Over winter break, I was working at my family’s restaurant on Christmas Day. As an older, wobbling man was on his way out, he exclaimed, “MERRY CHRISTMAS AND I DON’T CARE IF I OFFEND ANYONE! I’M NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT!” My younger sister, a few other hostesses, and myself all just chuckled it away. No spotlight. No popcorn. No wheezing liberal waving their arms about screaming “trigger warning” while recording it for Facebook. No spectacle.

Claiming “political incorrectness” has just become a new trend of hiding one’s racism and sexism. This has been an extremely common yet disturbing ideology that has appeared within the past election year. This “bright idea” is that political correctness does not matter. This seemingly popular thought that keeps making its way onto my social media platforms by loud and proud Trump supporters and “I eat liberals for breakfast but have never cared about politics until I decided to jump on the Small-Handed Cheeto Train” people. The problem I have with this ideology is not the blatant disrespect for political etiquette, it is the fact that people are using this to cover their ignorant viewpoints.

Let us look as some examples of how this ideology works (in my experience)…

“I’m not politically correct, Mexicans/Muslims/Anything That Doesn’t Look Like Me are bad.”

“I don’t care if I’m politically incorrect, I don’t believe in gay marriage.”

“I’m politically incorrect, women just cannot do the jobs men do.”

You are not being politically incorrect. You are being racist. You are being homophobic. You are being sexist. Congrats, you are in no way politically educated and you are, in fact, a bigot!

I just don’t understand what it is about this concept that has led people to believe that saying these blatantly disrespectful things are okay. No, I am not a whiny liberal snowflake crying for my safe space while sitting in my dorm room and throwing darts at a picture of Tomi Lahren. I am an intelligent human being who has enough education to see that there are grown adults using “political correctness” as a scapegoat for their unsettling behavior. Why did these people start viewing “political correctness” as the next Armageddon? Because we have “politicians” such as President Trump and Dr. Ben Carson who have manipulated and rebranded the term as an exploitation mechanism to make their followers feel some weird sense of empowerment.

As a college freshman, I took a class in which an election discussion took place. A concern that the Republican supporting side of the class shared was that they did not feel comfortable sharing some of their opinions. My professor explained that no one should feel this way about what they believe in. Yet, shouldn’t that be overlooked if the so called opinions are really just hatred in disguise? If a student does not feel comfortable explaining that he feels all Muslims are terrorists, doesn’t he deserve to feel that way? It is common and easily accessible knowledge that not even 1% of the Islamic population are terrorists. Yet there are still people who adamantly refuse to accept this statistic and continue on living their racist life, continuing to educate their children and family members with completely incorrect information and bias. In practice, we do not want to shun this student’s “opinion” BUT this opinion is not an opinion at all. It is a prejudice. A prejudice that is completely wrong and should be corrected. So, if there is an unsure feeling in a person, a feeling that the person is unable to share with a group and it is morally wrong, then they should get rid of that opinion. Just toss it out and relook at the situation with a more open and educated mind.

My only hope for this failure of a thought process is that my experience with it has been biased. With extreme hopefulness I write that these type of people have just somehow been placed in my life to test my patience and sanity. As a political science major, it has certainly made me think. I have seen people I have grown up with, looked up to even, using this claim as a mask to cover their underlying bigotry. Also as a political science major, it would be extremely rewarding if our next president would just be a little more respectful to not only the other cultures and nationalities of the world, but within his own country he is about to lead. After all, it’s not like I’m asking him to become best friends with Vladimir Putin.