May/June 2003

"I'm Not Wrong...
I'm Just Differently Logical."

by Greg Hartman

We're going to have to do something about children's television. Today's children watch shows like Sesame Street, which teach them that the world is full of friendly interracial adults and cute puppets and letters that form recognizable patterns. This is, of course, not true. When I was a kid in New York, my friends and I watched shows like Captain Video, which taught us that the world was full of evil forces trying to destroy the earth, which turned out to be absolutely correct.

-- Dave Barry

In the early 1980s, a specter far scarier than AIDS, MTV, the rise of Michael Jackson or the death of disco reared its head over American culture: political correctness, a term rivaling personal computer for primary ownership of the acronym PC.

What began as a small group of vocal activists, complaining that careless words marginalize oppressed people groups, quickly mushroomed into a majority of America's intelligentsia, each adding more stringent requirements to our speech, conduct and law. Sensitivity training, hiring quotas, college speech codes and vague transgressions such as insensitivity, intolerance and Eurocentrism -- all sprouted from the same root and now enjoy a stranglehold on American commerce, conversation, education and behavior.

What's the big deal? Why not think a little more about how what we do affects others?

In our postmodern society, with the absence of a unifying bedrock of morals or values, we've turned inward. As James Caesar of the University of Virginia has famously pointed out, multiculturalism really means biculturalism -- specifically, us and them (or me and them, for the truly self-centered).

Forget the melting pot; America is now a nation of precisely two people groups: victims and oppressors. Right and wrong is determined not by transcendent values or even group consensus, but by the individual, as measured by one's self-esteem.

Don't believe me? Think common sense, pragmatism and our shared values will win the day against social engineering and judicial activism? I hope so, too.

Toward that end, I've noticed that the worst PCers are like cockroaches: Turn on the spotlight of public criticism and derision, and they vanish. Join me, therefore, in an illuminating look at my personal rogue's gallery -- egregious examples of political correctness run amok.

The Hyphenated-American

Perhaps I'm naive, but I have always labored under the assumption that a person's nationality stemmed from the nation he or she was born in or chose to move to.

No longer. Now we're supposed to start with our national and/or ethnic heritage and append our actual nation of residence as an afterthought, even if our families have been in America for generations.1 There doesn't seem to be any danger of losing our heritage -- rather, since each of us are the center of our own universe, we must be affirmed at all times.

I've always resisted that, both because I'm a stubborn iconoclast and because some of us aren't so easily classified. When renewing my passport, for instance, there's no way I'm going to try to squeeze in that I'm a German-Italian-Croatian-Spanish-Welsh-American Indian-American.

Crisscross Applesauce

Speaking of American Indians,2 these days we're apparently not supposed to mention anything Indian at all -- perhaps out of embarrassment over the conquest of the West. Indian giver is undeniably pejorative, but we also can't say Indian corn or Indian summer, given that both allegedly refer to deceptive things (the jury's still out on honest Injun).

More innocent terms are biting the dust, too. We've all heard that professional sports teams such as the Atlanta Braves and Washington Redskins are under fire for insensitivity to Indians. It's interesting that: 1) Most such complaining is done by non-Indians, and 2) Surveys show most American Indians either feel honored by such names or don't care at all.

But it gets even sillier. Remember how teachers used to tell you to sit "Indian-style?" Now they're telling your kids to sit "crisscross applesauce." I'm not sure why, but it seems to have something to do with oppression.

Cathy Keen, a graduate student assisting in assembling a display for the Florida Museum of Natural History, said in her dissertation that an adviser to the project complained about a painting that showed Indians sitting cross-legged, pointing out that they could sit in other positions, too.

American Indians are human beings who can sit in more than one position. Thank goodness we've cleared that up. Left unanswered is the question of what problem is solved by linguistically sweeping American Indians under the rug.

A Speedy Retreat

Last summer, Warner Bros. cartoon fans began complaining that Speedy Gonzalez, the Academy Award-winning star of some 40 cartoons, was noticeably absent from Cartoon Network.

CN officials said their owner, Ted Turner, ordered them to squelch Speedy because he showed "negative racial stereotyping." When push came to shove, though, Turner was unable to answer a few questions, such as:

· Negative how? The fact that Speedy is always victorious? His sombrero? His Mexican accent?

· Offensive to whom? Certainly not a large number of Hispanic groups, whose enormous letter and e-mail campaign quickly pressured Turner to beat a speedy retreat and rescind his decision.

Such ludicrous proposals reveal the shallow mindset of wannabe social engineers like Turner:

· Their efforts rarely help. American Indians, especially those on reservations, suffer from disproportionately high rates of alcoholism, poverty, domestic violence, joblessness, gambling addiction and other ills. How exactly is changing sports franchise names or dumping the term Indian style supposed to help them?

· The "offense" in question is often meaningless. Hispanics turned out to be the last people in the world offended by Speedy Gonzalez; American Indians don't much care about team names. Not only are their benefactors hopelessly out of step, they make no attempt to find out what really does matter.

· Such efforts often show the most racism and condescension of all. Rather than inviting their charges to join the adventure of freedom and responsibility that is democracy, PC social engineers would rather they be coddled and swaddled -- broken, helpless and permanent wards of the state.

· Finally, many strident PCers don't show the courage of their so-called convictions. Inconveniencing the rest of the world is fine;3 suffering any inconvenience of your own is out of the question.

When Turner discovered he was alone in considering Speedy Gonzalez offensive, he flip-flopped faster than you could say "Arriba!" This 180, from the same man who proclaimed Christianity a religion for losers and who has frequently, cheerfully offended those who don't happen to control enough advertising revenue, makes it hard not to conclude that his real bottom line is the almighty dollar, not the welfare of the oppressed.

What Christians Can Do

· Demonstrate true community. God has built into us the desire to give ourselves to something larger than ourselves. The Bible says to honor others first (Romans 12:10); the self-centeredness of Americans today is not only unnatural, but also shameful. Those whose self-worth derives from such unhealthy sources will be drawn in when they see us loving one another (John 13:35) -- if we can stop bickering over theological minutiae and jockeying for ascendancy, that is.

· Draw a clear line between tolerance and endorsement. Fairly or unfairly, the Church has a reputation for rejecting PC favorites such as homosexuals, co-habitating couples, abortion advocates and so on. Our only hope is to build relationships with such people, one at a time, to show that we, like Jesus, can accept people for who they are without pretending we condone what they do (John 8:11).

As Christians, we know the Second Coming will ultimately sweep away all foolishness (Matthew 25:1-46). But the world could certainly use some common sense before then, and as God's children, we're just the ones to provide it. 

1I've always wondered why this has never caught on in Europe. Maybe it's because "British-Scot," "French-Swiss" or "Belgian-Luxembourger" just don't roll trippingly off the tongue.

2Before you fire off an angry letter to my long-suffering editor because I didn't use the term

Native American, let me point out that the Associated Press Stylebook instructs journalists to avoid the term Native American, reasoning that as American Indians probably migrated to North America from Siberia, they're no more "native" than anyone else.

3In the early '90s, San Francisco seriously considered banning perfume at public meetings. The city's "disability coordinator" claimed that for those suffering "Environmental Illness" (whatever that is), perfume was as significant a barrier as a flight of stairs to someone in a wheelchair -- provoking one Chicago columnist to write an article titled "The Tyranny of the Phew."

Greg Hartman lives in Colorado with a differently gendered significant other, two chronologically oppressed peer dependents and three companion animals.

What's Wrong With Political Correctness? Ask not what you can do for your country; find out what the world owes you: PC encourages people to think of themselves as victims singled out for persecution rather than citizens responsible to their community. It's not at all uncommon for a community of several thousand to be thwarted in its desire to erect a Nativity scene because a single atheist cries offense, often saying -- without irony -- that he or she resents the imposition. Blame, not solutions: PC at its worst doesn't even try to stimulate dialogue between victims and oppressors -- it simply hauls the deepest pockets it can find into court, promising to heal the victim's wounds with cash. History -- the revised version: PC is more interested in what should have happened or the perceived import of what happened, than it is in what actually happened. Fearful of offending Japanese-Americans, the producers of Pearl Harbor, rewrote several scenes to suggest that Japan was forced to attack Pearl Harbor by a U.S.-led embargo. Dr. King envisioned a world of equal opportunities, but thanks to political correctness, we now strive for a world of equal outcomes. Disney's Pocahontas, portraying as it did an Indian nature worshipper of sorts, widely diverged from the facts that Pocahontas was probably the New World's first Christian convert -- and that not all Europeans came to America to rape, pillage and plunder. Emotion outranks truth: Today many schools ban books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Uncle Tom's Cabin or To Kill a Mockingbird, fearful that they might offend. No one seems to consider that these books' frank depictions of slavery and prejudice are supposed to be offensive, or that it might be good to be offended about slavery and prejudice. Merit becomes meaningless: Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a country in which we would be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. Let's check our progress since then: Many fire and police departments have been sued -- not only for hiring quotas, but also for giving women and minorities less stringent fitness requirements, easier promotional exams, and, in Los Angeles, for limiting the number of white male applicants in a firefighter exam to zero. More recently, a photo showing three firemen hoisting a flag over Ground Zero became the subject of a proposed statue. When a closer look revealed all three firemen were white, activists demanded a statue with one white, one black and one Hispanic fireman (prompting one writer to thank God the actual firemen present on 9/11 followed no such quotas during the rescue). Dr. King envisioned a world of equal opportunities, but thanks to political correctness, we now strive for a world of equal outcomes, in which all professions show a nice balanced ethnic mix, no matter who actually applied or was best qualified.

A PC Glossary Our enlightened society recognizes no sin except intolerance. Therefore, outmoded terms reflecting moral judgments must be modified in favor of more positive, affirming terms. Just remember: The only reason the following definitions are funny is because they're so close to the truth -- and because no one's insisting that we actually use them. Yet. Body Odor: Non-discretionary fragrance. Clumsy: Uniquely coordinated. Dead: Living impaired. Dirty Old Man: Sexually focused chronologically gifted individual. Dishonest: Ethically disoriented. Drunk: Chemically inconvenienced. Fail: Achieve a deficiency. Fat: Horizontally challenged. Ignorant: Knowledge-based non-possessor. Lazy: Motivationally deficient. Panhandler: Unaffiliated applicant for private-sector funding. Pregnant: Parasitically oppressed. Serial Killer: Person with extremely difficult-to-meet needs. Short: Vertically challenged. Vagrant: Non-specifically destinationed individual. Wrong: Differently logical.

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