Two black-and-white photos. Top: A February 1897 photo of the St. Petersburg chapter of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. Seven men gathered around a table with Lenin seated in the center. Over his right shoulder stands Alexander Malchenko. Bottom: The same photo with Malchenko airbrushed out. Malchenko was arrested in 1929 and executed in 1930. He was rehabilitated in 1958 and restored to subsequent reprints of the photo.
2 December 2022
The term politically correct carries a different value depending on who is saying or hearing the term, but the Oxford English Dictionary gives a solid, objective definition:
(a) appropriate to the prevailing political or social circumstances (in early use not as a fixed collocation); (b) spec. (originally U.S., sometimes depreciative) conforming to a body of liberal or radical opinion, esp. on social matters, usually characterized by the advocacy of approved causes or views, and often by the rejection of language, behaviour, etc., considered discriminatory or offensive (cf. correct adj. Additions); abbreviated PC.
The first definition is the older one, dating to the late eighteenth century. And as the OED notes, politically correct is often simply a collocation of words rather than a fixed lexical item. A good example of such an early collocation is the earliest use that I know of, in the 1793 US Supreme Court opinion by Justice James Wilson in Chisholm v. Georgia:
Sentiments and expressions of this inaccurate kind prevail in our common, even in our convivial, language. Is a toast asked? “The United States,” instead of the “People of the United States,” is the toast given. This is not politically correct. The toast is meant to present to view the first great object in the Union: It presents only the second: It presents only the artificial person, instead of the natural persons, who spoke it into existence.
The second definition, the one we most often hear today, is much more recent, appearing in the twentieth century. Early uses of this sense are overwhelmingly found in Marxist writing, but the earliest instance I have found is not in a communist context. Also, in early use the phrase is used approvingly; it is only later that it acquires a negative connotation. The phrase appears in the Christian Science Monitor of 4 September 1919 and is in reference to the policies of the recently defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire:
Mr. Svarc charged that just as the Magyars would allow no priest to serve in Slovakia unless he were “politically correct,” in being which he had to become a traitor to those of his own blood and a slave to the Magyars, so the Magyar Government had issued orders to the bishops to cooperate with Austro-Hungarian consuls in this country to get “right conditions” in the United States.
Marxist use of politically correct and political correctness follow shortly after, so it may be that the term was in use by those on the left wing, just not published in English texts, in 1919. The Russian Revolution had already happened by the time this article was published, so it would be no surprise if earlier, Marxist uses turn up.
But there is no doubt that politically correct had become a term of art in Marxist circles by the middle of the 1920s. A statement by the Executive Committee of the Communist International on a general strike in Britain, published in the American Daily Worker on 20 July 1926 reads, in part:
It is characteristic that the remarkable historical process to the left of the British workers proceeded before all and first of all thru the trade unions. Hence it was not an accident but a fully legitimate and politically correct step of the British Communist Party to issue the slogan: “All power to the general council of the trade unions.”
And there is this from the pages of the Militant of 15 October 1929 about schisms in the Russian Communist Party:
In the form of a struggle against Philistinism he casts suspicion on the sincerity of the struggle against the Right deviation. Schatzkin believes that the victory over the Right was not achieved thanks to the politically correct line of the Party and its energetic defense against the Right opportunists, but thanks to the inertia and emptiness of the Party philistine.
By the mid 1930s, politically correct was appearing in non-Marxist writing, but in reference to restrictions on speech in the Soviet Union, and it is here that the term starts to acquire its negative valence. From the San Antonio Light of 6 May 1935:
Russians do not emigrate and bring the truth with them simply because they cannot leave. To get a visa, a Russian must be “politically correct” and pay $400 fee in gold. The owner of so many rubles couldn’t be “politically correct.”
We can see from these uses that left-wing writing placed a positive valence on political correctness, and the mainstream press in the United States viewed the term negatively. This split would continue through to today, although until the 1970s, references to political correctness were primarily in the context of the Soviet Union, China, and other Marxist governments.
In the 1970s, progressive—not necessarily Marxist—movements in the United States picked up the term. In the process, the term softens from hardline Marxist dogma to a call for inclusion and being mindful and respectful of voices and views that had traditionally been suppressed or ignored. We see the start of this new sense in an article on the feminist movement in the July 1973 issue of Esquire magazine. But that article stops short of using the term itself, merely collocating correct and political:
The mood of the original feminists has changed utterly. The anger is gone, and in its place there seems a blend of sadness, softness, compassion and exhaustion. There is also humor—some of it unconscious—when people recount the rise and fall of groups, the setting up and toppling of “correct political lines,” the purges and counterpurges.
By the mid 1980s, the abbreviation PC starts to appear. From the Tribune of Blackpool, England of 6 April 1984:
AT LAST—a video game which does not encourage mindless militarism. An American company, PC (Politically Correct) Games has just marketed a game called “Defend Nicaragua” which is about defeating the American-backed Contras.
The name of the game company hints that the abbreviation was in already use by this point. And a few months later a KNT News Wire piece on political differences on college campuses uses the abbreviation in a piece about Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania:
“The campus,” said Drew Clark, sophomore philosophy major and opinion editor of the school paper, The Phoenix, “is divided into the athletic and the P.C. side of campus.”
P.C.?
“The politically correct side of campus. The people who are progressive, the pro-Mondale people, the Latin American studies group, the feminist group. Those are the core opposition groups.”
And there is this from the San Francisco Examiner of 11 November 1990:
The term “politically correct,” with its suggestion of Stalinist orthodoxy, is spoken more with irony and disapproval than with reverence.
But across the country the term PC, as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at universities. There are even initials—PCP—to designate a politically correct person.
So, the current debate over political correctness has been raging for decades with little progress on either side. An editorial in the Vancouver Sun of 30 October 1993 sums it up aptly:
However, is [Canadian Supreme Court Justice John Sopinka] not aware that pointing a finger at groups and accusing them of being purveyors of political correctness is itself a way of suppressing freedom of speech? Accord to a news report of his speech he criticized some feminists, homosexuals and visible minorities for the insistence that “contrary views be suppressed.” Somehow, those are the groups that are consistently attacked for cracking the whip of political correctness to keep public debate in line with their viewpoints. Yet they hardly have a monopoly on censorship wishes. Just about everyone wants to shut up somebody else, ranging from the prim citizenry who would ban Margaret Laurence’s books from school bookshelves to crooked executives who would fire whistleblowers.
The problem with sneering at the familiar roll call of feminists, gays and visible minorities for fostering PC attitudes is that they may keep quiet and their legitimate concerns may go unaddressed.
In any event, just who has been muzzled? People seem to be saying nastier things than ever before about their fellow Canadians. In fact, they often attempt to deflect criticism by prefacing their ugly statements with “This probably isn’t politically correct, but….”
Labelling people or ideas can be a means of belittling them. The judge should take care lest his irritation over political correctness makes him deaf to some people’s voices.
(Note: In my 2004 book Word Myths, I dated the newer sense to the 1970s. Subsequent discovery of the earlier uses showed this to be wrong.)
Sources:
“Alleged Magyar Campaign Exposed.” Christian Science Monitor, 4 September 1919, 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Bernstein, Richard. “Academe and Orthodoxy.” San Francisco Examiner, 11 November 1990, This World 17. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“British General Strike Gives Lessons to Labor Movement, Is View of Comintern Executive.” Daily Worker, 20 July 1926, 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Davidson, Sara. “Foremothers.” Esquire, 80.1, July 1973, 74. Esquire Magazine Archive.
Flannery, Mary (KNT News Wire). “Football Players in a Minority at Swarthmore.” Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), 1 November 1984, C11. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
“New Opposition Among the Russian Youth.” The Militant, 15 October 1929, 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2006, s.v. politically, adv.; March 2005, s.v. P, n.; Draft Additions, 1997, s.v. correct, adj.
“Political Correctness All in the Name” (editorial). Vancouver Sun (British Columbia), 30 October 1993, A16. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Sanger, R.H. “Web Holds Enslaved Reds.” San Antonio Light (Texas), 6 May 1935, 7-A. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Street, John. “John Street’s Diary: Never Trust a Tory to Recognize a Free Election.” Tribune (Blackpool, England), 6 April 1984, 4.
Wilson, James. Chisholm, Ex’r. v. Georgia. 2 U.S. 419, Supreme Court of the United States, 1 February 1793. Thomson Reuters Westlaw.
Photo credit: Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, 1897. Public domain image. Wikipedia Commons. Original. Airbrushed.