Mistaken Identities: The Second Wave of Controversy Over Political Correctness

Political Correctness refers to the initiatives of feminists, multiculturalists, and postmodernists to promote cultural sensitivity, social inclusion, and protections against harassment. Though the media has covered its more salacious incidences over the past decade, the dominant understanding of this controversy - as a political war between a stodgy Right and a united Left - is misleading. In the past five years, a new second wave of controversy over political correctness has presented a distinctive set of issues, which has unveiled a core of enduring problems that strike at the heart of liberal democracy. This book collects the work of seventeen authors, all of whom situate themselves somewhere from the center to the left of the political spectrum and who challenge the view of political correctness as a simple square-off between leftists and neo-conservatives. They examine the challenges posed by political correctness to individual rights, universalism and equality, and science and reason.