Political Correctness and the Status Games of Elites: Andrew Sullivan

What they mean by PC seems, in this study, to be the fear of being “called out” for saying the wrong thing, usually around race and gender.

…The policing of speech under threat of social ostracism is never fun. It constrains speech, it sees evil where there often isn’t any, it conflates mistakes with malice, and it exacerbates racial tension, rather than alleviating it.

So who on earth favors it? It’s not loved by racial minorities. Hispanics oppose PC by 87 percent; African-Americans by 75 percent. But it does correlate with class and education and whiteness: “Progressive activists are much more likely to be rich, highly educated — and white. They are nearly twice as likely as the average to make more than $100,000 a year. They are nearly three times as likely to have a postgraduate degree. And while 12 percent of the overall sample in the study is African American, only 3 percent of progressive activists are.

With the exception of the small tribe of devoted conservatives, progressive activists are the most racially homogeneous group in the country.”

One might be forgiven for thinking that “wokeness” is, in fact, a mere virtue signal among the white upper classes in their own struggle for power and influence among themselves. Imagine that.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/andrew-sullivan-the-danger-of-trumps-accomplishments.html