Taking a Dim View - Part III

In Parts I and II of this series, I mentioned how I make a point of watching The View as often as possible. The women are well-informed about many facets of the political/social scene that I don’t follow on my own. However, the women consistently demonstrate blind spots in their discussions. In the previous essays, I focused on lapses that occurred in the panel members’ thinking on the issue of abortion and on the issue of celebrating our true selves. Here I consider how dangerous their support of political correctness has become.

The women often deplore the excesses of political correctness (PC) that characterize our society. But then they go on to indulge in some of those excesses themselves. Some of what I regard as the worst and most dangerous examples of their commitment to PC involve their calls for various people to apologize for saying something viewed as being insensitive or reflective of a prejudiced attitude. All sorts of people from cooking show host Paula Deen to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been called upon by panel members to apologize for having made insensitive, racist remarks or for having engaged in behavior seen as demeaning to people of color.

One of the panel’s most insistent calls for an apology involved Don Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers Basketball Team. A conversation that Sterling had on the phone with his mistress was recorded and eventually got aired by that mistress. In the conversation, Sterling asked that this off-again/on-again lady friend (herself of black ancestry) not bring any black people to his games. He apparently was saying this in the context of objecting to her flaunting her relationships with black men publicly in front of him.

No one comes off looking good in this exchange. Sterling’s attitude is plainly a narrow, dreary one. His mistress’ penchant for showing off her alliances with other men and then making public a private conversation in which Sterling objected to that, particularly when it came to black men – shows a relationship devoid of any love or regard on either side. The League officials’ resultant ousting of Sterling from his team ownership shows an over-reaction to a dim, befuddled fellow’s errant remark. It was an over-reaction prompted by society’s current irrationally punishing impulse towards anything deemed politically incorrect.

But it was The View panel’s indignant insistence that Sterling be made to abjectly apologize that represented the most disturbing aspect of PC. Haven’t any of the people demanding such apologies read the classic novel Darkness at Noon? In that book, Arthur Koestler vividly shows how tyranny was maintained in Stalinist Russia, and by extension, in all countries in which dictatorships prevail. People in Koestler’s world must be on guard against making even the most casual remarks in private that might be construed as critical of the current regime. Close friends and even family members can’t be trusted not to report them for such dissidence in order to gain credit with the powers that be for bringing noncompliance to light. After a transgression is revealed, the offending party is brought before a tribunal, is made to confess and to abjectly apologize for betraying the principles of the regime. After a sufficient public show has been made of the offending individual’s immiseration, that individual is brought into a back room and shot.

Such tactics prevailed in Russia even after Stalin’s era. They were also Mao’s way, Hitler’s way, and the way of almost all corrupt dictatorships around the world. Even those who haven’t read books such as Darkness at Noon are surely aware of these methods that dictators use to maintain power. Is that really the way advocates of political correctness would have America go? Do they really want us to make a common practice of encouraging the outing of people for the stupid remarks they make in private – then forcing these people to publicly wring their hands in apology and deposing them from whatever career success they might be having?

I don’t think that’s the American way. In order to maintain ourselves as “the land of the free,” people must be allowed to say anything they want to say, anywhere they want to say it, including the most stupid, insensitive things - as long as they don’t go beyond the very specific boundaries that the Supreme Court has established. Those boundaries include the famous injunction against yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater (when there is no fire). The Court also restricts what is regarded as “fighting words” That is speech addressed directly to an individual or to a group that a reasonable person can predict would incite an immediate, violent physical response from that individual or group. This clearly would not include a whispered request not to bring any “blacks” to a game, any more than it would include a whispered, personal request not to bring any “fat chicks,” any “Lithuanians,” or any “short people.” A bent toward such exclusions is indeed most often the sign of a limited, boring person, someone from whom intelligent individuals might want to dissociate themselves. But it cannot be the basis for any officially punitive action.

Furthermore, contrary to popular opinion, the U.S. has no laws against “hate speech.” As a recoil from horrific historic developments, some countries such as Germany now do have strict laws against publicly uttering defamatory remarks. It can even be punishable for a German citizen to anywhere call members of certain groups “freeloaders.” But there are no such restrictions in the U.S. Americans are free in theory, and should be free in practice, from official repercussions - no matter how mean and defamatory their remarks.

But there are more things wrong with demoting, firing, or demanding apologies from individuals who have vented their prejudices, besides the fact that it sets us on the slippery slope to tyranny. Another problem with such enforcements is that they don’t accomplish what they claim to want to accomplish. Making people apologize for racially insensitive words and deeds, or in fact for outright racism - never reforms these people. It doesn’t awaken them to the error of their ways. Forced apologies merely make hypocrites of them.

Beyond that, there’s a problem with these apologies in that they are being extracted in a lopsided way. There’s an inherent inequality in the way in which the PC society is trying to enforce equality. While white people are severely taken to task for any hint of insensitivity or offense to blacks, the reverse is not true. There is not the same level of criticism directed at anyone who makes defamatory remarks aimed at white people as white people – or indeed, until recently, remarks demeaning women. Quite the contrary. Hip-hop artists and rappers such as Snoop Dogg have become the darlings of the intellectual set, despite, or perhaps because of, their misogyny and racism. Snoop Dogg was invited to the White House as a result of President and Mrs. Obama’s enthusiasm for him. Martha Stewart appeared in a friendly roast of him where she was challenged to prove she could get as down and dirty as Snoop himself. (Stewart was generally approved as rising to the occasion.)

Essayist Theodore Dalrymple has observed how people used to try to imitate their betters, and often appeared ludicrous in the attempt. Now, the “betters” strain to imitate the worst, the most violent and vulgar elements of society. These wannabes appear equally as ludicrous in the attempt. While Don Sterling is stripped of his team ownership for his sotto voce request not to bring any blacks to the game – white fans of gangsta rap are bouncing in presumed energetic enjoyment of lyrics such as those by Dead Prez -

We gonna order take out and when we see the driver
We gonna stick the 25 up in his face......
White boy in the wrong place at the right time
Soon as the car door open up he mine
We roll up quick and put the pistol to his nose
By the look on his face he probably shitted in his clothes

The fashion for excusing, justifying, and hopping on the bandwagon of the rap culture goes beyond mere imitation and feigned, fawning enjoyment though. The internet is filled with professorial individuals interpreting the lyrics of Chance the Rapper and Snoop Dogg. These translations of rap lyrics by both black and white writers often include the imputation of profundity and actual genius to the songs under consideration. For example, there’s Chance the Rapper’s “Same Drugs” -

We don't do the same drugs no more
We don't do the, we don't do the same drugs, do the same drugs no more
Cause she don't do the same drugs no more
We don't do the, we don't do the same drugs, do the same drugs no more

When did you change?
Wendy you've aged
I thought you'd never grow up
I thought you'd never
Window closed, Wendy got old
I was too late, I was too late
A shadow of what I once was

Critics agree with Chance that the song isn’t about drugs. According to them, it’s a perceptive take on how Chance and his girlfriend aren’t on the same page anymore. What’s more, they hear the lyrics echoing the plaintive regrets of a Peter Pan-like reluctance to ever grow up. They find touching metaphor and literary synecdoche in the song.

Critics similarly praise the “literary legerdemain, the puns, the playfulness, and the sheer genius” of Snoop Dogg’s lyrics, such as those of his biggest hit, “Gin and Juice” –

Later on that day, my homey
Dr. Dre came through with a gang of Tanqueray
And a fat ass J of some bubonic chronic
That made me choke, shit, this ain't no joke

I had to back up off of it and sit my cup down
Tanqueray and chronic, yeah, I'm fucked up now
But it ain't no stoppin', I'm still poppin'
Dre got some bitches from the city of Compton

To serve me, not with a cherry on top
'Cause when I bust my nut, I'm raisin' up off the cot
Don't get upset girl, that's just how it goes
I don't love you ho's, I'm out the do' and I'll be

Rollin' down the street, smokin' endo
Sippin' on gin and juice, laid back
With my mind on my money

And money on my mind…

One critic again found telling metaphor here, metonymy and a loose-limbed, compelling chronicle of someone rolling breezily through life.

My goodness. Metonymy, synecdoche, playfulness, ingenious punning. It all puts the likes of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin to shame. Apparently, such dead white songwriters can’t hold a candle to these modern hip-hop artists. Except, I say – “The Emperor has no clothes! The Emperor has no clothes! The Emperor has no clothes!”

This straining to impute brilliance to so many rappers who are just peeling off random fragments of these-mean-streets vernacular is a shameful display of PC. That’s all the more so because such praise is not equally applied to both white and black performers coming from their respective colloquial cultures. While ghetto performers are praised in intellectual circles, the predominantly white country music performers are seldom seen as displaying any literary genius, playfulness, or astute use of metaphor. Lyrics such as “I’ve got friends in low places,” and “My baby is American-made, born and bred in the U.S.A.” are looked upon with sneering condescension or else ignored altogether by the politically correct.      

Most professorial people, when discussing music, are quick to spurn country music. If they don’t always go quite so far as to instead claim deep enjoyment of Snoop Dogg, they certainly impress upon listeners their appreciation of jazz, the kind of jazz that comes from the soul of the black experience. Forget about the soul of the Appalachian auto mechanic. Such a person ostensibly has no soul.

Despite Ken Burns’ efforts to confer a certain respectability on country folk music by tracing its historical context in his recent PBS series, it’s unlikely that any of the intellectual elite will be moved to embrace it. Political correctness will continue to demand that they dismiss its corn pone whiteness in favor of Snoop Dogg’s presumed gritty, anarchic cogency.

The trouble is, this kind of PC pressure leads people to abandon all standards, all striving towards goodness in art and in personal conduct. They excuse and even affirm any violent, misogynistic, racist attitude when voiced by blacks. They continue to see profundity where there is only mediocrity. They betray what likely would be their true feelings and their essential humanity in favor of their forced affirmation of sentiments such as:

“Kill the white people; we gonna make them hurt; kill the white people; but buy my record first; ha, ha, ha.” (Apache, Time Warner) – or

“It’s time to rob and mob and break the white man off something lovely.” (Dr Dre, Time Warner)

Any white performer singing such lyrics with the word “black” replacing “white” would not be praised; he would be condemned.

But the final problem with PC is that it constrains all normal, friendly human relations. It puts everyone on a hair trigger, cocked to take offense or to accuse the other of some PC infraction. Slamming people out of a social circle because of a narrow expression deemed to be non-PC hardly helps to create a less prejudiced, more welcoming atmosphere. You can’t fight for inclusion by excluding people at the drop of a hat.

I have personally been both the recipient and the perpetrator of such PC flash-over. Quite a few years ago (the reign of PC has been going on for some time), I invited a woman from the Libertarian Party over for lunch. During the brief contact I’d had with her at Libertarian meetings, she’d voiced an interesting, informed mix of conservative/liberal ideas that were the best of what I thought Libertarian philosophy should be. I felt the woman might be good friendship material, someone to cultivate. Unfortunately, our lunch went cold very soon.

We happened to get on the subject of the Chicago public school system and the woman mentioned the fact that well over a third of elementary school students in the City were black. I registered surprise at this. Indeed, I was amazed. The woman angrily asked me why that should matter so much to me. I could see she had interpreted my astonishment as dismay – a skinhead’s revulsion at the thought of being surrounded by black faces, a fear of being outnumbered by “the enemy.”

Actually, my surprise over the statistic had an altogether different cause. I’d recently been at a meeting of a local teachers’ association and I recalled that almost all the teachers there had been white. So I wondered - if so many students in the system were black, why weren’t there more black teachers?

But the bad impression I’d left was irrevocable. It would have been useless for me to explain. Anything I said would have come off as backpedaling justification. We finished our lunch in stony politeness. The only other time I ever heard from the woman was when I received a form notice inviting me to a gathering at her house to stuff envelopes for the coming campaign.

But there were times when I was the rush-to-judgement accuser. I remember the last time I so heartily indulged in that form of haughty appraisal. I don’t exactly remember what had provoked my censure, but I was walking down the street telling my companion how stupid someone I’d met had obviously been because that person had uttered a slur against some other race or ethnic group. To my tirade I added the cliché observation that “People always seem to need to feel superior to some other group. They sense their own inherent inferiority, so they have to fish around for some way to feel superior. They really are inferior though,” I pronounced.

My companion, older and wiser than I was – winked at me and said, “It’s enough to make you feel superior, isn’t it.”

“Epiphany” is a much over-used word, but I had an epiphany at that moment. Yes! What I had really been doing with my little speech was feeling superior to all those benighted others who were prone to making prejudiced, non-PC remarks. Of course there are standards that should be maintained. I’m not someone who believes all opinions are equally valid or that all actions should be allowed. Certainly, anyone poised to make some violent attack against the target of his or her prejudices should be stopped. But indignant rants such as the one I made that day against people who have simply voiced stereotyping remarks - is not the way to change things for the better. My criticism, even if I’d made it directly to the offending parties, would certainly not have turned anyone into a more loving human being. I knew that. So I’d indulged in that criticism merely for the purpose of getting a charge. I was energizing myself with a sense of my own superiority and I was intent on demonstrating that superiority to others.

I realized then that that’s what most PC is about. It’s self-serving. Its only purpose and its only result is to make a display of how much better the accuser is than all those left-in-the-dirt others. The critic gets to feel oh-so-superior to those who feel superior to black people, or Lithuanians, or short people, etc., etc.

If anyone truly wants to bring about a more welcoming, inclusive society, declaring others to be stupid, prejudiced Neanderthals is not the way to do it. Countering other people’s name-calling with name-calling of one’s own won’t accomplish anything. If will only tend to entrench those other people in their prejudices. So how could you go about changing others’ opinions? How would it be possible to deflate others’ prejudices?

Someone posed just that question in the Quora forum recently and Michael McFadden gave an interesting, reasoned answer. He suggested that you give people a chance to simply listen to a different idea. Give them a chance to listen - quietly, alone, unsurrounded by challenge. Any personal confrontation will put others on the defensive, forcing them to defend, justify, retort, and up the ante of hatred. But just give them a chance to sit silently exposed to a better way.

For example, if someone has notoriously been spouting some negative stereotypes about Jewish people, you might give her a ticket to a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank. That shouldn’t be done as obvious rebuttal to her floating anti-Semitism. Just present the theater ticket as a gift to a popular production that has been legitimately praised by critics. Similarly give someone who has expressed a fear of black people moving into his neighborhood a ticket to a production of A Raisin in the Sun, the acclaimed Lorraine Hansberry play about a black family moving into a white neighborhood. On the other side of the coin, if a black person seems locked into characterizing “poor white trash” as his enemy, you might give him a DVD of the documentary Harlan County USA. That documentary shows the struggles of Kentucky coal miners to wring some safety measures and a living wage out of the mine owners. In the same vein, literally, the John Sayles’ documentary Matewan shows West Virginia coal miners initially clashing with the black men brought in as “scabs” to break their efforts to unionize. But ultimately the blacks and whites join forces to make the mines less deadly places. Moving along to another kind of non-PC attitude, you might give the man who is ever-ready with a sexist joke a DVD set of the TV miniseries Human Trafficking. This dramatization graphically shows how a young Czech mother thinks she has finally found love only to be brutally initiated into the sex slave trade.

While using these kinds of gifts, the non-PC individuals can sit alone in the dark, watching, listening, without any pressure to feel or to react a certain way. Their mental pores can open and in this unthreatening atmosphere they can perhaps relax into learning something new, into feeling a different way. Their presumed nemeses can be humanized. Perhaps the recipients of such gifts can be moved off their set point of prejudice to see that we all have a common struggle to make this a better, kinder world.

Self-important denunciations of those deemed to have broken PC rules won’t do anything to accomplish such a goal. Political correctness becomes like a barbed wire fence between people. Until or unless people prove themselves to be imminently dangerous or riddled with truly homicidal anger, we should approach them with understanding – and perhaps more. Perhaps we should even go so far as to follow Goethe’s advice when he wrote that the only opinion worth voicing about the choices of others is one that springs from “a certain… enthusiasm, or from a loving interest in the person… All else is vanity.”