A Few Thoughts on Political Correctness
Sep. 18th, 2004 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
richardf8"Political Correctness" is a term we hear bandied about quite a lot these days, most often from conservatives who are feeling oppressed for some reason or another. It has come to mean censorship or censure of speech that is deemed offensive by someone or another.
To conservatives who feel for some reason that it is their cross to bear, unfairly imposed by a liberal establishment, I have this to say:
There is NO moral distinction between excising The Catcher in the Rye from school libraries for its content and removing Huckleberry Finn from school libraries because it has the "N" word. There is no moral distinction between bowdlerizing "Catcher" to relieve it of offensive language or doing likewise with "Huck." And BOTH have been attempted.
To liberals who feel unduly oppressed upon encountering epithets that are artifacts of a less-than-glorious past, a time when we weren't all equal, I have this to say:
There is NO moral distinction between excising The Catcher in the Rye from school libraries for its content and removing Huckleberry Finn from school libraries because it has the "N" word. There is no moral distinction between bowdlerizing "Catcher" to relieve it of offensive language or doing likewise with "Huck." And BOTH have been attempted.
Get it?
Put simply, Political Correctness, regardless of who is determining what is correct and what is not, results in a sanitization of our language and culture that serves only to further dichotomize our society. We cannot be so sensitive that certain words or situations are sufficient to send us through the roof and expect to continue functioning as a nation. And the way to avoid such a fate is to allow ourselves and our children to encounter these difficult passages, to wrestle with them and to harmonize them as necessary. This is the purpose of the humanities, and the danger of allowing any censorship at all is that it leaves us a nation that is ill-equipped to deal with, say, the 2 second baring of a boob on TV, or the the praise by one Senator of another Senator's legacy.
But what purpose does it serve, if we get all worked up over shit like this? [Oooohhhh. I said "shit." In a place where minors could see. I'm the downfall of all that is good and holy.] Simple. It distracts us from the larger issues we SHOULD be paying attention to. Like the fact that each time the pendulum swings from right to left and back, each side has nibbled away at one civil liberty or another. And we rarely get those back on the pendulum's return stroke.
To conservatives who feel for some reason that it is their cross to bear, unfairly imposed by a liberal establishment, I have this to say:
There is NO moral distinction between excising The Catcher in the Rye from school libraries for its content and removing Huckleberry Finn from school libraries because it has the "N" word. There is no moral distinction between bowdlerizing "Catcher" to relieve it of offensive language or doing likewise with "Huck." And BOTH have been attempted.
To liberals who feel unduly oppressed upon encountering epithets that are artifacts of a less-than-glorious past, a time when we weren't all equal, I have this to say:
There is NO moral distinction between excising The Catcher in the Rye from school libraries for its content and removing Huckleberry Finn from school libraries because it has the "N" word. There is no moral distinction between bowdlerizing "Catcher" to relieve it of offensive language or doing likewise with "Huck." And BOTH have been attempted.
Get it?
Put simply, Political Correctness, regardless of who is determining what is correct and what is not, results in a sanitization of our language and culture that serves only to further dichotomize our society. We cannot be so sensitive that certain words or situations are sufficient to send us through the roof and expect to continue functioning as a nation. And the way to avoid such a fate is to allow ourselves and our children to encounter these difficult passages, to wrestle with them and to harmonize them as necessary. This is the purpose of the humanities, and the danger of allowing any censorship at all is that it leaves us a nation that is ill-equipped to deal with, say, the 2 second baring of a boob on TV, or the the praise by one Senator of another Senator's legacy.
But what purpose does it serve, if we get all worked up over shit like this? [Oooohhhh. I said "shit." In a place where minors could see. I'm the downfall of all that is good and holy.] Simple. It distracts us from the larger issues we SHOULD be paying attention to. Like the fact that each time the pendulum swings from right to left and back, each side has nibbled away at one civil liberty or another. And we rarely get those back on the pendulum's return stroke.
