Political Correctness

Political correctness is a requirement in the language used to avoid everything that could be offensive to certain categories of people on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, etc. d.

Political correctness is an exaggerated politeness, often brought to the point of absurdity.

Political correctness in its current understanding in the West does not oblige or require anyone not only to “love” blacks, Hispanics or homosexuals, but even simply tolerant of them. It only assumes that a person who expresses homophobic, nationalist, racist or other xenophobic views will not receive a wide public platform and will be considered a political marginal, or should keep his views to himself. Or, at least, choose expressions in public, avoid radicalism and propaganda of intolerance, discord.

“The most difficult thing is equality. It is extremely difficult for a benevolent, informed and tolerant healthy person to communicate with a disabled person on an equal footing. I can call a healthy person a fool, an idler, a thief, but not an invalid. This will be considered discrimination even if the said person with a disability is really a fool, a bum or a thief. I can joke about the weaknesses of a healthy person, but not about the weaknesses of an invalid. It will be considered discrimination. When social commentator Bozena Rynska was rude to government officials on her blog, the public took it with delight. When she got nasty to the disabled, she was accused almost of fascism. Even when the director of the Pushkin Museum, Irina Antonova, announced that she would not install a wheelchair lift on the front staircase, she was accused of discrimination against the disabled.

Equality is the hardest thing. On the way to equality, it is quite possible to politically rename Blind Pew in Treasure Island as Visually Impaired Pew, and attach an elevator for the disabled to Giotto’s bell tower in Florence. Equality is the most difficult thing, because it requires the most difficult thing in human society — rationality.

If special conditions are not created for a person to exercise his right, then this is not discrimination (no one restricts him in any way), but a refusal to assist in exercising the right. When you pass by the same person who cannot get into an unequipped room in a wheelchair, do you discriminate or do not help him? Every person has the right to higher education, but the state does not guarantee that everyone will receive it, but offers to solve problems with their own education — is this discrimination, or not providing assistance? Everyone has the right to housing, but not everyone has it — is this discrimination? If someone did not offer a homeless person to share his shelter with him, then this is discrimination? When someone built a house and did not provide for special funds for wheelchair users, he showed disregard for the problems of the disabled, and not hostility towards the disabled. People all too often show callousness and inattention to each other’s problems — this is not discrimination. But to call callousness to the problems of disabled people discrimination is to demonstrate one’s political correctness, this is hypocrisy. No public organs, no state organs possess anything that generates or eliminates callousness. Callousness is personal, it is from the mind. And when a person demands the elimination of callousness either from state bodies or from public organizations, this always indicates that he is only trying to relieve himself of the burden of unwanted problems. Help the disabled, do for them what you think is proper and necessary. And the disabled will be the owner of what millions of healthy people do not have — the owner of human attention, warmth and attentiveness. From Snob magazine