Lin Yao, "I Beg to Differ"

Lin Yao, “I Beg to Differ with Xu Jilin & Co.:  The Intellectual Trap of the (Anti-) Political Correctness Framing”[1]

Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction

Lin Yao is one of the many thousands of Chinese students in the United States, and is completing his law degree at Yale after doing a Ph.D. in Political Science at Columbia University.  His research focus is on contemporary Chinese intellectual discourse, and he recently stirred up a certain amount of controversy by publishing an article on Chinese liberals who support Donald Trump, liberals who, in Lin’s analysis, see Trump as defending American democracy against the hordes of the politically correct left.  The text translated here is Lin’s reaction to an online discussion involving four Shanghai professors (Xu Jilin, Liu Qing, Bai Tongdong, and Wu Guanjun—none of whom are Trump supporters) of the Black Lives Matter movement in America since the death of George Floyd (a translation of this discussion is available here). 

Lin writes as a progressive, and his views of the Black Lives Matter movement do not differ substantially from those expressed by the Shanghai professors.  Lin takes aim, however, at the professors’ natural, unquestioning acceptance of the anti-political correctness discourse which is widespread, particularly on the right in the United States and Europe, but which in fact has become “naturalized” almost everywhere:  when is the last time you heard anyone, even on the left, admit to being in favor of political correctness?  No one likes being told how to think, and above all what not to say.  Lin’s goal is to probe what is really going on here, which he does with the deftness of a Qin Hui.

First, Lin notes, there are of course ideologues, on the left and on the right, who attempt to enforce intellectual conformity and stifle dissent.  What has happened over the past few decades, however, is that the term “political correctness” has been captured by the right and used to badmouth the left, ignoring instances in which the right has done the same thing.  As examples of right-wing political correctness, Lin cites the blackballing of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick after his protests against police brutality, and of Mitt Romney by the conservative establishment after his vote to impeach President Trump. 

Another example which Lin does not cite was Trump’s condemnation of “cancel culture” (part of political correctness) in his July 4 speech at Mount Rushmore.  “Cancel culture,” in which people lose their jobs for “politically incorrect” words or deeds—a recent example is that of Amy Cooper, who was fired after calling the police on an African-American birdwatcher in Central Park—is of course morally debatable at best.  But Trump is “cancel culture” personified; cross him and you lose your job (ask any moderate Republican who chose retirement over facing Trump’s wrath in a primary), an irony that did not occur to me until I read Lin’s piece.

So what has happened is that the right has succeeded in weaponizing the notion of political correctness, to the point that the term is always pejorative, and almost always associated with the left.  Calling someone politically correct not only puts him on the defensive, but also redefines the issue in partisan terms as being part of a progressive agenda—whereas in fact, the very accusation of political correctness is itself already partisan.  Lin further illustrates how anti-political correctness is in fact a defense of the status quo which seeks to limit the freedom of expression of those attempting to question or change it. The right's defense of Confederate statues (“They are tearing down our history!”) is a perfect example.  Once you remove the leftist label from the idea of political correctness, it is clear that it is a rhetorical move frequently deployed by both the left and the right.

Although Lin writes as a progressive, his goal is not to engage in “what-aboutism,” not to say “the right is more politically correct than the left.”  Instead, his goal is to illustrate how the very idea of political correctness obscures the issue in question and hinders discussion, further impoverishing public discourse.    Finally, Lin’s text makes clear that while he is writing from a posture largely informed by what we think of as Western, progressive values, he is addressing a Chinese audience, because discussions of “political correctness” are very common in Chinese Internet culture, and work according to the same logic he describes here.

Translation

On the evening of June 22, the East China Normal University-University of British Columbia Joint Research Center on China and the World organized a discussion with four participating professors, on the theme of the current anti-racism protests underway in the United States.  Generally speaking, all four professors expressed their sympathetic understanding of the movement, a point of view that I certainly share.  At the same time, I felt that there was room for discussion of some specific points they made as well as of the intellectual framing behind their discussion, so with all due respect, I decided to offer my opposing view on these questions.  Since I was not able to listen to their conversation directly, my response can only be based on the transcripts of the discussion that were compiled afterwards, and I apologize if I have misunderstood any of the professors' views.
 
My objections are centered on the “(anti-) political correctness” framing that characterizes the discussion from beginning to end.  Political correctness in the West is something that has been much discussed on the internet in China in recent years.  In the last couple of months, events like HBO’s decision not to offer “Gone with the Wind” and “Friends” out of concerns for the lack of diversity among the actors, or the debate in the South over the removal of the statues of Confederate generals, have been taken by some commentators as proof that “the protest movement has gotten out of hand, and is entering the stage of ‘political correctness.’”  In the Shanghai discussion, Professor Xu Jilin was the host, and he too chose to begin the discussion with the question of political correctness, thus choosing the framing for the rest of the conversation.
 
In their responses, the other three participants did not challenge this framing, but instead conceded to it automatically, tactfully defending an anti-racism movement that its opponents see as “an expansion of political correctness.”  For example, Professor Bai Tongdong’s way of putting it was:  political correctness in the US has perhaps gotten a bit out of control, but the prevalence of "political incorrectness" within some discourses that defend racial, gender and geographical discrimination suggests the urgent need to be corrected by "political correctness."  As Professor Liu Qing put it:  the idea of “political correctness” is connected to fundamental notions of civilization, and is inseparable from the causes of modern progressivism--liberty and respect for equality--so "political correctness" cannot be completely abandoned, even if it is important to maintain a sense of proportion in the process of pursuing such goals. Professor Wu Guanjun’s approach was:  “Political correctness” can indeed make some people afraid to speak out, but the existential threat that Blacks in America suffer on a daily basis due to police brutality and systemic discrimination is a more pressing problem than freedom of speech.  At the moment, the public space for a calm and rational discussion has disappeared, so we can set aside the problem of political correctness until later.
 
Thus while the three professors displayed an understanding attitude to things that have been identified as “politically correct,” the debate as a whole did not manage to avoid the intellectual trap set by the “(anti-) political correctness” framing.  In fact, the very idea of “(anti-) political correctness” is a discursive trick that aims to change the subject, displacing the focus of public opinion.  Once we accept the contamination of the idea of “political correctness” at the level of language, and discuss questions like “what is the proper measure of political correctness?” in the framing defined by the contamination, we are already trapped in a distorted discursive system in which it is easy to ignore where the true problems lie.
 
Let’s be clear here.  To say that "'(anti-) political correctness' is a discursive trick" is not to say that the possibility of "sociocultural forces suppressing freedom of expression" (in the US) cannot exist, nor is it to deny that many people use the term "political correctness" with real concern and anxiety about whether "sociocultural forces will (or have) suppressed freedom of expression".  The opposite is true.  Pointing out the discursive nature of the  (anti-) political correctness stance aims precisely at removing the rhetorical distortion and examining in their entirety the issues of concern the stance obscures, thereby enhancing the depth and quality of relevant public discourse.

So, why do I say that (anti-) political correctness is a discursive trick?  What intellectual trap does the trick obscure and how does that trap contaminate public discourse?  To answer these questions, we should first think for a moment:  When we say that something is "politically correct" or that the expression of some opinion has been suppressed by "political correctness", what exactly are we referring to, what are we concerned about?  Does the use of the term (anti-) politically correct help or hurt in our efforts to appropriately sort out, analyze, understand, and criticize important issues?  Beginning from this perspective, we can readily discover that the discursive framing of (anti-) political correctness harms the effective operation of public opinion for two reasons:  one is its over-generality in conceptual terms, and the other is its selective focus and blindness. 
 
The Over-Generality of Political Correctness
 
Let’s start with the question of the overly general nature of political correctness.  In the Western world, when many people say “political correctness,” what they actually mean is:  the demand by a particular group to exclude from certain language platforms the expression (for reasons of content or of the mode of expression) of certain political or ideological stands that violate the preferences of the group making the demand.
 
Clearly, once we start to work with a fairly detailed definition, the different character of many of the items originally included under the opaque term "political correctness" stands out, allowing us to see in greater detail which items are justified and which are not.  For example, who is the subject of the exclusion, what type of speech is being excluded, the nature of the platform on which the exclusion is taking place, the specific manner in which the exclusion is taking place, the personal impact on those excluded, the ideological or political considerations used to justify the exclusion, and so on, are all factors that may have an impact on the legitimacy of applying the label to a particular instance.
 
Let’s take the example of the "nature of the subject of the action:" there is surely a world of difference between a violent state apparatus restricting or prohibiting free expression by means of the law, and a business (particularly a non-monopoly business) banning certain expressions in order to cater to its target audience.  For example, HBO has restored "Gone with the Wind" to its offerings, having added an "introduction to the racist historical background" to the movie, but viewers who want to watch the original version without the introduction are still free to go to other sites such as Amazon Prime.  This is clearly not the same thing as if the U.S. government were to ban Gone with the Wind so that no one could offer or view it.  This distinction is especially important for those who advocate "market freedom:"  if you believe that corporations have the right to cater to consumer preferences for the sake of profit, then it is reasonable to accept corporations’ catering to consumers' political preferences for the sake of profit as well (including removing from the shelves products that are offensive to their target consumer base) rather than criticizing them for "bowing to political correctness." 

Viewing consumers' own notions of "political correctness" (as opposed to the "political correctness" imposed by the violent apparatus of the state) as a disturbance of the market order is contradictory.  Of course, whether the state has the right to interfere with certain expressions of a business in certain circumstances (e.g., racist restaurant owners refusing to serve customers of certain races), and how the right of a business to "refuse certain expressions in the pursuit of profit" should be limited when it has developed a monopoly position, are issues that could be further discussed.  But it is precisely moving out of the murky framework of "political correctness" and switching to this kind of detailed definition of the various factors that can facilitate further discussion.
 
By the same logic, the nature of the excluded speech itself, the manner of exclusion, the personal impact of the exclusion, and so on, are all factors to be taken into account in assessing a particular case, without going into detail here.  In short, even if we desire to discuss the question of whether "political correctness has gone too far", the term "political correctness" must first be broken down into a more detailed definition in order to be effectively analyzed on the basis of the various factors in a particular case.  To speak only in general terms of "(anti-)political correctness" is to refuse to confront the diversity and complexity of specific cases.
 
If the problem were solely one of over-generalization, it would not be such a big deal; the bigger problem with the term "political correctness" is that it puts different phenomena in the same category of public discussion, leading to selective focus and an inability to see the issue.  This selectivity is manifested in two ways:  the first is the partisan orientation of the concept in the context of the left-right "culture wars" of the West since the late Cold War, which creates a "partisan blind spot;" the second is the naturalization and normalization of the current situation through the framework of the discourse itself, which creates a corresponding "status quo blind spot."
 
The Partisan Blind Spot in the Discourse of Political Correctness
 
In his remarks, Professor Liu Qing talked about the history of the transformation of "political correctness" within the Western context from its function as a kind of self-criticism within the left to a rhetorical weapon used by conservatives to attack progressives.  I talked about this in a 2018 forum on “Political Correctness” and Freedom of Speech.  In the Western world, from the beginning of the 1980s, the use of the term political correctness acquired a clear partisan connotation, in which right-wing conservatives accused the left wing of attempting to suppress the free expression of conservatives on university campuses and in public discourse.  In contrast, no one used “political correctness” to refer to conservative attempts to stifle the free speech of the left.  In this way, those who used the expression unconsciously came to accept the stereotype that came with it (i.e., that political correctness is a purely left-wing phenomenon), which then focused attention and discussion on what was being said and done on the left, while ignoring parallel and often more serious instances of speech suppression on the right or in mainstream society that could equally well be called "political correctness" in general terms.
 
For example, many people now criticize the Black Lives Matter movement for “engaging in serious political correctness.”  But what these people do not realize is that if you really want to talk about "political correctness," it is the supporters of the BLM movement who are the victims of "political correctness" at the hands of the American right and mainstream society.  In 2016, the NFL quarterback player Colin Kaepernick got down on one knee during the pre-game performance of the national anthem (a gesture Martin Luther King used to practice during the civil rights movement) as a way to protest police brutality and systemic racism and to raise public awareness of these issues.  The act was quickly assailed by a part of the media, which accused him of daring to disrespect the national anthem. 

When Trump took office in 2017, he publicly clamored for the NFL to fire Kaepernick.  Under such pressure, the league promptly abandoned Kaepernick, and he was unemployed from that point forward, until the death of George Floyd triggered another wave of the BLM movement this year, and Kaepernick's ordeal was revived by the media.  The Kaepernick case clearly involves the suppression of freedom of speech, but none of those who are worried about "political correctness overkill," whether in the US or in China, have thought to include it in their thinking and discussion; perhaps some of them may not have heard of the incident, but others condemn political correctness on one hand but turn around and defend the league's firing of Kaepernick on the other (saying things like "The national anthem is not to be sullied," or "Sports should not be involved in politics"). 
 
Another example.  During the congressional impeachment vote against Trump earlier this year, Republican Senator Mitt Romney (also the Republican presidential candidate in 2012) voted in favor of Trump's impeachment, becoming the first (and only) senator in U.S. history to vote for the impeachment of a president of his own party.  Romney's act undoubtedly took great courage (as well as revealing the shamelessness of other Republicans), but he also became a target of conservative forces throughout the country, and was subsequently disqualified for participation in the Conservative Political Action Conference and other large-scale events, being turned away at the door.  If we use the framework of the "(anti-) political correctness" discourse, it is perfectly valid to say that Romney is a victim of "political correctness" at the hands of the American conservative community.  Of course we can also say that the organizers of an event are completely free to invite—and disinvite—whomever they want.  But this defense is equally applicable to the many cases in which the left has been accused of "political correctness" (which underscores the previous point that "political correctness" is too general a term).
 
In sum, the partisan nature of "(anti-) political correctness" discourse makes it easy for those who use it to be misled into a particular kind of mindset, in which, on the one hand, they keep an eye on every move of contemporary left-wing social movements, and take the slightest disagreement as a suppression of free expression (this preoccupation stems from the memory of the "left-wing regimes" of the Soviet Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, and is reinforced by the over-generality of the term "political correctness"); on the other hand, they turn a blind eye to what is happening on the right, underestimating the real threat it too can pose.  In this way, the discursive framework of "(anti-) political correctness" invariably distorts our perception of where the real threat to freedom of expression comes from in contemporary European and American societies.
 
The Status Quo Blind Spot in Political Correctness Discourse
 
Beyond the problem of partisan blind spots, "political correctness" as a discourse in the Western world functions more generally as an obstacle to public awareness of the current state of affairs and to challenging the status quo.  The word "political" has a connotation of "artificial" or "unnatural;"  when we disparage certain practices as "politically correct," we are in effect "naturalizing" and "normalizing" the status quo challenged by such practices and "artificializing" and "problematizing" the challenge we have termed "politically correct."  In fact, this casts a veil of naturalness, legitimacy and rationality over the status quo, while ignoring the fact that the status quo itself is also an artificial construct, and that the maintenance of the status quo by mainstream society is itself a more insidious and entrenched form of "political correctness."
 
Take for example the "Calvin Klein plus size model" issue that has been hotly debated on the Chinese Internet lately.  The underwear company Calvin Klein has been slammed by some netizens for "succumbing to political correctness" after one of its latest ads featured a large, Black, transgender model who doesn't fit the so-called "mainstream aesthetic."  But if we put aside the "politically correct" rhetoric and think about it the other way around, prior to this ad, underwear companies, under the cultural hegemony of the patriarchal “mainstream aesthetic,” chose their models to satisfy the male gaze, ignoring the real needs of their own customers for too long (for example, in real life, the lithe bodies of the models cannot serve a genuine reference point for larger women when they make their choice of undergarments).  Isn't it the real "political correctness" that needs to be opposed, the one that makes underwear companies lose potential profits from these customers?
 
In other words, when netizens accuse underwear companies of "giving in to political correctness" by changing models, they are actually using the term "political correctness" to "normalize" a status quo in which "underwear ads prioritize the male gaze over the needs of female customers" and the underlying patriarchal ideology, and to "problematize" the challenge to the status quo posed by the change of models in order to maintain the status quo (and thus continue to enjoy the privilege of the gaze).  If we wanted to keep the word "political correctness" (and its pejorative sense), we absolutely could have said:  Calvin Klein’s change of model not only is not "giving in to political correctness," but on the contrary, it is a rebellion against and an assault on "political correctness (of a long-standing patriarchal society)!"  If you are truly against "political correctness", you should applaud Calvin Klein for changing their models, and you should actively push other underwear companies to change theirs as well,  striving to be more diverse and less beholden to "mainstream aesthetics.”
 
To give another example, Professor Xu Jilin, who hosted the Shanghai discussion, claimed in his remarks that the founding of the United States reflected the "modern civilization that developed out of Protestantism," creating a "melting pot of cultures" with "Anglo-Saxon America" at its core, and so on.  Let’s set aside the fact that such "melting pot narratives" have been challenged, debunked, and disproven in recent decades by deeper research from fields such as U.S. immigration history, so that they no longer hold up on a factual level; solely in terms of the role these narratives have played in daily reality, this self-perception of a "melting pot of cultures, based on Protestant,  predominantly Anglo-Saxon civilization," is precisely what mainstream American culture has been defending as "political correctness" for more than 200 years since the founding of the nation, and has been used as a tool to combat "heresy" and "outsiders." 

It is by equating "real America" with "Christian heritage" and "Anglo-Saxon identity" that mainstream society could justify discriminatory immigration laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924, and laws against anti-miscegenation on the grounds that Chinese (or other Asians) are racially, culturally, and religiously fundamentally different from "real Americans.”  Even after these legal aspects of discrimination were abolished, mainstream society, through the cultural pressure of the "melting pot narrative,” forced minority immigrants either to abandon their original linguistic and cultural identity and "assimilate" into the so-called "American culture," represented by the white suburban middle-class American lifestyle, or to refuse and be deemed "un-American".  On the other hand, no matter how hard these minority immigrants try to integrate, they are still not fully accepted into the mainstream culture because they do not exist on the spectrum of "Anglo-Saxon heritage (and broader white identity)" and are sometimes faced with the embarrassment of being "perpetual aliens".
 
In this sense, the recent challenge of multiculturalism to the "melting pot of Anglo-Saxon Christianity" self-perception of mainstream American society aims precisely to break with the established "political correctness" and liberate various immigrant groups from the shackles of this perception.  And it falls to Chinese scholars, lacking an in-depth understanding of the social, political and cultural history of the United States, to accept and internalize the "political correctness" implicit in the mainstream discourse without thinking, and end up following the American right-wing in dismissing the initiative of contemporary identity political movements to rethink the mainstream status quo as "forgetting one's ancestors".
 
Finally, let's take the recent "statue removal" theme that has been discussed online as a last example.  In the framework of right-wing discourse, "toppling statues" is the embodiment of the "political correctness" of the contemporary left-wing identity politics movement.  But on the other hand, is not the very act of arguing that certain statues are too significant to be overturned, and of erecting certain statues in the first place, itself a way of constructing or defending a more entrenched "political correctness"?  As I have argued before, the erection and preservation of any statue is not a natural occurrence, but a reflection of the socio-political climate of a particular historical period.  For example, the Confederate statues that now dot the Southern and Midwestern states come from several historical periods, one being the rise of the second wave of the KKK in the early 1900s, and another the era of the white supremacists who ruled conservative states battling against the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.  These statues were erected precisely to whitewash the fact that the South fought the Civil War to preserve slavery and to demonstrate the determination of white supremacist forces to oppose racial equality.

Along with the erection of these statues, Southern politicians and writers have been active in constructing and propagating complementary cultural myths, such as the claim that Confederate statues were erected only to "honor the cultural heritage of the South" (if so, why did states like Kentucky, West Virginia, and others that sided with the federal government against the South, as well as Midwestern states that weren't involved in the Civil War at all, rush to build Confederate statues after the war was over?) and the great celebration of Robert E. Lee's personal qualities (while avoiding any mention of his cruelty to his slaves and touting his completely understandable “surrender in the face of certain defeat” as an example of “being unable to bear the suffering of others.”)  Confederate statues concretize and embody these cultural myths, which in turn are internalized as reasons why "Confederate statues cannot be removed without disrespecting history." 

Together, they construct and maintain a "political correctness" in mainstream society that is sympathetic to the "cultural heritage of the South" based on a "revisionist" historical narrative of the nature of the Civil War from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ("Slavery wasn't the real cause of the Civil War," "Southerners were just defending their homeland").  The rise of calls to remove Confederate statues in recent years means that Americans are beginning to rethink the cultural myths that pervade the mainstream narrative, and are beginning to be alert to and reflect on the white supremacist political intentions behind the statues, in other words, to challenge the "politically correct" kidnapping of the status quo by the "revisionist" civil war narrative of more than a century ago.  If you're truly against "political correctness," you should strongly support the removal of Confederate statues.
 
The same is true for other non-"Confederate" statues. For example, while I personally do not advocate the removal of Washington's statue, does framing the question as "political correctness has gone too far" help us to understand and discuss the topic?  Isn't the narrative that "Washington is the father of the nation, there is no America without Washington, and to remove the statue of Washington is to deny the entire history of the United States" exactly the "political correctness" that mainstream society has embraced up to now?  From this perspective, the removal of Washington’s statue is not "political correctness," but instead "anti-political correctness."

Even if you consider those who advocate the removal of the Washington statue to be "unreasonable," you should say that they are "anti-political correctness gone too far," not "political correctness gone too far."  Or, to take a step back, we can describe it as either "politically correct" or "anti-politically correct;" this also means that the discursive framework of "political correctness" does not actually help us to analyze in any depth the pros and cons of whether Washington’s statue should be removed, but merely evokes our suspicion and antipathy towards those who challenge the status quo through the effects that this discursive framework brings with it—over generalizations and a “status quo blind spot.”

All of which leads us to the conclusion that that the framework of the discourse of "(anti-)political correctness" is in fact itself entirely discursive.  Not only does it fail to promote deeper public discussion of issues such as freedom of expression and identity politics, but also, through its over generality and selectivity, makes people who use this framework blind to the complexities of real cases, and subconsciously adopts a conservative posture on socio-cultural issues, embracing the status quo and resisting change.

Notes

[1] 林垚, “与许纪霖、刘擎等商榷:（反）政治正确”框架的思维陷阱,” published online on the Pengpai Intellectual Marketplace 澎湃思想市场 on July 13, 2020, at the following address:  https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/mJafOYAY3jUysJlFfMDZRw .