Political correctness

Today I was reading an article on how the USA's negotiator with Brazil for the upcoming WTO trade negotiations, Susan Schwab was hurt by the Brazilian counterpart's remarks. He had apparently compared the tactics employed by negotiators from developed countries to Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, and Schwab is descendant from Jewish holocaust survivors. His exact statement? as quoted by Yahoo, "Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth," and "I am reminded of Goebbels", quoting certain parts. Though I know that forming an opinion on the basis of incomplete comments is dangerous, my point is not entirely based on this.

Recently Britain's schools have changed the nursery rhymes taught in schools (see here). Britain, or the United Kingdom to be more correct, has almost been at the forefront of political correctness, replacing black with rainbow, etc. etc. Some of the changes are actually quite hilarious. Before you start raising fingers at me, let me point out that I'm also a "coloured" person. But the simple fact is that when you say baa baa black sheep, I can't see any semblance of racial discrimination. In a contorted way, possibily yes, but then you can see innuendos in just about any statement. Language, any language is an approximate representation of what we wish to express. In algebra, we call this dimensionality reduction. One of the most common ways of doing this is PCA or Principal Component Analysis, which is that you try to gauge the common thread in the data, to put it very crudely. This is done with almost rampant disdain in computer vision to remove noise in data collected from natural sources (:D no offense, I know it's necesary). Which is why it's quite beyond my comprehension, why we haul up someone based on some part of a statement. Isn't it relevant as to what thread was being followed and the context in which the statement was made? I always find that the media, press in particular, tends to highlight such things to gain TRPs, taking out small sections of statements and contorting them. Problem is that these sections are used by a majority of people to form opinions even without knowing the full fact.

While I do accede that little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the press may claim that it is the responsibility of the people to find the truth, but the press are most people's only source for such information. Even more so, we must allow some leeway for people's inherent stupidity. You may not notice it, but everyday you'll make many insensitive comments to a multitude of people. But, being part of everyday occurence, people ignore them, as part of the lost art of common sense. If you feel that you're not part of such a group, try and listen to what you said, you'll be shocked.

Every statement can be taken in atleast 2 ways, so don't try to create a context out of a statement. Like my favourite PCA, gauge the common thread. And though I concede I've never as yet been a victim of discrimination on the basis of colour or the other common things, I still feel some judgement call should be made the statements that are held as discriminatory. Though it's probably a better thing for people not to say stupid things, but that's quite a thing to ask, don't you think? I mean, in India, being a general category male is like a curse. People have a tendancy to blame this category for all evils that plague society. And being part of this category implies that you have to slog for everything a little more than everyone else, meaning people having reservations, even though I myself didn't do anything against them, nor have anything against them. Without digressing, let me just say that reverse discrimination is as prevalent as discrimination.

To conclude, I just want to say, that it's been more than 50 years since the Nazi's were overthrown. Give them germans and others a break. Referring to a person of that group doesn't mean that you condone their actions, you're simply using them as an example. They did terrible things, and it can cause a lot of hurt to be reminded of them, but they're still the past. A new generation has now emerged who don't grasp the brutalities of the actions done in the past century, as well as people of the developing world who didn't have anything to do with it. These people are already paying some price or another for what happened, even though they were direct or indirect victims, and not the perpetrators. Political correctness can seriously stifle free communication, and lead to more problems that it can solve. In my opinion, though people should be educated to be more careful about what they say, they should also be educated to be more tolerant. Being all prickly and quick to get insulted is probably not the best way to go about things. In that spirit, I apologize to anyone who finds this article insulting in any way.