A Futile Attempt to Hold onto 'Politically Correct'

My friend Dan and I spent the last week arguing over email about the term 'politically correct.' I was foolish enough to step in and defend the often reviled term. I knew I was getting myself into trouble. There are few phrases more loaded than, "That's not PC."

Dan was unhappy about what happened at the Miss America Pageant (That sentence, taken out of context, puts Dan in an odd light, but it is true.). Dan suggested that Miss California had lost because her stance on gay marriage is not politically correct. That's where our debate began, but to be clear, we did not get into a debate over gay marriage.

I took issue with Dan's assertion that it is politically incorrect to oppose gay marriage. He was suggesting that the ideas behind PC are motivated by a political agenda - an agenda that favors gay marriage. He had both history and examples of 'PC-gone-wild' to back him up.

Despite that, I argued that a more useful definition of political correctness suggests this:
If an issue is still open for debate in the public discourse, then the various sides of that debate are all valid - none of the views are politically correct or incorrect.
The distinction between correct and incorrect is actually as follows: If your language pushes a stakeholder out of an active debate by marginalizing him/her based on sex, race, creed, religion, sexuality, or socioeconomic status, then you are being politically incorrect.
I went on to say that anyone arguing in a debate can cross the line of political correctness. As a hypothetical example, I said if Miss California had been in favor of giving gays the right to marry, and she had phrased her answer using words like 'homo' or 'Jesus-freak', then she would have crossed the line. She would have been politically incorrect.

Which means the pageant "judge" responsible for the question that started this debate crossed a line at the end of his recent interview.


You see what he did there? He used two gender-specific slurs to marginalize a woman's view on same-sex marriage. It's offensive, and it is politically incorrect. Not to mention, he just helped the same-sex marriage movement take several monumental steps backward.

It's frustrating because that video really helps Dan's side of the debate on how we understand political correctness. And that drives me nuts because my understanding of political correctness is very helpful in the classroom. In fact, that is why I engaged in the debate in the first place.

In my composition course we discuss and write about cultural diversity. In that classroom I have students from over 15 different countries, at least 6 different religious views, a wide array of political ideologies, and many different temperaments (often changing from one day to the next). In order for such a class to function, I need to both abide by AND enforce the brand of PC I argued for. I've had students sit out of discussions because of the offensive way a peer has expressed an opinion. I actually need political correctness as a teaching tool.

Of course, I don't use the term in class because it has become a parody of itself - especially here, where Europeans see PC ideology as a pointless debate about "manholes versus people-holes." Nevertheless, I need to keep in mind that I am an American teaching non-Americans via an American system of education. The ideas behind political correctness help to remind me of the lack of balance in that power structure.

So my question for readers today is this: Can we invent a term that avoids the baggage of PC while describing the act of avoiding "expressions or actions that can be perceived to exclude or marginalize or insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against?"