Not trying to pick any fights or insult anyone.
A friend who suffers from chronic depression has learned all the coping strategies available, and one of the most useful is called "Fake it till you make it". This simply means to act as if you were well - serene, confident, in control - so that, through incremental small successes, you can gain calm, courage and autonomy.
It seems to me that what we sometimes call "political correctness" - and, by the way, not everyone uses that phrase derogatorily: we just don't have a wieldy alternate label - is an attempt to achieve the same kind of thing in society. We have a mental image of the society in which we would prefer. We try to act as if the society we do live in resembled the image, hoping that, thereby, it will become tolerant, inclusive and fair.
There is much wrong, and all the wrongs have generated phrases, names, forms of address, references, and caricatures. The vernacular reflects and describes the attitudes, relationships, institutions and processes that have damaged and oppressed and marginalized and belittled groups of people.
In order to right wrongs, you must first identify them. Then you must get the majority of people to admit that they, themselves, are complicit in perpetuating the wrongs and that they should stop. You have to convince people to think differently - better. Speaking and writing differently - better - is a step toward that end.
But there are dangers. Faking it in depression may mask symptoms that would be more effectively addressed in some other way (meditation, medication, art therapy, counselling, diet....) When it doesn't work, it may prolong and deepen a "low" by adding guilt, failure and frustration. Other people who don't know you may belive the front and expect more resilience than you possess. These pitfalls don't make "faking it" less useful: you can avoid them by being aware, being prepared to change strategy as circumstances demand.
There are dangers, too, in changing language before changing the system it describes. Language may hide attitudes that need rather to be exposed. Now that the N-word is anathema, we've got media flunkies running around declaring the end of racism in America - a patent but prevelant falsehood. Now, it's far more difficult to spot, to pin down, to prove; the enemies are hiding in plain sight. And the majority of people have not grasped all the concepts of new language, partly because it's still fluid, in process, nebulous, and partly because it's not being applied universally and consistently. Including is harder than excluding, takes longer, requires more care and attention.
Is it worth the effort? Is it working? How can we do it better?