A programmer from New Zealand has come up with an interesting way to show critics of ‘political correctness’ why it can actually be pretty important.
Byron Clark set up his browser to automatically change all mentions of the term ‘political correctness to ‘treating people with respect’ and the results paint rather an interesting picture, reports Vox.com.
As more and more detractors accuse people of hiding behind political correctness, its critics make it sound like a scourge that threatens the very core of their freedom of speech.
I set up my web browser to automatically change "political correctness" to "treating people with respect" pic.twitter.com/yvNnqUWpNm
— Byron C Clark (@byroncclark) August 4, 2015
However, this experiment shows something very different. The truth of the matter is that often people use ‘political correctness’ as an all encompassing charge to level against those who wish to treat certain issues or causes with a greater degree of sensitivity.
For example, when the ‘hack’ is applied to a certain Mr Donald Trump’s comments from the first GOP debate it makes an already ridiculous sounding speech downright laughable.
When asked about his derogatory remarks towards women, Trump said:
I think the big problem this country has is treating people with respect.
I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for treating people with respect. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.
Basically Trump’s response was that the very idea of treating women respectfully was a problem for the country as a whole that it doesn’t have time for.
Although, it may sometimes be the case that political correctness is taken too far, I’m sure the majority of people would struggle to agree with Trump on that one…
