What This Politically (In)Correct Campaign Tells Us
Yet, as much as the PC debate is associated with college campuses, we hear it attacked most often in this presidential cycle by conservatives, particularly Donald Trump, who seems to find boundless joy in violating it.
That's ironic, since Trump's supporters also happen to be the least likely among all of the Grand Old Party's top-tier candidates to have graduated college.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in December, for example, found only 38 percent of Trump supporters graduated college, compared to 46 percent of "social conservatives," who tended to back Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Dr. Ben Carson, and 55 percent of "establishment" Republicans, who support Sen. Marco Rubio or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Yet when asked about what motivates them, the Trump supporters tend to lash out most of all against illegal immigrants and political correctness.
Of course, they also hate the media -- partly, I'm sure, because journalists often have served as arbiters of manners long before the term "PC" became popular.
A focus group of Trump supporters convened in December by Republican pollster Frank Luntz in Virginia praised their man's "political incorrectness" along with his business experiences and self-funded campaign.
Why does PC strike such a sensitive nerve?
Certainly, there are some who resent PC because it muzzles their own opportunities to express bigoted opinions.
But you can find some racists and other bigots in every racial, religious, political or ethnic group.
More important, I think, is the invasion Trump supporters see PC "thought police" making into their lives with a new, foreign and often bewildering etiquette that they have neither the time or ability to learn and practice.
Remember why Trump disdains PC? "It takes too much time," he says.
I understand what he means. I still receive emails from people asking whether they should use "black" or "African-American" -- and what was so bad about "colored" and "Negro" anyway?
Good questions. Talking about the nation's growing diversity across racial, ethnic and gender lines is how we Americans learn to get along, regardless of our tribes.
Today's anti-PC rebellion appears to be a response to growing anxiety over our nation's growing diversity. Political campaigns can be a terrible place to solve such anxieties, but it's a good time to start talking honestly about them -- if that's not too politically incorrect.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
