Without question, everyone deserves basic respect and human decency, everyone deserves the right to be who they are, and everyone deserves to feel safe. This is why the concept of political correctness was created, as an attempt to bring people together and diversify our environment. The sad truth about political correctness is the fact that the media is ruthlessly abusing it for monetary gain.
I have noticed that social media has become a breeding ground for political correctness, and this is exactly what the corporate culture wants to happen. During this past summer a tragic event occurred, the Charleston Shooting, and unfortunately social media managed to manipulate the purpose of political correctness and completely change the focus of this tragedy. While we should have been focused on the victims of this shooting, social media decided that the Confederate Flag was a politically incorrect symbol in our culture that incites hatred, racism, and violence among us. Within hours people were consumed with the debate over the Confederate Flag. At this point, a schism had been created between supporters and opponents of this symbol, essentially a race war had begun. Although political correctness is supposed to eliminate divisions in society, in this case its’ ideology was used to create a very heated one. Sadly, this is exactly what was meant to happen. Companies such as Facebook knew exactly what would happen in a situation such as this, and it was used as a way to generate profit. Watch the video that I have hyperlinked to see how this incident was abused to create a vast division amongst the people (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-charleston-shooting-and-the-confederate-flag/ ). After watching the video, please vote on the poll at the bottom of this page.
It is not a coincident that mass outrage and debate occurs on social media after an event like the Charleston Shooting, in fact it is becoming more and more normal. David Sessions is a doctoral student in history at Boston College. He wrote an article that reviews the writings of Jonathan Chait, one of my previous sources. According to him, anger and debate on social media has become so common because the media is using it to create profit for themselves. Events like the Charleston Shooting can be used to make people question their identities because it touches on their insecurities. Things that can be called racist acts are major profit centers for these companies due to the fact that they can use political correctness to turn those stories into online warfare (Sessions par. 8&9). This is not what political correctness was created for, but unfortunately this is how it is being used. People buy into the drama so easily that it makes using political correctness a successful business strategy for mainstream media. In his article in In These Times, Sessions states, “Identity-based outrage is now one of the most reliable sources of clicks and Facebook shares” (Sessions par. 8). Is it not obvious that we are being used as sources of advertisement and publicity by these companies? Every time we see stories that use political correctness to incite anger based on identity, we become angry, and that is exactly how the media wants us to react.
Considering the amount of time I, and others around me spend on social media, these are ideas well worth some thought. Is the mainstream press creating a culture of arguing and debating solely for monetary gain, or do they actually believe the messages behind the stories they are promoting? We need to understand that political correctness does have positive aspects, and it was created for good reasons, but its’ ideology has been corrupted and abused in ways that creates division among us.
Citations
CNN. Protesters. Digital image. FOX17. WXMI, 21 June 2015. Web. 17 Nov.
2015.
Harris, Ron. AP Photo. Digital image. Huffpost Politics.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 28 July 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
Sessions, David. "On Jonathan Chait, ‘Politically Correct’ Speech and the
Social Media Left." In These Times. IN THESE TIMES AND THE
INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.
2015.
Harris, Ron. AP Photo. Digital image. Huffpost Politics.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 28 July 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
Sessions, David. "On Jonathan Chait, ‘Politically Correct’ Speech and the
Social Media Left." In These Times. IN THESE TIMES AND THE
INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.