Oh, well, I think we were talking about different things, then, Ebbie. In fact I know we were. We agree on the essentials of this matter.

You were considering one common form of abuse. I was considering another very different but still common form of abuse. We've both seen plenty of both types, I'm sure. Yes, I fully understand the wrongness of the particular form of abuse you were referring to.

Context is everything when one is discussing this sort of thing.

I was referring to the tendency of people to be unfair to this or that other group of people due to some politically correct form of stereotypical thinking that they, as a group, have gotten into as a regular habit...usually because it's "in style" at the time, and it's therefore taken for granted.

Example: Many if not most British people in the onetime "Raj" in India had an oh-so-superior attitude toward any and all Indians, and felt quite justified in that attitude and in assuming that "All Indians are like that, you know...they're lazy, undependable, basically dishonest"...regardless of the unique circumstances of a situation or an individual.

Example 2: Many Indian people in the onetime "Raj" in India had a negative attitude of their own toward any and all British people, and felt quite justified in saying that "Oh the British are all like that, you know...pompous, full of themselves, stiff, inflexible, completely lacking in any warmth or feeling"...regardless of the unique circumstances of a situation or an individual. Some British people were not pompous, full of themselves, and lacking in all warmth. Some were genuine friends of the Indians and sympathized with the Indian desire for self-government.

Those were forms of political correctness that afflicted many people at that time. We presently sympathize more with the Indians of that period, because the British held the power at the time and colonialism is seen as anacronistic and unjust now...but that kind of prejudice against people merely because they are not "one of us" can be a very nasty thing going in either direction, because it's not an honest attitude that recognizes individuals, it's a prejudice.

The kind of political correctness I was alluding to was the kind that does not eliminate prejudice, but enshrines and exacerbates it.

When you treat people in any unequal or biased fashion, simply because of which outwardly identifiable group they are in, you may be serving a form of political correctness that is in vogue at the time amongst your group. So you then do to those others what you wouldn't want done to you! That's what I call hypocrisy.

For a good Nazi, for example, it was politically correct to turn in a Jew to the authorities, not because he'd done anything, but just because he was a Jew. It was extremely politically correct.

Therefore, a good Nazi was doing to a Jew what he would not under any conditions want done to himself. I call that hypocrisy...a very extreme example of it.

It's also hypocritical to interview several applicants for a job, but to favor one over the others because of his or her racial or cultural background or gender. You should not hire people because of stuff like that (unless it relates very directly and specifically to the particular nature of the job). Differences like that don't matter on most jobs. You should hire them simply because you honestly think they'd be good at the job, and you should hire the best applicant. Period. No profiling. No prejudice. No quotas. No government looking over your shoulder and telling you to find a racial or cultural or gender stereotype and then hire on the basis of that. That's prejudice, enshrined as being politically correct.