III. Difference in Perception Between Selected Countries
3.4 Case Study: The U.S. Composition of Thought
The U.S. create an interesting case thanks to the heterogenous composition of the society and presence of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which has been largely waved against political correctness.
The analysis was possible thanks to Morning Consult, a global decision intelligence company, which conducted a National Tracking Poll in 2019 on political correctness53. The poll referred to was conducted from February 06 to March 15, 2019, among a U.S. national sample of 13206 Adults53.
The consistency in the aggregate result of the poll with the other polls analyzed beforehand is noticeable, in this case 48% of the respondents believe there is too much political correctness in their country, but still there is a majority
53 Morning Consult. Na tiona l Tra cking Poll #190210 Februa ry 06 - Ma rch 15, 2019.
Crossta bula tion Results
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of them believing there still is too much prejudice, as a consequence, Americans are divided on the issue. (Figure 6)
Figure 9: Morning Consult Poll54. Poll conducted Feb.6-March 15, 2019. U.S.
When it is also considered the identity of the respondents, it comes out that the majority of the voters for the first option is white, male, Republican and supportive of Trump53. A simplification of the matter is shown in Figure 7, in which the White men correspond to almost 50% of the answer that there is “too much political correctness”, and just 29% white male asserting that there is “too much prejudice”.
Figure 10: Morning Consult Poll54 Poll conducted Feb.6-March 15, 2019. U.S.
As shown in Figure 8, adults consider themselves to be politically correct in the 34% of the cases, with distinctions based on ethnicity and political
54 Pia cenza , Joha nna ; Ea sley, Ca meron; Yokley, Eli. PC a nd Prejudice: Ga uging Divides in America’s Culture War, April 24, 2019. Morning Consult, Washington.
https://morningconsult.com/2019/04/24/pc-a nd-prejudice-ga uging-divides-in-a merica s-culture-wa r/ Accessed: 01.09.2022.
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ideology. Indeed, Democrats feel to be more politically correct than the Republicans, consistently with the previous research, and Black people feel to be more politically correct on average (44%) than the respective White (33%), Hispanic (30%) and Asian people (36%).
But when correlated with the behavior they adopt the percentages change, it turns out that people who don’t like the politically correct label will still try to adhere to that type of behavior. Adults who said there’s too much political correctness in the country were nearly three times as likely to say they tried to meet the political correctness definition than they were to apply the label to themselves53. Those who said there’s too much prejudice in the country also shied away from the term, with less than half of them saying they considered themselves politically correct.54
In Figure 8, it can be noticed the large difference between the perception to be politically correct and the avoidance each group practices when it interacts with people outside of its circle, with an average of all adults moving from a 34% of respondents considering themselves to be politically correct, to a 75% of people avoiding to say and do things that could be perceived as insulting people different than them.
Figure 11: Morning Consult Poll54. Poll conducted Feb.6-March 15, 2019. U.S.
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In Figure 9 the questions asked by the poll are related to the divisive matter whether the importance should be given more to free speech or to social norms, political correctness included. In the poll, most of the people who viewed politically correct culture as too pervasive in American society in general felt free to express themselves on the abovementioned topics. But the same people were also overwhelmingly more likely to express confusion about more abstract questions concerning the state of the country’s discourse on the social norms.
Large groups of the respondents agreed that the social customs about what they can and cannot say are changing too fast, so it is difficult to keep up, that people are offended too easily, and that the current climate prevents people from saying what they think because others might find it offensive.
But these were sentiments also shared with a majority of the poll’s broader population, suggesting that when it comes to free speech, Americans are not as nearly divided as one’s could think54.
Coming back on the divisions between Republicans and Democrats, it is of importance their view on the questions shown in Figure 9. Beside of the first question “it’s alright for society to give up parts of free speech so as not to offend others,” all the others taken into consideration are formulated at the opposite side of the spectrum, and this is consistent with the findings below.
The Republicans find themselves on the left side of the chart in the first answer, but on the right concerning all the other ones picturing a marked closedness with regards to political correctness, while the Republicans find themselves more open to the possibility of coming to terms with the new social norms created by political correctness.
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Figure 12: Morning Consult Poll54. Poll conducted Feb.6-March 15, 2019. U.S.
Beside the graphs shown in the research above, some other points are found to be notable, which are related to the perception of the aggregate sample of the respondents on the acceptability to express their own opinions about the topics proposed by the study53, with the section “people who are similar to me”
to be the most positively answered by them (78% of the adults being comfortable expressing their opinion).
The results show that, beside the abovementioned theme, there is a descendent scale on the acceptability to express adult’s opinion in the matters of immigration (72%), politics (71%), gender (69%), religion (68%), sexuality (65%), race (63%), and lastly people who are different from them, with just 59%
of people responding positively to it53. People are more afraid to express their opinions freely when they feel the interlocutor is perceived to be different from them.
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