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Hello, everyone. And welcome back to America Under the Microscope, advanced episode. Hi, Lulu.

Hi, James.

In our basic episode, we were talking about the generalities of political correctness. For this advanced episode, I want to get into the more nitty gritty of PC language, specifically how it's almost impossible to know what is PC now.

Yeah. Has it been taken too far?

I, me personally, I think some people do take it a bit too far. You can see this by how the standard just keeps changing. And there is no set standard of what is or is not PC, but it seems like people keep moving the goal post.

It's like… it's like you can say this but not that. Now you can't say that either you have to say this, now you can't say this, you have to say those. It's like… what is right?

Yeah. And who's to decide what's right?

That's the other key, it’s like who gets to make the decision, because if it's say, if we're going to talk about like the common one that shows up a lot, let's say just simply, should you say black or should you say African American?

OK. So who is the one who decides which is politically correct? If you're talking about the community that you're directly referring to, they don't… themselves have a consensus of what is or is not PC. So if you have the group, you're trying to avoid offending, who can't decide whether it is or is not offensive, then you're at a loss.

The other thing is, you were talking about language being ever changing, especially this whole PC language. You know that the whole idea of reclaiming certain words.

For example, that's just again use this idea of black. So white is okay but black is not, it's been for a period of time people thought that was not PC, you have to say African American, what not. And then there are people saying, no, why shouldn't we say black? We should reclaim that word and then just use it in a positive sense.

You see, in a lot of aspects, language has been reclaimed to mean something positive because why should you think black is an offensive term if it's just a word?

So, as… there's no good answer to that and I… sociologists and other much more educated people than us debate this all the time and they don't get anywhere with it.

No, it's almost like debating for debating’s sake.

I think that's what they get paid to do. They're talking heads.

Yeah. The other thing that's very big, that's also relevant to PC language is the idea of cancel culture.

Yes, cancel culture. This is a big one right now. And you see this a lot, like this is something big, you'll see in a lot of college campuses in America right now, is students trying to stop speakers from coming to the school to give presentations, because some of the students don't agree with the views or the things that speaker says, even though the university invited them to introduce different views and different opinions.

And right now, cancel culture, I personally think cancel culture is extremely dangerous, just because somebody doesn't like something is not a reason that you should stop them from speaking.

Because if you use like in a classroom, like I spend time in the classroom, we have questions and discussions, and students get to share their opinions. I don't always agree with my students’ opinions, but I'm not going to prevent them from sharing their views in class. And I'm also not going to let my students argue or insult students for sharing opposing views.

Yeah, honestly, with classroom I do kind of understand like teachers shouldn't just indoctrinate their students with their own ideas or political views. However, this whole cancel culture, I do agree, it can get very dangerous.

It also is, for example, one part of cancel culture is even if you are doing a lot of things correct but if you say one wrong thing that is deemed as none PC then that's your public image completely ruined damaged because…

Are you thinking of Johnny Depp right now? The Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial has excellent example of the cancel culture.

Yeah, but now Johnny Depp is finally in the clear.

Oh, yeah, he won his case. But a lot of the trouble came from an article that his ex-wife had published in a newspaper with… there wasn't even accord police reporting thing, that's just her word in a public sphere, and people took her word for it, and Johnny Depp lost his job, his career was damaged, and that's an effect of this cancel culture.

So words can be really powerful, and it's sometimes if it's a he says/she says situation without any evidence to back it up, it can be very, very difficult for the public to really know who's right, who's wrong, but then we're not getting into that.

But to just go back to what you are saying like people are trying to police their language or they get their language policed by other people. Is this one thing, say one wrong thing and your life is ruined, that I do think is pretty dangerous; and I'm more leaning towards what you said quoting your own grandma, you said it's not what you say, it's how you say it.

Yeah, definitely. The message behind the words, not the words themselves. We can say bad words in a very loving way and we can say good words in a very hateful way.

Yeah. I don't know if you're going to agree with me on this.

Of course, I am all for being polite. I'm all for actually being an egalitarian treating everyone as equal do not have prejudice, do not have discrimination.

However, isn't policing your words to that extent, policing your language saying that oh we mustn't say this type of language to this group of people because we might offend them. Even if this language seems not that offensive, but because they are minority group, they're going to get hurt, they're going to get offended. Isn't that a little bit condescending? That to me, that can be a bit condescending.

Some people in those minority groups would agree with you. They do find a condescending. That's why it's so complex. Again, there's no consensus on this, it’s that people cannot agree what is or is not right? So in some cases, they just don't talk.

The people sometimes… honestly people who are really, really PC or they sound very, very PC, they're always very careful about using PC language, especially when it comes to race, they can actually be the biggest racist.

Yeah, they use it as kind of a shield.

Especially… and also if we're talking about offending others, really shouldn't we let the people who are in this minority group say…

Being… offending someone isn’t a good standard of whether something is okay because you can't control what is or is not offensive. It's personal. But you can avoid being hurtful like purposefully hurtful to others. People should take honest mistakes as that’s that honest mistakes, they didn't know, shouldn't demonize them for that.

If you are going to really judge a person by what they say, you need to think about a pattern, like if you constantly say things that are really offensive to a certain group of people, then of course, you are intentionally being offensive. But if it's just a slip of tongue or you just don't know like you said, then should people really be punished to that extent?

But then again if you have public presence, this is always very sensitive, very touchy subject; and I'm sure when our listeners are listening to this episode, maybe a lot of you don't really agree with me or James.

That's okay.

That's okay, and leave your comment in the comment section. And we're not going to debate, we're just going to share our opinions; and I think from the bottom of our heart, we don't want to offend anyone. I think that is the most important thing.

Yeah. And we want to hear from you no matter your view.

All right. On that note, we're going to wrap up and we'll see you next time. Thank you, James.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening, everyone.