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“PC” So Far
- Abstract
The term “political correctness” seems to have originated in the early part of the century, when it was employed by various species of Marxists to describe and enforce conformity to their preferred ideological positions. Books, films, opinions, even historical events were termed politically correct or politically incorrect depending on whether or not they advanced a particular Marxist view. There is no indication that the revolutionary ideologues and activists of that period spoke of political correctness with any trace of irony or self-mockery.
Eventually the term dropped out of the political lexicon, only to be revived in the early 1980′s when it came into use by spokesmen for assorted contemporary ideologies: black consciousness and black power, feminism, homosexual rights, and to a lesser degree pacifism, environmentalism, the counterculture in general. The new Webster’s College Dictionary, published by Random House, defines political correctness as “marked by or adhering to a typically progressive orthodoxy on issues involving especially race, gender, sexual affinity, or ecology.” These days, as most people know, the home of such “typically progressive orthodoxy” is the American university.
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