Don’t you laugh when you’re watching a rap video, or rather anything on TV, and you see someone flick off the camera? You don’t actually see their finger however because due to censorship it is blurred out through a very expensive project thanks to the powers that be.

What it really boils down to is an exercise in futility. Although I am against censorship, I understand the reason for it. But there exists another kind of censorship that compels America to hide behind a red white and blue veil that is the act of being politically correct.

Some would call it respect, others would call it a ridiculous antic expressing soulless diction; I call it useless. When it comes to respect, where I’m from, to be respectful is to tell someone the truth, as blunt as it is. Political correctness is an entity that hides people’s true meanings and feelings by covering them in a post-Victorian expression of fake sentiment; it doesn’t make any sense. Being nice, caring about others feelings, choosing your words correctly, are all admirable traits, but to use that analogy I opened with, and when expressing views and feelings on a macro level, people shouldn’t punk out or hide behind a curtain that dilutes the potency of truth.

Our country is one that is famous and notorious for speaking our collective mind, we shouldn’t penalize people for saying what they feel, we should respect it, we can even respectfully disagree with it while respecting the opinion of our fellow man or woman.

Have you ever been in a relationship where you are trying to communicate with your partner but can’t find the right words because you don’t want to sound so blunt or inconsiderate? We are too sensitive as Americans. We can’t listen to rap because it in its essence is a form of true raw expression that roots itself in one of the most vulgar and insensitive parts of our America: the streets. To strafe the line of truth in this country commercially, and remain just as passionately raw without restricting your freedom of opinion or your truth on any level of means is a rare thing. An aspect of staying true is saying what you feel. One of the reasons why artists in all realms succeed, at first, is because their talent expresses who they are. What if they were limited because they didn’t want to offend anyone?

Political correctness is a plague that prohibits people from saying what they want to feel because it is almost now a social norm for people to alter their own feelings and thoughts because of the risk of being reprimanded for saying what they believe.

Not too long ago, my friend came back from class and told me that he got into trouble for making a comment during a class discussion. It was an English class, and they were discussing critical race issues about some text they were reading. He made a comment about black people (him being white) and made a general comment that went along the lines of “I don’t understand, it seems like all black people I view..” Regardless of what he said, even if it was the most asinine and racist statement of the century, he didn’t hold his tongue and now a true topic could be discussed collectively by a class of aspiring professionals. But his professor told him to keep some of his comments to himself in order not to offend any of the black students in the class. Lord knows that they could’ve learned something from an opposite perspective but, we don’t want that to happen. We’re too focused on the risk of offending someone and hurting their feelings.

This internalized censorship isn’t progressive. Political correctness dilutes the views of our fellow man, and nothing positive can come from that. One Love.