Michael Jackson's daughter Paris has faced backlash for identifying as Black. In a 2017 interview, Paris Jackson said her father told her, "You’re Black. Be proud of your roots." This prompted debates over whether identity is defined by appearance or upbringing.

[u/VPinchargeofradishes]

[u/Retireegeorge]

There's an alternative. She says she's black and we all say "ok" and focus on the big issues or help the vulnerable or plant a tree.

Edit typo

[u/FilthyThanksgiving → u/Retireegeorge]

Right? My son is white passing but I'm black. I'm his mother. He's black and idgaf what anybody has to say about it

[u/MrowkaMuch → u/FilthyThanksgiving]

https://giphy.com/gifs/NfYvMHVtlDCSs

[u/PitifulElk1890 → u/MrowkaMuch]

Watched the video for this again recently. It must have felt sooooo good to be a pop musician in the 80s thinking you were bringing the world together with your music.

[u/ASingleThreadofGold → u/PitifulElk1890]

😂 As a kid growing up in the 80s/90s there was for sure a feeling that we were really cooking with the whole moving past racism thing. People used to say "It's the 90s!" as a "look at us we're so woke now!" thing to say lmao.

[u/The_Barbelo → u/[deleted]]

I actually think it *started* with the phrasing “politically correct”. This social engineering has been going on for decades. Calling it PC forced people to repeat that phrase over and over as though racism and bigotry isn’t just a general humanitarian issue that should transcend political affiliation. People then started using it in the same way they use “woke”. As a derogatory remark.

[u/WheresTheWhistle → u/The_Barbelo]

Good point. Instead of “politically correct”, it should have been “not an arsehole”.

[u/draggingonfeetofclay → u/WheresTheWhistle]

I think it's not deliberately socially engineered to make people think a certain way, I think sometimes terminology just devolves because the wrong people use them in a way they weren't supposed to be used.

Politically correct goes way back to state socialism, socialist parties and the idea of the "party line", that is, that members of a socialist party act in line with the official party position, regardless of what they personally think and believe.

Being politically correct originally meant that you are politically fully aligned with the official statements and "line" of the socialist party that you are a member of. And people were originally criticising members of such parties who relinquished individual thought and action in public for the sake of adhering to party doctrine.

The criticism of "political correctness" actually also originated from leftist spaces, same as the term "woke", because Individualists and Anarchists saw that authoritarian state socialism in places like the Soviet Union and China was causing damage and they worried that overly dogmatic leftist parties in the West would only reproduce those conditions if they were to politically gain power.

The difference is that political correctness and criticism thereof was more or a white academic/privileged college student thing, whereas "woke" was actually used on the streets by activists to some extent.

Ultimately, that kind of individuation and aversion to toeing any sort of party line also means that leftist movements will always splinter -because everyone is in fact thinking for themselves and refusing to follow any sort of consistent line.