Political correctness in Finance
At the private school that I attend, and at most colleges and universities in America, political correctness rules. Students on college campuses have developed an almost Orwellian newspeak and become fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and constantly afraid of being labeled with the slew of "isms" and "phobias" that have become the scarlet letters of our day. The result is that free speech is silenced and no one says what they really think anymore.
After these students graduate, they often go on to work in finance. So how prevalent is the PC culture in the finance industry? Is there a politically correct culture in finance that limits honest discussion?
Even though on college campuses political correctness might have put a damper on debate and discussions, in my experience when it comes to the banking/finance industry, attitude, performance and work ethic take precedence. That being said, there is no harm in acquiring the much needed skill of expressing your opinions and viewpoints with politeness.
America is the greatest country on Earth!
Wow, why are you throwing monkey shit at the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? Move to North Korea if you don't like it here!
Absolutely!!!!!! And that monkey shit wasn't thrown by me.
You think it's bad in finance, try working at a west coast tech firm.
The day after the election, about 20% of the employees called in "sick" because they were too upset to show up to work. At least several times a week, I hear gratuitous Trump bashing. During a lunch with my group, a female colleague even "joked" about how she wishes Trump would get assassinated, and our boss just laughed it off.
Tech attracts the most self-righteous obnoxious liberal SJW types in the entire planet.
haha dudez fuck liberals amirite?!
It's almost a mental imbalance with logical reasoning and rationing. Liberals are incredible hypocrites. Love trumps hate, then pray for assassination?
Unhinged.
Jeez. It's not much better at a lot of the East Coast private schools. You should have seen the campus therapy dogs, coloring book sessions, and healing groups that the kids at my school needed after the election.
Is this for real?
Here is some type of event from Michigan law school that advertised coloring sheets, play dough and bubbles for their law students...
I honestly thought this was a joke at first but it seems real, eventually they took it down because people were making fun of them I guess.
Trump is garbage though. It's not even a left vs right issue anymore.
That's true, but this PC nightmare pre-dates Trump.
West Coast college graduate here, I happened to see the huge debate outside of the lecture hall in our campus when Milo Yiannopoulos was on his "tour" last year. Caused such an uproar. I think West Coast colleges and universities, especially tech do have many liberal point of view. I work in the finance industry right now after graduation, and although there are some hints of extreme liberalism, it seems a bit more reserved than a tech company like you described would.
I work in tech on the West Coast (Idaho though), and in a college town. Work is fine (after the election everyone was openly happy Hillary lost) as most if not all are conservative, but the college students and professors surely make-up for it.
It's definitely troubling. As someone who has never been afraid to express his beliefs, I find that I'm increasingly under attack in the various academic and social circles I'm involved in. I think the key is projecting a persona that sticks to your core values, so that in cases where you may slip up, and say something some would deem inappropriate or insensitive, they evaluate that comment against the image you have conveyed throughout your relationship with them.
Political Correctness? (Originally Posted: 05/11/2011)
So, James Tate some high schooler from CT decided to be creative and ask his date to prom by posting cardboard letters with double sided tape on the outside of the school building. The school felt as though this was a danger to students and suspended Tate and his two friends, they are also not allowed to attend prom.
When does this Political Correctness stop? Or is the school justified in its actions?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Let-James-Tate-Go-to-the-Prom/1461616721…
http://gawker.com/5800802/boys-romantic-prom-invite-gets-him-banned-fro…
Law 38 homie. Law 38.
So much depressing shit everywhere these days. It's the fault of everyone who ever made a dollar off a frivolous lawsuit. If you or someone you know falls into this category, please do us all a favor and
BEND THEM OVER AND GIVE THEM THE ASS-FUCKING SANS-REACH-AROUND THEY SO RICHLY DESERVE
That is all.
I'm not quite sure what they found offensive?
Actually, they suspended him because the act of putting the letters up endangered him and his friends that were helping. I just needed to get the above out.
Kid will be on Jimmy Kimmel tonight
How is this political correctness? They got shafted by people who feel the need to ban someone from prom for sneaking into school and getting on a ladder....I'm thinking Saturday detention, at the worst, would have been more than fair.
And people wonder why school funding is so easy to throw under the bus during a budget crunch.....don't our schools have bigger problems????
That's ridiculous, let the kid go to prom. Maybe a light punishment, but these people need to relax. This country becomes more like a police state every fucking day, and it's disgusting.
That is one hell of a cock block
On second thoughts - maybe he can play the sympathy card
So they have pictures, go to dinner and then straight to the afterparty? I fail to see how he is punished by this arrangement, assuming his date said yes.
yeah the date said yes
I'm sorry...how is this political correctness?
If being "politically correct" means not wanting dumb 17-year-old HS kids climbing up on ladders and breaking their arms when they fall off, thus creating a huge liability and lawsuit against the school, then so be it.
What - there were no other ways for this kid to romantically ask his date to prom? This isn't even original - this is exactly what was done in that new chick flick "Prom" only he hangs a sign off of a bridge, not the school. And no I haven't nor will I see that movie, but it's in the previews. And I'm sure that's been done in countless HS movies before that.
There is real political correctness out there hurting this country - using this as an example is stupid.
This is politically correct because its upholding a school policy to the fullest extent and not bending the rules of ANYTHING. Even though the rule is ambiguous saying that if you are disciplined first offense or 100th offense after April 1 you will be banned from prom. More so she refuses to admit that his punishment is over the top for the actions committed by this student.
Sounds like you never went to prom....
Agreed this was a flowery way of going about things. But the kid should be happy with the arrangements, he gets to skip the boring part and straight to fun - and the principal or superintendent did all the work for him.
And he is almost guaranteed to get laid. Chicks love flowery shit from a bad boy. This kid did it right, and the principal sealed the deal by making him out to be some dashing and dangerous (but sensitive and romantic) rogue.
I'm sure blackfinancier is positively giddy at the latest developments.
Umm sure?
Lets look at it this way. Every hot bitch at that kids school is going to be going to his after party, or in this case his during party, and he is gonna get laid regardless if he date has sex with him or not. He is going to be getting tons of ass between now and graduation and all the way through the summer.
The school just opened it self up to a shit load of pranks between now and the end of the year.
Dude have you seen the kid?? I doubt that kid is getting tons of ass over the summer. And his date is less than stellar as well. This guy is not Robin Hood - he's an idiot who felt the need to go out of his way to impress a girl who's not hot but still out of his league. There's nothing we need to be cheering on here...
In banking there's less PC-culture for sure compared to college campuses. But nowadays, college campuses are such a cesspool of leftism. (Not liberalism, there's a difference) It's just college students with a lot of time and want to feel significant. Understandable since who wouldn't want to be part of history. Every protestor wants to be the next Rosa Parks. People with jobs in finance don't have time for that.
It really is sad...I think if people had just stopped the identity politics and debated issues out, Trump wouldn't even have gotten elected since people would have realized his policies are less than optimal to say the least. The polarizing behavior from both left and right nowadays are the problem.
I think the out of control political correctness of our era finally fully sunk in to me when I read an article a few months ago about "discrimination" in society against the "asexual" (i.e. people with low or no sex drive). I was like, "Whaaa?"
Great point about the difference between leftism and liberalism. There's a big difference between believing in liberal policies and supporting the ideas in vogue among social justice warriors on college campuses today. I think it's fair to say that concepts like "triggers" and "micro-aggressions" irritate a lot of sensible liberals, as they should. It's hard to even have a debate with someone on a lot of campuses today without someone getting offended. Glad to hear that there's less of a PC culture in banking though.
I think the key is being able to defend your point of view. If you have a reasonably well-argued position, it's hard to call you a 'bigot' or some other word designed to silence you. I'm pretty centrist, I suppose, and used to be a Republican. My views shifted left as I got older, since I grew up in a conservative household, and didn't have a particularly well-developed worldview until my mid-20s. I had a lot of opinions, but they were mostly half-baked. That's what college is meant to allow you to explore. If you cannot participate in civil discussions that allow for all sides of an argument to be heard long enough and openly enough to change your mind (or change the minds of others), then your university experience isn't particularly worthwhile.
That said, your political views shouldn't be expressed brashly at the office. And you certainly shouldn't be joking about assassinating the President with coworkers. I assure you that if Hillary had won, and a white male had made the same insinuation even jokingly at a West Coast tech firm, they'd be fired (or at least have a major HR problem). The double standard at the moment is absurd.
And it's not about political correctness in those instances. It's obviously not PC to joke about such things. I think a lot of so called political correctness changes from person to person. On a lot of college campuses at the moment, a wealthy white male essentially has to prostrate himself in order to 'check his privilege' enough to participate in a lot of discussions due to the odious tendency of liberals to assume he simply cannot understand their position because of his race, sex and social status. When coupled with a half-baked worldview that's never really been tested, it leaves a lot of college students unprepared for the workforce they're entering.
Some falsely assume that all educated and intelligent people already agree with them on virtually everything that matters and share poorly-formed perspectives with colleagues who may respectfully disagree with them. The problem, of course, is the environment in which these views are shared. If you challenge an underrepresented minority female's perspective on anything associated with race, gender, affirmative action, sexual harassment, pay disparities, or any interpretation of an event before 1999, you open yourself to an HR inquiry.
It's a genuine concern, since people should be able to express themselves at work without fear of triggering someone. In my experience, little to nothing interesting happens in absence of some controversy. It's too easy to offend people any more. And I think it really depends a lot on the person as to what they can pull off. If you're a Caucasian chef who cooks soul food, there's a real chance that you'll get harassed for cultural appropriation. But if you know nothing about African American culture, you're ignorant. Either way, your opinion on Southern cooking is likely to be tainted in some people's minds because of a presupposition of some wrongdoing on your part.
This is the basest sentiment of leftist thinking, which separates it from true liberalism specifically because it is illiberal. You cannot wish to be viewed as a strong Latin woman when it suits you while simultaneously demanding that race and gender be ignored when it suits you because it's nigh impossible for a third party to know your mind well enough to know when it suits and when it doesn't. To then get frustrated to the point of becoming 'triggered' is only natural. It's the result of a mountain of cognitive dissonance experiencing an avalanche of reason.
Clearly, this sort of nonsense annoys me. You have to quickly decide for yourself if it's worth engaging on a topic with a coworker who has said something off-color around you. Just be prepared to repeat anything you say to HR. Otherwise, don't associate with them at the office. It's sad that this sort of office environment will lead not to inclusion and diversity, but to paranoia over sharing contradictory opinions. This will, in-turn, lead to the holder of said opinions either:
It's like attempting to explain to Nurse Ratched that you don't need your pills today. No matter how logical or reasonable you are, if you're surrounded by lunacy, you're going to appear insane. The solution is simple: just don't talk politics at work and encourage others to do the same.
If only we could all approach any kind of debate or disagreement with this perspective. It's sickening to me the intimidation that is experienced by anyone who dissents with popular opinion these days. The moment you "out" yourself as someone who doesn't agree with popular opinion, you are labeled as a racist/homophobe/bigot/etc before any debate has even begun. To top that off, stating statistics or facts about any specific group to support your argument can be taken as a microaggression and you will be shouted down due to your unchecked "discriminatory beliefs." If this isn't oppression of free speech, I don't know what is.
Post of the year.
Extreme politeness / fear of speaking "out of turn" is not limited to finance. It's a corporate america thing. If you're on the company's time and dime, it's just standard operating procedure that you better make sure you come correct. Also private east coast colleges have always been bastions for progressive / liberal ideals.
People have strong opinions about things and if everyone was forthcoming, at work for example, with those thoughts...consider the alternative? There's not really a gray area when people debate deeply rooted personal opinions; things would devolve pretty quickly. Consider the flame wars that Trump threads inevitable become on this site.
If I have strong / "contrary" opinions on things, I'm always forthcoming around friends, close loved ones, or my significant other.
The only people who care about their place of work being too politically correct are insecure men who post on internet forums.
yea bro this shit is weird, I don't have enough time at my office to be discussing politics. If we do it is usually light-hearted and in passing. I mean, I just like to work and go home and if I engage in conversation it's usually about sports or some other benign subject...
I'm not really making the intellectual connection between insecurity and not liking political correctness. Is this a case of "takes one to know one"? Because it must take a pretty insecure person to accuse others of being insecure--based on nothing...
Or sometimes they're just fucking right.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, remove yourself from those situations. work is for work, not for political discussions.
Jah. Even being associated with openly political types in the office is a liability.
I know that if a cisgendered scum even makes eye contact with me at work I completely hyperventilate and need several hours of coloring book therapy. I don't know how I'm supposed to be productive when I'm surrounded by people who aren't even black Muslim lesbian transqueer postop anarchists (without nose piercings and denim).
If demanding that everybody at work become homosexual is unreasonable then I don't even want to live in this solar system anymore.
Your 1st sentence was gold. There rest cringe-worthy.
the fact that I know what cisgender means pisses me off
I've looked it up a few times because every time I see the word I think it has greater meaning that it does. Nope and every time I get pissed. Now I am in the same boat as you, pissed off that cisgender is word taking up space in my head.
The biggest irony of this whole situation is that the shackles are being put to society by the very same people who actually, genuinely, think they are helping making it more inclusive. I've met some of these people and they are entirely convinced that this is the way to go and do not in any way see the paradox of indulging fringe groups and promoting their rights to extremes while taking away the freedom from the rest. The saddest part is that it's spreading, including finance. I would never support anyone making a loud crude joke in the workplace. Nor do I think we should avoid talking about anything else but work in the workplace. We are social creatures, not fucking robots so we should be ourselves and there is a middle ground between those two extremes.
My desk doesn't seem particularly PC although it's a completely different vibe from even 10 years ago. A lot of "PCness" comes from needing to thread the line with customers. They can be all over the map politically, you really need to pick your spots if you're going to make jokes about anything a little edgy.
I agree with all of AllDay_028 points. This is an issue about social IQ, respect and maturity. The way I’ve started to look at it is like those people with zero fashion sense, you know the type, and it usually boils down to not having a role model who knew the importance of presentation and first impressions. Now it’s about masculinity (or lack of a toxic masculinity) and basic respect in a diverse society.
I think it's a big step to think that the safe spacers (who are not as prevalent as you make them out to be) are the same students going to work on Wall Street...
Fair point. I wouldn't say that "safe spacers" are dime a dozen on college campuses, but I can say that there are a ton of students at private schools at least who are invested in "PC culture" significantly more than the average American. It's probably true that they're a lot less likely to go into finance though.
Also, in 2017, "political correctness" has about as much actual meaning as "fake news" does.
"Fake news" means news that is purposefully incorrect for the sake of fooling someone into thinking something - like Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop - not news that is simply disagreeable, paints you in a bad light, or uses unnamed sources, which is how the White House uses the term.
Likewise, "political correctness" never was meant to be able "cisgender" people or safe spaces or the "war on Christmas" or whatever - it was meant to reflect a type of speech that is strategically inoffensive, such as how a politician would approach a controversial topic. It is hardly a bad thing to avoid offending rational human beings, and while there are people or groups out there that make a habit out of being offended, they are both outliers and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
"Anti-PC" culture has become almost, if not more toxic, than "PC culture" these days. So many people think they're being "Anti-PC" when really they're just being assholes. "Oh what...I can't call gay people fags and can't call black people the N word theses days? I can't make a Muslim tell me Merry Christmas in October? What is the world coming to?!?"
This lol
This is a complete strawman. Almost no one is criticizing PC because they wish they could still use inflammatory slurs. PC culture has created a social hierarchy that ranks the validity of opinions based on a person’s identity. It is this cultural shift that almost all people here and elsewhere have criticized.
Many of those "free speech" rallies were literally people walking down the streets while screaming slurs.
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