The Meaning of “Consensus”

This article and its research were based on a false premise. There is no consensus about what “political correctness” means.

A solid research study would have asked Americans simple questions like, “Do you think all people should be treated the same?” or “Do you think all people deserve to be treated with respect?”
Kate Permut
Letters: “The Term ‘Political Correctness’ Primes People to Respond Negatively”

Of course, that presumes that there is a consensus about "treating all people the same" or "treating all people with respect" means. And I would submit that the bickering over PC culture is a direct result of the fact that there is no such consensus. And that leaves out any debates that terms like "should" and "deserve" inject into the picture.

Ms. Permut goes on to say that for her: "[Political correctness] means 'Treat everyone with the same respect'." But what does that mean, in practice? Treating everyone the same, treating everyone with respect and treating everyone as they wish to be treated are not necessarily the same things. And they can each mean different things to people on different sides of an interaction.

Reading through the letters, it was interesting how people often laid out simple, or even simplistic, definitions of “political correctness.” Such as: “just being polite,” or “fostering politeness and respect.”

This is, I think something we often see when people are dealing with something they understand to be self-evident. It's simple enough that no shading or nuance is needed. Of course all people shouldn't be treated the same. There are any number of reasons to treat two people differently under the same circumstances. But, for instance, not allowing a handicapped person to park closer to doors is not what Ms. Permut had in mind when she wrote her statement. Likewise, what treating someone with respect means differs. I suspect that the respect given to someone who has just done a service and someone who has just committed a crime might be quite different from one another. And she likely expects people to understand that. But the problem with simply expecting people to assume things is that they don't know where their assumptions should begin and end.

Therefore, there is something incomplete in pointing out the lack of consensus around the term political correctness, but failing to understand the lack of consensus in other terms, especially those that we consider "simple." Expecting the boundaries of assumption to be bright enough that they don't need to be clearly drawn is a minefield.