Political Correctness Prevents us From Having an Honest Conversation about Race and Racism

Thankyou for the response. Unfortunately I disagree with all of it. In reading my opponent's response I became increasingly surprised and frustrated. My opponent seems to have entirely ignored the logic of my argument and responded with a nonsensical argument. I evidently need to make it plainer that plain, if I'm going to get a logical counter. So, firstly and fore mostly, I was asked by my opponent "Is it politically incorrect to think gay white employees steal less?" Yes! Of course it is! As I have already explained, that sentence has just completely defined millions of people by there race, gender and sexuality. It has stereotyped them. Accusations like those bridge the divides in society. They stir up a hailstorm of negativity that channels itself in our brains into prejudice. Once more, they are completely unnecessary! Why is it necessary to play a hate infused blame game that targets people who have done nothing wrong, other than having physical characteristics similar to the same as those who have committed a crime? To make ourselves have deep rooted prejudice, or to teach the next generation to categorise and generalise individuals they have never met based on their race or gender? It's not. It solve's nothing. It creates problems. Instead we must tear out whatever it is that we don't like at the roots. In this case it may be that we are trying to stop stealing. So we say 'stop stealing'. We condemn the act and the individuals who did it. We do not respond with prejudice. This is a principle I have now been forced to repeat. I have been accused by my opponent of taking "exception with his desire to associate certain groups with particular actions" but I allegedly do "not seem to explain why". I hope this refresh of round 2 will help..."Both claims associate an act with a physical attribution ie some one"s gender, the colour of someone"s skin. Alternatively to this, the politically correct thing to do would be to criticise the act itself on a moral or ideological basis. So, to say "it is wrong to harass people in the street." My opponent thinks that in order to stop issues in society we need to 'assess if there was one group doing more...than others". Again, this is just an excuse of prejudice, and refers to the 'blame game' I mentioned earlier, that halts positive change. In fact my opponent made an excellent list of some major problems facing us in society, and yet he doesn't support an idea that will actually change things. Again, I have been quoted by my opponent, and again I have been misunderstood. My opponent made this quote from an earlier argument "as long as you don't insinuate anything from that then that is perfectly politically correct. Which just goes to show that political correctness is not some sort of mine field. It's just about not being offensive, it really isn't rocket science". By taking this out of context my opponent then went on to somehow declare that I am saying 'it's ok to think something offensive but not to act on it'. Maybe my opponent should go back and read the rest of the paragraph. If he does, he may find what I was actually referring too. That it is not politically incorrect to state a statistic like " 90% harassment of women, in this study, was done my black males" but that it would be politically incorrect to add on to the end of that sentence "... therefore black people harass women more than any other racial group". I hope my opponent understands the difference. One is a fact and one is a racist conclusion. I could go on to address further incompetent questions made to me in my opponent's argument but the story is the same and I do not wish to repeat myself. My opponent thinks that only stupid people make judgements about groups. This is a naive falsehood. Everyone is capable of prejudice. Everyone stereotypes and everyone make sweeping judgements. It's a natural human instinct. It's started whole world wars through nationalism. Here is an BBC article that tries to openly refer to and explain what it acknowledges as "One of the least charming but most persistent aspects of human nature" - an aspect that political correctness aims to challenge. http://www.bbc.com... Completely contrary to my opponent's argument about the stupidity of certain individuals who will always want to cause trouble and need to be ignored, my opponent has decided to only acknowledge those sorts of people in reference to my Benedict Cumberbatch example. I will only re-iterate how forgiving people were, including the mass organisations set up to counter the harm that prejudice, and hence political correctness, causes. I'd like to further point out that I'm shocked that my opponent has decided to compare someone being a different race or gender, to them being a zombie or a shark. Just the short of vilianisation that political correctness aims to counter. My opponent has decided to stray from the motion and criticise the press instead as his argument weakens. The press may decide to bring attention to a politically incorrect incident over a national crisis but that is a separate issue with how our press tailors to all sorts of unfair acknowledgements of news and a problem that is nothing to do with political correctness. The press will write about a dramatic football game or a black and blue (or is it gold and yellow?) dress over a geographically distant crisis. Just as religions can not be defined by they're extremists, neither can political correctness be defined by those who use it as a made excuse to cause unnecessary violence. They are not seen as part of the anti- prejudice movement, but are just regarded as all extremists are, violent trouble makers. I am also very glad that my opponent's wine store locks up commonly stolen items. That is very sensible of them. It may not have any relevance to this debate, but it's always nice to know. I'm no lawyer, but I'm also pretty confident that anyone who attempts to sue a store for taking safety precautions with commonly stolen items is going to be pretty unsuccessful and end up in debt with legal bills. I look forward to a response that understands and addresses my argument.