I take this election personally

This campaign had it all: Hillary didn’t look like a president. Her voice was too shrill. Other women were mocked with unflattering pictures, labelled too fat, too aggressive, measured by their attractiveness, not their competence.

We should take words seriously. Even if Trump does not believe what he says, which I doubt, his words have had an impact. They have normalized a discourse about women — and minorities — we have not seen in decades. Labelling it “pc” trivializes it.

Words matter. Words matter to the cab driver who thought that he won’t be allowed back into the United States — he is American — because his birth certificate lists his religion as “Muslim.” To the gay couple who feared the Supreme Court would withdraw protection for gay marriage. To the students who see racial slurs and ethnic slurs in line postings and signs around the campus.

It’s would be one thing to criticize “political correctness” in a world where the equality struggle has been won, when discrimination is the product of the aberrant individual who didn’t get the message. But that’s not the world in which we live. African-Americans are 11.4 percent of the workforce but only hold 6.7 percent of management positions. Hispanics are 16.1 percent of the total workforce but hold only 9.1 percent of management positions. Relative to their white male counterparts, African-American males earned 75.8 percent as much, Hispanic males earned 68.6 percent, African American females earned 68.1 percent, and Hispanic females earned 61.0 percent. Females earned 82.5 percent of what their male counterparts earned; and in management professions, females earned only 77.5 percent of what male managers earned. Words matter, contributing to what civil rights lawyers described as “headwinds” to equality.