If I needed any further evidence that few things are new, I gained it as I went through some of my wife, Francie’s old files. One is on the subject of political correctness, with various clippings from 1991. I could be reading them today.
The Wall Street Journal carries an editorial: “Political Correct Newsrooms" which tells the story of how Juan Williams, a black journalist, still present today on Fox News, had “been taken hostage by the Washington Post” because he was “saying nice things about Clarence Thomas” who, at the time, was being considered for the Supreme Court. He was being accused of sexual harassment by Professor Anita Hill.
We see Thomas Gephardt, a conservative columnist on the Cincinnati Enquirer, lamenting “political correctness at UC.” One professor at the university had recently written a guest column “about the effort of academic/afro-centrists to turn history upside-down to get across their point of view.”
Describing what is going on in university campuses, Gephardt wrote that, “taken together, they reflect a profound change in the tradition of free, open civil discourse. How ironic that the once enslaved universities of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are rejoicing to see their intellectual shackles loosened. Who would have imagined that new, politically correct shackles would one day be visited upon by their American counterparts?”
There was this poem entitled “The Politically Correct Christmas.”
No welcoming crash in the village squares;
It went the way of the school-day prayer.
A multi-cultural spending spree
Is what Christmas is turning out to be.
Followed by:
Santa’s features are pictured in a bright rosy hue,
But minorities require black or brown too.
That stump of a pipe in his teeth has to go;
It’s offensive to all non-smokers below.
Finally, here is the conservative national columnist, James J. Kilpatrick.
He writes, “There is something fundamentally ridiculous in the new orthodoxy of the politically correct. In today’s academic world, words do summersaults. ‘Diversity’ means ‘sameness.’ Free speech carries a heavy cost.
The general idea in these intellectual zoos is that all cultures are equal. There is no longer such a value as ‘merit.’ The rule applies to language. It also applies to music, with the result that Mozart is no better than rap.”
And still from Kilpatrick, "On many campuses, students risk suspension or expulsion if they are heard voicing any ‘discriminatory’ or ‘disparaging’ remarks about another student’s race, sex, religion, color, creed, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry or age. Maybe the process of corruption will soon run its course, but don’t bet on it. Those who love our Western inheritanceness had better get off their rumps and fight.”
All of this twenty years ago.
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So what, as we are hearing almost the same issues today, twenty years later, do I view as a correct position on this issue?
In a word, the issue is complex.
White privilege is a reality. Racial bias, at least for the majority of us including me, is a reality. And as we have seen more clearly than ever during the past year, racial injustice is a reality.
Yet, we are making a major error—moral and intellectual—if we allow these realities to justify allowing an unexamined assertion by a minority that he or she has been the victim of racial bias to lead to conclusions and actions which impugn and deny the value and rights of another person, including the right to free speech.
We have seen that recently at Smith College where an unfounded and on examination false accusation that a couple of people were racist has resulted in harm to them in their employability and state of mind. As has been true on many other campuses, discussion on the merits of the case is being inhibited by an inappropriately morally tinged sense of "political correctness" which is impeding getting at the truth. As a Smith Professor said (as reported by the "New York Times"-2/25/2021), "My impression is that if you're on the wrong side of issues of identity politics, you're not just mistaken, you're evil".
I fear "political correctness" is running off the rails. We hear discussion of whether statues memorializing Thomas Jefferson should be taken down because he owned slaves. Reading Shakespeare is questioned just a reading Huckleberry Finn was generations ago. Consciousness extends to the laughable as we read that Hasbro toys will be rebranding Mr. Potato Head as a "gender-neutral" head. What comes next? Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse being conflated to a gender-neutral mouse?
There is great danger in all this. It can leave us feeling that we are doing something substantive to address genuine racial and gender inequities when we are in fact dealing with superficial tokens of progress.
Even worse, it delegitimizes the existence of the very real, genuine racial and gender biases and thus inhibits broad and sustained action to confront them.
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I want to turn back briefly to an issue raised by James Kilpatrick in his previously cited column and the related issue being debated today on the importance of highlighting awareness of the contribution of African-Americans to our Nations history and culture.
I deeply believe we have to be very intent in gaining a deep understanding of the history and the cultures of other people, importantly African-Americans whose history we have so long ignored. Knowing this history is vital if we are to understand what brought us to where we are today. Above all in recognizing the vestiges of slavery. But there is more than that. Years ago, we didn’t recognize the role of music originating in Africa to current-day music. We did not recognize the role of the spirituals which lifted enslaved men and women. We didn’t know of, let alone appreciate, the insights and inspiration to be gained from far too-long uncelebrated and unrecognized Black writers and novelists.
I say all of that, believing there is such a thing as “merit.” Some writing is richer and more meaningful than others. However, this quality of "merit" is not inexorably differentiated by race or nationality. Some writing is better than other writing in describing human nature and the challenge and rewards of life. One thing we have discovered over the past 20 years is that “merit” has many origins and smany sources and it carries greater or lesser meaning for different audiences.
To conclude, I am increasing concerned that our urgently needed and deeper appreciation of the reality of racial and social inequities is too often leading to a premature, unexamined, and morally self-satisfying responses to alleged incidents of racial bias. We must remain open to other points of view as we search for "truth" in how to confront the existential issues of racial and social justice.
At the same time, we should never allow the pejorative labeling of exposing the reality of "white privilege"by some as "political correctness" to dissuade us from revealing the "truth”of this reality.
