Political Correctness and Public Sector Management

2 November 2006 at 9:32 am Nicolai Foss Leave a comment

| Nicolai Foss |

The following is ephemera, but we have noted from the blog stats that our readership appreciates this category of posts. And we believe in giving the market what the market wants.

I was recently accused by an (admittedly weird) external lecturer here at CBS for having fascist sympathies. I thought my political leanings were classical-liberal, which I would tend to associate with rather the opposite of fascism. Oh well; the reasoning of this person was that I ran a blog that linked to the Ludwig von Mises Institute; that institute was known for being associated with people who had an unconventional view of the American Civil War; a view, this person added, that any sane human being would recognize as fascist! QED

I was reminded of this incident when I read this story in the UK newspaper, The Daily Mail. The wise Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire has, in a masterstroke of political correctness, decided to ban the use of the word “political correctness”! There is a strange reflexivity at work here which sociologists will certainly appreciate. Here is an excerpt from the story:

A council has warned staff against using the phrase ‘political correctness’ at work because it might offend people.

A booklet outlining ‘equality’ policy to council workers claims using the term at work can be damaging and even linked it to the Ku Klux Klan.

The bizarre publication also orders staff not to use words like ‘policeman’, ‘fireman’ and ‘chairman’, suggesting they are classic examples of ‘exclusionary language.’

While the word ‘ethnic’ is also outlawed for being not ‘appropriately descriptive.’

The 44-page training book called ‘Equality Essentials’ has been used for staff training courses at Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire.

The publication outlines forms of damaging behaviour in the workplace and rates them on a five-level scale.

The authors claim that moving things around on someone else’s desk is as serious as punching or kicking them.

And workers are instructed to come up with 10 things they can do every day to make colleagues feel better.
….

A section of the ‘PC booklet is devoted to denouncing the use of the words ‘political correctness’.

It states:’Political correctness is often used to describe what some of us think are unnecessary changes which don’t really bother anyone.

‘The term political correctness was coined in 1988 by John O’Sullivan III, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was making an after dinner speech complaining about how Black Americans were being allowed to take the jobs traditionally reserved for the white majority because of a wave of political correctness.

‘Since then the phrase political correctness has almost universally been used to decry changes which aim to prevent offensive behaviour.’