Trump didn’t pull this “I hate political correctness” idea wet and dripping from the depths of his heart, nor does he pull any other ideas from there either. Earlier in the month on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd interviewed Trump and got him to admit that he sourced his ideas from “the shows,” meaning the mainstream political television shows. Months before, when asked where he got the notion that Mexicans are “rapists” and “murderers,” Trump cited an article from Fusion, which, of course, he misread.
In this little game of idiot telephone, we can trace the way ideas pass between people via language. Ideas aren’t coming from the heart, they’re coming from a bunch of people who have vested interests in manipulating language in the service of their cause. Frank Luntz still has a job for a reason.
We’re all vessels through which this highly manipulated language passes. We do have some say in the matter, though. We can filter out or synthesize bits of what we’ve heard and then choose what to repeat. Because the language we use to talk about problems shapes the way we approach those problems, being sensitive to “political correctness” is actually crucial in the fight to solve real problems.
Take the recent kerfuffle over the term “anchor babies.” Trump says “anchor babies,” and now everybody has rushed to defend their use of the term. Jeb! says he’ll use a better word, if one exists. Hillary says that word is “babies.” Clinton’s right, not because she’s being sanctimonious or annoyingly PC, but because the term “anchor babies” confuses the issue of immigration rather than clarifying it.
When Trump calls a child an “anchor baby,” he’s claiming to have a lot of knowledge about people’s personal lives. These undocumented workers aren’t having babies because that’s what happens when you have sex with someone, or because they earnestly want to have a family. They’re boning for legal status.
But this claim, as Politifact points out, isn’t backed up by immigration data. Basically, people come to the US when the economy is good, and they bone because they love each other. That is, unless they’re participating in something called “birth tourism,” a relatively small phenomenon practiced primarily by more affluent immigrant populations seeking to escape turmoil at home.
Calling the children of undocumented immigrants “anchor babies,” then, perpetuates a racist, classist, and ultimately counterintuitive understanding of human behavior, which detracts from any real conversation about sensible immigration policy. Being politically correct, in this case and in many others, only helps us cut through the bullshit so that we can begin to start talking about real solutions.
