Political Shots Fired Thread

[Sandslinger]

So I'm having a discussion on FB with a friend from my school days who is a immigrant from South Africa about the discussion of Hijab being allowed in police forces.

The whole discussion ended up with the black hat being thrown into the ring.

"if you are against this then you are obviously a xenofobe who hates muslims and outsiders and just terribly afraid of your country being taken over"

I've seen this argument used so much in these kind of contexts and it just makes me see red so god damn fast..

In any case it reminded me of two situations I came across in the UK where political correctness just went very wrong and thought I'd share in the hope that perhaps others has equally "funny" or illuminating situations to share.


So here we go.

Sitation nr 1

It is 2 weeks to Christmas and my mother is visiting me and has took a trip to the local supermarket (like 10 shops under a roof basically)

She notices the complete lack of Christmas decorations and asks one of the girls in the shop why this is.

The girl responds that "The local council has banned Christmas decorations this year because this particular area has started to receive a lot of asylum seekers. And they don't want to offend any non Christians by shoving Christianity in their face or in her own words "Those fucking pakkies stole Christmas"

She blamed the asylum seekers for this but of course none of them had complained about the decorations this was down to some do-gooder in local council trying to go out of their way to be super politically correct. Obviously not with the results she intended.

(As a sidenote I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck tassels and a fat man on a reindeer has to do with Jesus)

The second incident was not so long after 9/11.

Police was out in full force at the train station checking peoples baggage and such. However they were for obvious reasons focusing on people with a rather more ethnic look then your average bleach white Glaswegian.

To prevent the political fallout of ethnically targeted policing the police force had gathered as many black/brown police officers as they could muster including a lot of short term hires.

The thing was none of them had the training to do stop and searches or crowd control so there was a entire wall lined with black police officers looking extremely bored and basically as though they had been shoved to the side.
While the avg white police officers were at the ticket doors stopping and searching and doing "police work".

when I came in and saw it the whole picture looked so fucking ridiculous to me I had to stop and take a picture of the whole scenario.

Have Anyone else experienced political correctness backfiring as bad as this ?

[Lallante]

No.

[GiDiYi]

"Those fucking pakkies stole Christmas"

I've got nothing to really contribute at the moment, but the quote gave me a good laugh.

[Lallante]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

[Crystalline Entity]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

Having police arrest white people deliberately to fill quotas is good amirite?

[duckduck]

Bullshit.

People make up or exaggerate these PC-gone mad-stories all the time. I'll avoid speculating on their motivations.

Story 1 is almost certainly false. There are lots of stories in the crappier UK press about councils banning Christmas and they never stand up. Some misguided councils have renamed their own Christmas celebrations as 'Winter Festivals" or some such bullshit, but they have never banned Christmas decorations in private businesses. More likely the supermarket were too tight to buy decorations and the staff member made up this story.

I accept your account of story 2, but I'm not sure how you knew what training the individual police officers had done. Either way it hardly seems worth wasting pixels on.

[Shiodome]

I work with an old lady who still calls Asians paki's (in public), I'm teaching her to use the term 'browns'. I'm probably a bad person now

[FatFreddy]

[Itiken]

No.

<-^->

POLTICiAL CORRECTINESS GOEN MADZ

[Lallante]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

Having police arrest white people deliberately to fill quotas is good amirite?

Yes. The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it. (i.e. the prevailing police culture up until about a decade ago).

[Crystalline Entity]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

Having police arrest white people deliberately to fill quotas is good amirite?

Yes. The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it.

There is an argument for the police to be 'fair', but quotas area really stupid

[Lallante]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

Having police arrest white people deliberately to fill quotas is good amirite?

Yes. The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it.

Whatever the merits of your argument, there is an argument for the police to be 'fair' but quotas area really stupid

Thats an example of a poor implementation. The "PC" principle behind it (racial profiling is wrong) is sound.

[Crystalline Entity]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

Having police arrest white people deliberately to fill quotas is good amirite?

Yes. The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it.

Whatever the merits of your argument, there is an argument for the police to be 'fair' but quotas area really stupid

Thats an example of a poor implementation. The "PC" principle behind it (racial profiling is wrong) is sound.

Usually, i quietly agree with you. Now i quietly disagree with you... no doubt im a closet racist.

[Lallante]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

Having police arrest white people deliberately to fill quotas is good amirite?

Yes. The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it.

Whatever the merits of your argument, there is an argument for the police to be 'fair' but quotas area really stupid

Thats an example of a poor implementation. The "PC" principle behind it (racial profiling is wrong) is sound.

Usually, i quietly agree with you. Now i quietly disagree with you... no doubt im a closet racist.

No. Lots of people disagree with political correctness, I said the ones who get really angry about it tend to be racists.

[Crystalline Entity]

I've never met anyone who gets really angry over PCness who isn't a closet racist.

Seriously who cares? At most its a mildly amusing example of modern beaurocracy culture. Realistically it prevents more harm than it causes.

Having police arrest white people deliberately to fill quotas is good amirite?

Yes. The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it.

Whatever the merits of your argument, there is an argument for the police to be 'fair' but quotas area really stupid

Thats an example of a poor implementation. The "PC" principle behind it (racial profiling is wrong) is sound.

Usually, i quietly agree with you. Now i quietly disagree with you... no doubt im a closet racist.

No. Lots of people disagree with political correctness, I said the ones who get really angry about it tend to be racists.

Again, not sure I fully agree with that, but fair enough. Excessive PC ness is stupid but nothing to get hideously worked up over

[GiDiYi]

The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it.

Because they are right to be honest.

No, I wouldn't say that one loud in public.

But it's still correct.

[Lallante]

The alternative is a police culture that assumes the darkies did it.

Because they are right to be honest.

No, I wouldn't say that one loud in public.

But it's still correct.

It might be statistically correct, its not in any way necessarily correct in any given instance. Assuming it is correct goes against the most fundamental principles of justice (innocent until proven guilty, no collective guilt etc).

Thats essentially what racial profiling is - applying real statistical racial trends to policing. It is somewhat effective (better than picking a subgroup at random), but this doesn't detract from it being ethically wrong.

The huge negative externalities to society outweigh the marginal benefits in finding the correct culprit.

[GiDiYi]

Assuming it is correct goes against the most fundamental principles of justice (innocent until proven guilty, no collective guilt etc)

Yeah, I know. But we all know that the fundamental principles of justice don't work. Just like democracy. Or healthcare.

[FatFreddy]

racial profiling, you say?

[Joshua Foiritain]

racial profiling, you say?

That dude liked it. All blacks are now gay.