Week 11_4/7/16_Help I'm being Oppressed.

Political correctness is considered a very important trait when wanting not to offend any particular group of people by using nondiscriminatory words or phrases. However using political correctness to not offend or discriminate anyone might actually offend other groups or individuals because when referring to one group, one might exclude another group. In article, Letter: Iowa State is too Politically Correct; Charles Braun explains the issues of being too politically correct, and how people use it to avoid the unnecessary evils in our life rather than confront the unnecessary evils that will cause havoc in our future.

At first Charles list off topics that everyone, almost without any hesitation would agree to be either a good thing, which are: diversity, discrimination, and sustainability. Of course these are no doubt good traits to have and even bad traits to dismiss, but within context these topics can also be both bad and good. Such as diversity, at first it sounds like a good thing, having a diverse community with much different type of people sounds like a nice breeding ground for diverse culture and community. But as Charles puts it, “Diversity consisting of an axe murderer, a rapist and a bank robber is not what most students want on their dorm floor”. When context is provided to what type of diversity is given it no longer sounds like a good thing, most people just accept the fact that when something is labeled as having a “diverse culture and community”, people automatically assume that it is the best for human growth and or development.

Then when it comes to the term sustainability once again, people only think about the items and things associated with positive ideals, such as how the world and how the ecosystem will deal with long term pollution and human activity, and what steps humanity needs to take before the world reaches environmental destruction. Charles then points out how no one seems to take notice of the other issues of sustainability, “Take sustainability. A possible one- or two-degree temperature increase a hundred years from now is cause for panic, but an unsustainable federal deficit that could collapse our economy in a few years is ignored”. Once again we are faced with perceptual selectivity of political correctness, while being blinded by this halo effect of these political friendly goals. Here people are thinking about the evil of environmental sustainability, but when in fact people should also worry about the crumbling economic and social infrastructure of the nation, when in a blink of an eye the nation people live under could collapse leading to political and social unrest.

These terms we associate with political correctness and the words we use to differentiate between what is offensive and what is non-discriminatory doesn’t really work or apply to all mattes of life. While we focus on one topic such as global warming, we ignore the other possible side of the coin. Instead of a society of building and strengthening our community, we cherry pick issues that disturb or simply offend us because in one instance we are the minority, where in an instance people could be focusing on other issues affecting the globe rather than Christmas decoration in a public place. Charles Braun brings this issue to light, showing how Iowa University has becoming a mono culture society specifically tailoring needs to the “minorities” in order to become what is considered a  diverse, nondiscrimination, and sustainability culture.