When I started university in Britain in 1988, political correctness didn’t exist. If a woman tried to speak at a students’ meeting, the cry would go up, “Get your tits out for the lads!” The ritual climax of bar conversations was a double entendre about homosexuality. But, in 1993, I went to study in the US and discovered PC. The American students I met didn’t make racist, sexist or homophobic jokes. When I returned home and told British friends about this strange new world, they explained that it was because Americans were humourless. This wasn’t actually true. The Americans were much funnier than the Brits with their eternal gay jokes.
The attempt to shut out any views deemed undesirable has since got out of hand on some US campuses. On recent visits I have found the policing of speech chastening. One liberal, male, feminist professor told me of a fairly anodyne analysis that he didn’t dare publish for fear of being hounded as sexist. Even many liberals now want to roll back PC speech codes.
But, in fact, PC’s basic demand — respect all groups — needs to be rolled out more widely. We now have PC for women, and racial and sexual minorities. If we had it for the working classes, too, that could change the political climate. Two rather different politicians — Donald Trump and Nelson Mandela — have shown us the outlines of a working-class PC.