I was reading over a couple of articles recently that brought to my mind the slippery and oft-cited concept of "political correctness." One of them, about a Seattle public school teacher who asked her pupils to remember that Thanksgiving is not a happy time for Native Americans, comes from the FoxNews Network, which like all media has a radical left-wing bias. The other, an opinion piece by Michael Medved, gives historical evidence for a unicultural America.
I don't mean to interact with either of these articles point-by-point, but each is worth reading, and I do not wholly disagree with either. However, I have a bone to pick with some assumptions that underlie each article. The former asks us to share a laugh (or a scandalized ubi sunt?) over the state that this country (or at least its radical coasts) has come to. Apparently, the idealistic teacher tried to build a case for Thanksgiving being a time of sorrow and lament among the Native American community, which is apparently not quite factual. My response to this would be "stop being silly and try to make your otherwise good point without recourse to inaccuracy." The article (I read between the lines here a little) asks us to gripe "Look at that. Undermining our sacred values, by God."
Medved argues for some kind of "melting-pot" uniculturalism by stating, among other things, that the Know-Nothing party's machinations against Catholics demonstrate an American unwillingness to accept the unassimilated other. All he really seems to prove is that yes, in the past, immigrants to America were expected to "Americanize" and desist from their bizarre foreign behavior. True enough; people in this era also sold cocaine as children's headache relief and believed the Negro to be closer to the original ape than the enlightened whitey, so I'm not sure that archaic views on society and culture are appropriate corroborations for one's argument. All of this aside, however, I was still left wondering what the fundamental reason behind this argument was; why, after all, are we so against multiculturalism or cultural diversity?
I think the answer lies in this vague and mutable little concept of "political correctness." The term originated from the well-known early 20th century totalitarian regimes that forced individuals to either spout the party line or risk being "purged." No one would argue that this is going on in the USA as of now, so a new definition came about: basically, the ridiculous stuff that the Left wants to replace our values and heritage with. Hyphenated names, gay pride, class consciousness, the right of women to vote ... etc.
I am more than willing to concede that some of these concepts, and the people who push them, have significant cloud of the ridiculous hanging about them. But so does any political ideology. My problem is when anything that seems to smack of social justice for any minority, or of an attack upon corporate misdeeds, or even the vague and demure suggestion that sometime, somewhere, in all the decades since Jamestown, it is possible that misdeeds have been committed on the American continent by white men of British descent, is instantaneously branded "PC," which apparently then gives us license to ignore it and/or rail against it. The Right, by fostering an almost paranoid skepticism of government (but not big business, for some reason) and then trotting out this label, has conveniently found a way to ridicule many voices that, despite any attendant silliness, are really quite well-intentioned and helping fight the battle for justice and equality. All this based on the assumption that rights are somehow a zero-sum game, and that if Native Americans or homosexuals are freed from discrimination, then somehow white, straight Evangelicals will be in for a round of persecution.
Instead of the paranoid and perjorative definition of "political correctness," I would like to offer a re-contextualization. "Political," at heart, just means "social" or "pertaining to the polis." What if PC could just mean acceptable in the polis -- i.e. polite, just, non-discriminatory? It doesn't have to mean that we hate America or white people, or that we intend to establish draconian racial quotas, or make Spanish an official language, or condition our children to be gay. It does mean that we should treat everyone with respect, whether in speech, or hiring, or education; and that applies to a lesbian Khazakh-American muslim just as much as it does to me.
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3 comments:
Well, hmmm. You've packed a lot of stuff into your post, and I don't really have time to parse the whole thing out. I think you made some very good points, as there are fanatics on both sides of the "multiculturalism" debate.
On the other hand, what do you mean by the term "social justice"? That term has bugged me for quite some time. I have read up on it a bit (for example, in Thomas Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice), and have noted that it's the new buzz phrase in many teacher's colleges. "Teaching for social justice" is the new mantra. But what does it mean? That's the $64,000 question. According to an article I read in City Magazine a while back, it basically means that teachers need to embrace everything but the kitchen sink--homosexuality, bisexuality, radical feminism, abortion rights, trans-gendered malarky, evolution, redistributed wealth, universal health care, global warming, reparations for slavery, guilt for being white, America is the bad guy, and on, and on! (You can read the article when you get home). And, if they don't embrace all this, they can't get their certificate.
I'm assuming you mean something entirely different than this. But what?
For the record, I do realize that the USA has done its share of bad things. Slavery and the treatment of American Indians (from whom we are ascended, in part), is horrible. On the other hand, I do think there is (or should be) a shared cultural ethos to a certain extent, and that would include needing to know (and use reasonably well) how to speak English. I don't think people should have to give up their cultural distinctions, so long as those distinctions are not against the law (polygamy, and the like).
I'm not so sure I agree with you final sentence. If I don't want to hire a lesbian, and I own and operate a private company, I don't think I should have to. I also don't think I should be compelled to rent a home I own to a homosexual couple, or to a fornicating couple. I would never harm a homosexual, any more than I would an adulterer, but I don't think I should have to hire one if I have religious scruples against it.
Oops! I mean, from whom we are descended!
Sorry it took me so long to get back! Grad school ...
I didn't even remember that I'd used the term "social justice" in the post; I suppose it is a buzzword just as much as "political corectness," and I think that etymologically they should be understood in roughly the same way: good behavior in the polis, respect toward the other in society, lack of xenophobia and racism, etc.
Another way to look at it might be "full citizenship." If there is an inequality inscribed into the heart of our system, then how can we actually claim the group or class who gets the short end of the stick has full member status in our society? There is no question that on average, if job applications are sent around with names like "John" and "Mary," and then identical ones sent out but with "Kareem" or "Juanita," the latter will fare far worse. And that is the point, I believe, when the sanctity of private enterprise must give way to the larger moral question of whether or not we can all be complicit in pressing a metaphorical boot into the face of a gigantic American underclass. I think not, and I think there is every reason for legislation to reflect that.
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