of renegotiation of social norms regarding what sort of behavior ought to be considered acceptable in order to create that more inclusive culture. I don’t think anyone has a real understanding of what norms are actually required, or what that culture would ultimate even look like. If you want everyone to be respected, do you try to be “color blind”, or do you try to respect everyone’s unique cultural background? Would there be neighborhood segregation or not?
A lot of these things are still being debated, but it’s also complicated by the presence of many people who don’t share the goal of greater inclusion, or haven’t reached this new understanding of race relations, or have other agendas that they want to tack onto the movement to ride it’s coattails. And all that leads to a lot of confusion and very heated rhetoric, because it’s very easy to misunderstand someone who just doesn’t understand what you are trying to accomplish, for someone who is opposed to it. And it’s very easy for people with other agendas (i.e. the far left) to use the fact that norms are confused and unsettled to try to drive them in their own preferred direction, and to try to connect everyone together who is opposed to any of it (i.e. trying to link free market capitalism to racism).
But I don’t think the correct response to this is to just say let’s be against this new PC. I think it is (a) understand what they are trying to achieve, and that it’s a worthwhile social goal, and (b) participate in the debate over what the new social norms ought to be in a constructive way. Don’t just oppose “PC” in all of it’s manifestations, instead say things like “if you want to create a really inclusive society, you need there to be room for people to make a ‘faux pas’ without being excoriated for it. ”
(And if you don’t you are kind of playing into the hands of the far left, when they try to claim that capitalism is inherently racist, by making it seem that it’s impossible to combine free-market capitalism and racial inclusion)
Mark Z
May 17 2019 at 2:18pm
Why is it exclusively the obligation of white people to include others? You do realize that sometimes black people or hispanic people or what have you actually want to fraternize primarily with people like them in some contexts, right? If you think that’s a bad thing, then criticize them for non fraternizing more with other races. If you think it’s ok, then stop criticizing white people for the self-selective behavior of non-white people.
This entire framework that assigns responsibility entirely to one race even for the behavior of people of other races, and all but rejects moral agency for non-white people, just explains why this kind of thinking fails right off the bat. It’s also insultingly collectivist to tell people that the color of their skin carries with it certain special obligations they have toward strangers.
Settling for ‘mere politeness’ – in my opinion the morally superior option – far more practical. You’re never going to convince the majority of the population that they are required to treat people who belong to other groups that they have to treat them better than members of those groups have to treat them, even if you accept that collective guilt makes such an arrangement morally acceptable.
Hazel Meade
May 20 2019 at 1:13pm
It’s not. Part of the goal of developing these new norms is to overcome the kinds of racial resentments that makes people want to retreat into their own spaces and exclude people of other races from them. Although one difference is there’s considerably less loss of economic opportunity that comes from whites being excluded from black social networks than from black people being excluded from white social networks. The idea here is that “mainstream” society should be a place where people of all ethnic backgrounds can feel comfortable participating – and thus to allow inter-ethnic freindships a place where they have chance to flourish. Right now “mainstream” generally means “white”, and most non-whites tend to feel a bit uncomfortable in mainstream spaces, in part because of stuff like “microaggressions”, where white people unintentionally make these remarks that reminds non-whites of their not belonging. In other words, we’re trying to feel out a set of social rules that will make things “normal” between whites and blacks and other races, if you take my meaning. There probably is quite a bit of room to define norms which include making white people comfortable in that space too – i.e. by not taking extreme offense when a white person makes a casual remark that sounds racist, or not constantly bitching about “white people”. I also suspect that many people on the left also would agree with that, too, but of course, there is a lot of anger and frustration and defensiveness over these issues and people are going to express that. That’s part of why this is hard, and why I say nobody really has fleshed out what the new norms really should be. I do think the critics of PC could have an opportunity to shape this discussion in a more constructive way by voicing these concerns in a more neutral tone, instead of reacting in a racially defensive way.
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