Everyone has an equal right to be described in a dignified and respectful way. However, equal treatment does not mean the same treatment; that is why equal value is a necessary component. Descriptions of individuals, groups and communities should enhance human dignity and value while respecting self-descriptions, cultural concerns and practices.
Consider the much abused asylum seekers. The word "seeker" suggests those requesting asylum are scroungers on welfare, exactly the clarion call raised in the tabloids. Asylum is a legal process, it does not and should not cast doubt on the moral worth of anyone engaged in the process. Would a more ethically sensible, neutral and accurate term not serve us better - such as "asylum applicant"? Is replacing "the Muslim community" with "Muslim communities" not more sensible, and ethically sound, emphasising the plethora of diversities we should recognise?
I agree with Ziauddin Sardar writing in today's Guardian that politeness is important and that we should all be sensitive and kind to one another. On that basic point I think we all probably agree. But beyond that I'm afraid this piece shows how silly political correctness originates not in a too-zealous examination of the way we think about others and how that's reflected in language, but in a too shallow one.
What he says about asylum seekers, for instance, seems to assume we use the word seeker, and that some people on the left feel a vague guilt about doing so, because there is something intrinsically or inherently derogatory about it. But there isn't. The reason why people feel a shudder of inner angst when using the phrase asylum seeker is that they are upset and troubled by their feelings about those who claim asylum and the way they are treated. Phrases and words, over time, become associated with our feelings towards the people and things they refer to, and will always be coloured by those feelings - unless we address them directly. If we did begin to speak of asylum applicants, it would only be a matter of twelve or fifteen years before Ziauddin Sardar began to feel that term was wrong, too, because somehow things had moved on.
Take the concept of mental handicap, another phrase Ziauddin Sardar sees as reinforcing stereotypes and denying dignity. How did we come to speak of mental handicap? I think it's perfectly obvious that by referring to people as handicapped must have been intended to emphasise that the additional problem those people face is random, to explain their doing less well than others, and to imply that the situation is unfair. To talk of someone being handicapped works in just the same way, linguistically and psychologically, as to call them challenged - a way of speaking that's become a sturdy pardody of PC language. It's clear, therefore, that the application of the word handicapped to those previously known as mental defectives or cripples was the political correctness of its time. So why does it now feel rude? Sir Ernest Gowers, in his second edition of Fowler's classic Modern English Usage, has the answer. This is from his article on Euphemism:
euphemism is a will-o'-the-wisp for ever eluding pursuit; each new word becomes in turn as explicit as its predecessors and has to be replaced. The most notorious example of the working of this law is that which has given us such a plethora of names for the same thing as jakes, privy, latrine, water-closet, w.c., lavatory, loo, convenience, ladies, gents, toilet, powder-room, cloaks, and so on, endlessly.
We see this process continuing in the United States, where you now ask for the bathroom or, ridiculously, the restroom. The point is that, for whatever Freudian reason, it is our embarrassment about what happens in this place that rubs off on the word we use to describe it, and once a word begins to fit, our embarrassment inhabits it as an overtone, implicit in its meaning, so that we feel the need of a fresh, untainted term.
According to this same process, by which embarrassment often manifests itself, in England at least, as politeness, our embarrassment about people and social issues can be seen in the way we clutch at one euphemism after another to cover our problematic thoughts about, for instance, the mentally handicapped. The old term initially coined to make use feel better gradually makes us feel bad again. And so we stop speaking of coloured people and the handicapped, and begin talking of blacks and the disabled; then give up talking of blacks and the disabled, and speak only of black and disabled people, naively thinking we restore their previously-denied humanity; before feeling even that is not enough, and that we must speak only of people of colour and people with disabilities.
I'm not rubbishing all neologisms: people's feelings about terms are real and must be respected. What I object to is the uncritical idea that our invention and reinvention of new euphemisms in itself reflects a moral progress. For one thing, the feeling of moral discomfort we act on and the term we use to assuage it may both be absurd - like the way Victorians spoke of unmentionables for underwear, or the way Ziauddin Sardar now wants to stops talking about carers because doing so denies the independence of the person cared for. I would have thought it obvious you're not entirely independent if you have a carer, but this just goes to show the ludicrous lengths your rude-ometer can take you to if you do not make a habit of questioning it. Using new terms is an easy way to purge our feelings about social problems; but instead of simply turning the handle to churn out yet more of them, we should examine more critically our need to do so, and try to address and deal with the feelings that lead to this urge. That seems to me absolutely necessary if we're ever really going to make any moral progress in the way we deal with, say, race or disability.
A good way to start might be for people who think like Ziauddin Sardar does to ask themselves what are the stereotypes that they think a term like mentally handicapped reinforces. That exercise might help reveal that the guilty associations we fear are in our minds, not in our words.
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