User:El Taj/PC or anti-racist?

This was originally to be posted as a topic in the RationalWiki:Saloon bar, but I started rabbiting on for a bit so decided to turn it into a userspace essay.

I met up with several old school friends in a bar to have a few drinks celebrating one of their birthday's. I was back in central London and it'd taken me an hour and a half to get to the bar in question from the tube station. Researching later I realised the bar was only 2 minutes away from the next station along and that I'd wasted an hour and a half of my life wandering around London, eventually getting on the back of a taxi rickshaw to be carted through Chinatown, Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square before heading through Westminster towards the Houses of Parliament. My friends I were supposed to be meeting had been phoning me every two minutes to ask where I was. I asked the taxi driver, some clueless guy with an Eastern European accent, where the fuck we were.

"We're just coming up to Big Ben." Why? We passed where I needed to be twenty minutes ago. "Oh, did we? Well we can go back." No thank you, I don't want to waste another half an hour on this fucking rickshaw with you dragging me around, "following the signs" as you said. I stood up and left without paying, lighting a cigarette while backtracking to the nearest tube station, calling my friend and telling him to meet me and take me to the bar. While sitting on the London Underground it occurred to me how ridiculous I must've looked going through Piccadilly Circus at half past nine on a Saturday night, a solitary man in a suit jacket on the back of a rickshaw usually favoured by couples or groups of three getting ferried between bars. Never mind.

I eventually got to the bar and ordered a beer, pausing to give my friend a hug and a kiss, wishing her a happy birthday. The bar was very busy, but there were only about five or so of my friends here. My ex-girlfriend from a few years back was present, and had brought her boyfriend with her as she often does when we meet up nowadays. He's a bit further into his twenties than the rest of us, and while I get on well enough with him he's not the kind of guy I'd hang out with by my own choice. He's constantly bigging himself up, brags that he's been in more fights than you can count on both hands, and that he can't help but get (obviously unwanted) attention from all the girls when he's out, don't ya know. The only thing I have in common with him is that we used to have sex with the same person. And unfortunately, we support the same football club.

At one point a discussion about relationships (or something, I can't quite remember) led to his remark "I gave up on my sister when she started going out with black guys." I had come to expect this kind of attitude from this man, having previously heard he'd believed in this kind of thing and had supposedly voted from the British National Party in the 2010 general election. Whatever. People's political views are there own business. Laughing uncomfortably but saying nothing I knocked back some more of the screwdriver I was holding. This prompted his girlfriend to laugh at the "look of disgust on my face" and my old friend who had come to rescue me from the Underground station to say "it's because it's not politically correct!" I didn't mind this. He's one of my oldest friends and it's an old joke to call me politically correct. The boyfriend then said, "hey, it could have been worse, I could've said 'wogs'." Charming.

I've never thought of myself as politically correct. I don't even know what the fuck defines "politically correct" anymore, and I don't think these friends of mine do either. It's become a meaningless smear word used by reactionary media outlets in the UK (the Daily Mail springs to mind) who loathe not only liberals and left-wingers, but pretty much anything any person or organisation ever does politically, culturally, socially, which is different to how things used to be. Not only that, but it seems to have become synonymous with "health and safety regulations" by these people. You read a story about how a teacher isn't allowed to rescue a kid in their class from being attacked by bears or something because they're afraid the kid's parents will sue them if you drop the kid. Politically correct? Or health and safety? Or one and the same? Papers like the Mail, the Express, and the Sun overlook the double standard that the writers for them are the exact kind of people who would love a chance to sue someone in a situation like that.

No, I'm not politically correct thank you very much. I hate the whole concept of "political correctness gone mad." I've never been one of these over-sensitive clitorises blown up to six feet tall who phone in to complain to the BBC because someone said "fuck" or "cunt" on a live broadcast. Too many people get worked up when they see or hear something they don't like and instead of pausing, thinking, taking stock and so forth, they instead complain through letters, telephone calls, Facebook updates, and online essays through marginally notable rationalist websites. "Repost if you agree" Facebook statuses. "We give millions in foreign aid but our own country's still fucked!" Jeremy Clarkson saying something stupid on the One Show. The Kony 2012 campaign of last month. I have yet to watch the video.

If you're watching shit like Big Brother or I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here you deserve to be offended. I remember the last Match of the Day before Christmas 2011 where Alan Hansen (ex-Scotland and Liverpool player) casually referred to black players in the English Premier League as "coloured." The next day I was on an Underground train to meet a friend, picked up a discarded Evening Standard and saw an article covering the incident and Hansen's immediate and unreserved apology the following day. I can easily see why this word would have been offensive to black people, especially when football in England (and much of the Western footballing world in fact) prides itself on a game where people of different races and ethnicities come together to play. I wasn't offended. "Surprised" would be a better word. I would've thought the BBC would have told its employees what words could and couldn't fly on live television. Hansen didn't use the word in anger or malice, and I was not offended. Being white, I will never know what it feels like to be called any number of anti-black epithets nor will I ever be in a position to say what is and isn't offensive to black people. I didn't feel the need to phone in telling the producers to hand him his P50. Watching MOTD with my father he said that in his time "coloured" flew and "black" didn't. Evidently Alan had missed the memo that they'd switched it around.

I've always been an anti-racist. I grew up in a London suburb with a generous proportion of black people, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, whether British born or not, and didn't think anything of it. This was my default state of mind, and I was only aware that I could be described as "anti-racist" when I met people who perceived differences - whether joking or serious - with skin colour. I can't help but feel uncomfortable when someone who I once had a very close relationship starts dragging round someone who comes out with this crap, never mind how much they really "mean" it.

I remember a house party last year with a group of work friends, most of whom were black or Asian. Myself and about four or five other people there were white and I had been necking with a girl (also white) I had been seeing casually for the previous couple of weeks. Later on that evening I was talking to a friend of mine (black English girl) who was extremely drunk and ended up telling me she thought I was a kind of harmless racist, a suburban white boy who had inadvertently been brought up this way. I was offended, rejecting this statement coolly, but avoided getting worked up over it. I never bother getting into shouting arguments, ranting and raving like a maniac if I can avoid it, especially when alcohol is present as it only gives an excuse for everyone there to "get involved" and "take care of you." I've always been able to handle alcohol. Numerous times I've stumbled home after putting fuck knows how many UK units through me. Fortunately for me my friend passed out in bed with two or three other people later that evening (or early morning as I remember getting a taxi back home with my lady friend at about 4am) and has more than likely forgotten her accusations. It's a conversation I'd like to forget.

If believing someone has the right to be with someone regardless of skin colour is politically correct... well shit, call me politically correct. If it's anti-racist, call me anti-racist. Or if it's an attitude which should be so widely acknowledged in Britain in the 21st century that one doesn't even think about it...

...what do you call that?