Abstract—There have been various social movements
throughout history to protect minorities from discrimination
and infringements of their rights. However, as we can see from
many historical cases, these movements are not direct
representative of changes in public perceptions. This paper used
political correctness as conveyed in textbooks – changes in the
term referring to African Americans and increased reference to
African American and female public figures – in order to
demonstrate the actual impacts of these movements on public
perceptions. The examined differences, which are the
disappearance of the term negro and appearance of the term
African-American, and increased mentioning of
African-American and women public figures in text book,
considering the fact that textbooks reflect value-sensitive
publishing, indicate that public opinion regarding minorities
changed after the active social movements of the 1960s and 70s.
Index Terms—Political correctness, minorities.
Chung Hyun Lee is with the Korean Minjok Leadership Academy,
Republic of Korea (e-mail: sw021360@gmail.com).
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Cite: Chung Hyun Lee, " Public Perceptions of Minorities in America: Political
Correctness in U.S. History Textbooks, Before and After
1970," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 233-237, 2014.