Study: Americans Really, Really Hate Political Correctness

In one of the most encouraging studies in recent times, a group of leftist scholars out of England has found that the political correctness minefield driven by the left is wildly unpopular with Americans across virtually every category.

The British study group came to these results, without aiming for them, when it took a deep-dive look at political polarization in America. An unexpected unity arose among the vast majority of Americans across race, gender and income lines in really hating today’s politically correct atmosphere — and possibly those pushing it — which could have long-term, detrimental political ramifications for the Democratic Party.

The key takeaway from the study looking at political correctness is this: Fully 80 percent of Americans believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Those numbers vary, but remain vast majorities across boundaries. Interestingly, even young people don’t like it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. It seems that not only is political correctness deeply unpopular and a political anchor, but it also has no future.

The study Hidden Tribes: A Study Of America’s Polarized Landscape, was conducted by More In Common, which is a European organization made up of what appears to be mostly leftists and socialists. The researchers for the study include scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon — whose pedigrees include Harvard, Yale, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. It was in no conceivable way a conservative organization or conservative researchers, which makes the findings all the more compelling.

The 10-month study period between December 2017 and September 2018 included a nationally representative poll of 8,000 Americans, six small focus groups and 30 one-hour interviews.

Researchers identified seven clusters of Americans when talking about immigration, white privilege, the prevalence of sexual harassment: progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, the politically disengaged, moderates, traditional conservatives, and devoted conservatives.

In those clusters, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are outside the American mainstream; 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are far outside the mainstream; but about 65 percent of Americans are in some form of the middle, and the authors call them the “exhausted majority.” According to the report, this large number of Americans “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.”

Most of the “exhausted majority,” and virtually all of the traditional conservatives share a strong dislike for political correctness. The study did not define political correctness, which was probably necessary in that it is always changing — and that is part of what people don’t like. But it includes being required to use just the right words, and never the wrong words, in a broad range of topics and being required to treat people differently based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation and prefer certain categories over others.

So when Democratic U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono says that “men need to shut up” she is invoking political correctness. When the New York Times runs a column by Alexis Grenell (a white woman) under the headline “White Women, Come Get Your People,” she is using political correctness. When colleges have cordoned off free speech zones so that students don’t get “triggered” by potentially “offensive” words or thoughts, that is political correctness. Gender non-binary pronouns such as ne and ve are political correctness. Americans simply recoil at all of this and so much more.

Here’s a further breakdown. This is the percent of Americans by category who consider political correctness to be a problem in the country:

Blacks: 75 percent Whites: 79 percent Asians: 82 percent Hispanics 87 percent American Indians: 88 percent Income under $50,000: 83 percent Income over $100,00: 70 percent Never attended college: 87 percent Post graduate degrees: 66 percent Traditional conservatives: 97 percent Traditional liberals: 61 percent Progressive activists: 30 percent The takeaway is crystal clear. Other than the tiny percentage of Americans who are progressive activists, there is widespread, cross-category opposition to the sort of political correctness that makes it almost impossible to communicate without fear.

As a 40-year-old American Indian in Oklahoma told researchers in a focus group: “It seems like everyday you wake up something has changed … Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? … You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary.”

And politically, it is a poison issue. Remember progressive activists are only 8 percent of the population.

Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on government at Harvard University, reviewed the study for The Atlantic magazine. In that review, he admitted to a revelation that should really give Democrats pause:

“In the days before “Hidden Tribes” was published, I ran a little experiment on Twitter, asking my followers to guess what percentage of Americans believe that political correctness is a problem in this country. The results were striking: Nearly all of my followers underestimated the extent to which most Americans reject political correctness. Only 6 percent gave the right answer. (When I asked them how people of color regard political correctness, their guesses were, unsurprisingly, even more wildly off.)

Obviously, my followers on Twitter are not a representative sample of America. But as their largely supportive feelings about political correctness indicate, they are probably a decent approximation for a particular intellectual milieu to which I also belong: politically engaged, highly educated, left-leaning Americans—the kinds of people, in other words, who are in charge of universities, edit the nation’s most important newspapers and magazines, and advise Democratic political candidates on their campaigns.

So the fact that we are so widely off the mark in our perception of how most people feel about political correctness should probably also make us rethink some of our other basic assumptions about the country.”

This is an admirable insight and admission by Mounk. The sense among conservatives is that progressives, academics, colleges and other leftist bastions are far outside the mainstream of America. Inasmuch as they are pulling the Democratic Party with them, they are inviting electoral disaster for Democrats at some point.

Thank you for referencing that article Liberty7732. Please note that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.

With all due respect to mom & pop, please consider the following.

Since parents are not making sure that their children are being taught the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers as the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood, while both Democrats and Republicans wrap themselves in the Constitution, neither political party actually respects the fed’s limited powers imo, Democrats being the worst at disrespecting those powers.

When the states finally wise up and repeal the 16th and ill-conceived 17th Amendments, the repeal amendment needs a provision that prohibits political party support for federal elected officials imo.

I'm sure (though I haven't looked) that the venerable AP would disagree.

I make no doubt. What has to happen in America is a lawsuit demanding that the NY Times v. Sullivan rule be overturned.
It makes it hard for public figures to sue for libel. But that the ruling is “fair” is predicated on the assumption that there is ideological competition in journalism. Critics of “the MSM” know that to be untrue, but have had a hard time articulating an irrefutable argument against it. The answer is IMHO bound and gagged and lying on our doorstep. The Associated Press (and its membership, taken together) constitute a monopoly in blatant violation of The Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890).
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)
The AP “wire” is a virtual meeting of all major US journalism - and it has been in continuous operation since before the Civil War.
The “conspiracy against the public” is the promotion of the fatuous conceit that journalism (AP journalism) is objective. Nobody can know that they are unbiased, whether or not they are in a mutual admiration society which assures them that they are. It takes effort even to attempt objectivity - and that effort must start from the assumption that you might likely be biased. Starting from the contrary assumption that you are unbiased simply proves that you are not even trying to be objective.
Worse, journalists are negative and they know it. They are all taught that , for commercial reasons, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Thus, the idea that journalism is objective amounts to the conceit that negativity is objectivity - amounts, IOW, to cynicism. Journalism is cynical about society, but naive towards government (after all, any criticism of society naturally raises the idea that “there oughta be a law”). That combination of cynicism and naiveté contrasts with the attitude of the conservative, who is skeptical enough of society to accept the (regretable) need for government - and skeptical of government because it is expensive and dangerous. It is for that reason that journalists are, to a conservative, indistinguishable from other socialists.
But to the point of the Stylebook, any politically tendentious rule in it (such as requiring that illegal aliens not be called “illegal aliens”) can be called an element of “conspiracy against the public” because after all, illegal aliens are illegal aliens.

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