warned of substituting subjectivity for historical ob-
jectivity and of the lack of intellectual freedom im-
posed by political correctness. In short, it was be-
lieved that the true purpose of higher education,
namely the search for truth and open dialogue, had
been terribly twisted.
Impact The late 1980’s began a battle between ad-
vocates of new terminology and increased sensitivity
toward the multifold identity groupings constituting
a pluralistic society and those who viewed such
changes as a dictatorial restraint of freedom of ex-
pression and thought. The battle continued well
into the twenty-first century. Symbolically, the battle
pitted the political left as proponents and the politi-
cal right as opponents. In reality, “political correct-
ness” was more of an artificial concept than an actual
movement; proponents and opponents depended
on the particular issue at hand and cut across con-
servative and liberal ideologies.
By the 1990’s, political correctness had become
grist for a wide variety of satirical works and media
comedy sketches. The concept formed the basis of
Bill Maher’s television programPolitically Incorrect,
which ran on Comedy Central from 1993 to 1996
and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC)
from 1997 to 2002, as well as an Internet e-magazine
entitledPolitically Incorrect, published from 1997 to
- However, in schools and in the workplace one
had to be far more cautious about the words one
used. Textbook publishers had to sanitize their pub-
lications repeatedly so as to avoid controversy of any
kind that might reduce sales, while advertisers had
to carefully select words and images so as to avoid
product boycotts. The irony of political correctness,
critics might point out, is that the fear of upsetting
anyone upsets a great many.
Further Reading
Friedman, Marilyn, and Ian Narveson.Political Cor-
rectness: For and Against. Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1995. A debate between two promi-
nent philosophers on the pros and cons of politi-
cal correctness and the larger issues involved.
Keith, Allan.Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring
of Language.New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006. A linguistic analysis of the ways peo-
ple use language and how individuals and institu-
tions censor language. Includes bibliographic
references and index.
Levine, Lawrence W.The Opening of the American
Mind. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. A scholarly de-
fense of multicultural studies and diversity from a
historical perspective. The work was written as a
rebuttal to conservative critics of political correct-
ness. Endnotes and index.
Ravitch, Diane.The Language Police: How Pressure
Groups Restrict What Students Learn. New York: Al-
fred A. Knopf, 2003. A leading educator’s indict-
ment of the extent to which the misuse of bias
guidelines by government and textbook publish-
ers has damaged education in the United States.
Bibliography, index, endnotes, and useful appen-
dixes.
Irwin HalfondSee also Affirmative action; African Americans;
Conservatism in U.S. politics; Disability rights move-
ment; Education in the United States; Feminism;
Women’s rights.Pop music
Identification Mainstream, mass-marketed
popular music
In their common ability to cross audience boundaries de-
spite their stylistic and demographic diversity, the most pop-
ular musicians of the 1980’s represented what may have
been the last generation of performers capable of creating a
generation-unifying pop-cultural sound track.
Although the best-selling musicians of every genera-
tion since the explosion of rock and roll have consti-
tuted a heterogeneous group, no decade saw so
many disparate performers appealing to so broad an
audience as did the 1980’s. Unlike the musicians of
the 1990’s, the popularity of whom in many cases
had the unintended effect of splintering a once-
mass music-buying audience into smaller and smaller
enclaves that had less and less to do with each other,
the musicians of the 1980’s indulged in a musical
cross-fertilization that was eventually mirrored in
the unifying effect that their music had on their au-
diences.
If Prince and Michael Jackson, for instance—two
of the decade’s most ubiquitous superstars—were
merely the latest links in a chain of African American
musical innovators stretching back to Little Richard,
James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, and
Sly Stone, their blending of such influences into768 Pop music The Eighties in America