Political Correctness and Harassment

Political correctness doesn’t have the best reputation.  It’s gotten old, has led to ridiculous policies in all sorts of places, and has had a chilling effect on being able to speak your mind according to free speech advocates. 

I’ve made it clear multiple times on this blog that language is important in the workplace.  The wrong kind of language leads to harassment charges and lawsuits.  Executives, managers and supervisors must be particularly careful about using language that puts down employees in one of the protected classes.  I ran across an article in The Boston Phoenix, however, arguing that political correctness has gone too far and needs to be reined in.  Although I stand by my warning about inappropriate language in the workplace, the difference between political correctness and harassment is worth considering.

The article focuses on the near death of parody (satirizing a person or group of people) on college campuses, particularly if the parody deals with gender, race or religion.  The author of the article blames all this on Harvard, where he says political correctness originated, which is odd considering Harvard’s alleged advocacy of free speech and its birth of the Harvard Lampoon (which led to the National Lampoon, which led to Saturday Night Live and other venues of edgy satire).  But Harvard and many other private colleges and universities have cracked down on parody with severe discipline of students and policies that incorporate, among other things, sensitivity training.  (Sound familiar?)  These places of the highest learning have said, in effect, that parody is tantamount to harassment.

Private universities can have whatever rules they want about what language is permissible and what isn’t, just as private employers can.  Such rules can be practically problematic, however, when they attempt to insulate a college campus or a workplace from what surrounds us in our society every day.

Let’s take TV alone.  The Simpsons is a parody alright, but compare it to Family Guy, South Park, Reno 911, and Mad TV .  Yikes!  Now throw in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  And don’t forget The Onion, which also has a fake TV news show.  Closer to the workplace is The Office, which contains quite a bit of inappropriate language and ended last season with two of the main characters having sex–in the workplace.

Your employees watch these shows, then come to work, and are expected not to talk about what they’ve seen, lest someone be offended, and certainly not to imitate anything seen on these shows.  One could argue that that’s unrealistic, if not crazy.  In any event, it places human resources professionals and managers of all kinds in difficult situations.  You need to be vigilant about offensive language–and reasonable about political correctness.  Sometimes, that requires walking the finest of lines.

1. 

   Michael Moore says:

   September 30, 2008 at 12:04 pm

   John:
   I agree that employers must be cautious to guard against harassment lawsuits, but one can make a case for blaming the legal system for a humorless work environment. There is a lot of comedic ground between the standards for acceptable humor for hypersensitive workers and serial harassers. However, the hypersensitive seem to have all of us choosing our words carefully. For example, in a post on this subject another blog, I used the word “off-color” to describe a sexually oriented joke. One commenter stated that the term “off-color” was indeed cloaked with racial undertones and a poor choice of words for the post. After scouring the Internet, I found no racial tie to the terminology, but apologized anyway. After apologizing, I wondered if I should have “respectfully disagreed while disclaiming any intent to offend.” Thanks for the post on this interesting topic.
2. 

   ACU Frank says:

   September 30, 2008 at 6:13 pm

   One of the most horrific moments of my life occurred during a staff meeting involving a racially-diverse mix of employees. While outlining a new policy, I remarked that “we need to call a spade a spade.”

   You could hear a pin drop.

   No one said anything to me about the remark, then or at any time later. Still, I fretted for months that it was only a matter of time before someone from Corporate called to discuss it.

   In the end, I would like to think, everyone there recognized that the phrase has absolutely no link to the familiar racial slur. I would also like to think that in my time there, I had already demonstrated a level of character that would temper any suspicions.

   But you just never know.
3. 

   John Phillips says:

   October 2, 2008 at 9:44 am

   Michael and Frank,

   Thanks for your comments.

   Michael, I enjoy reading your blog, BTW. Though the situation you mentioned is a tough call, I think I would have respectfully disagreed rather than apologizing, because apologizing in that kind of situation encourages the hypersensitive to continue their ridiculous ways. Of course, I’m saying this as a bystander, and I might very well have apologized had I been in your shoes.

   Frank, I’m a little surprised that you didn’t hear anything from your innocent comment, although as you say, maybe people know it was innocent because they know you. Also, maybe the people you were meeting with have gotten beyond hypersensitivity.

   If we’re really going to have a post-race America, then all races need to move past splitting hairs over words that have multiple meanings so that we can solve some real problems.

   Thanks again to both of you.