A Defense of Political Correctness

As I begin what turns out to be the third rewrite of this blog post, I find myself curious – why, given the title, are you reading it?

I suspect that there are several different camps here… I’m guessing some are reading this because you love/like/respect/care about me, and are truly interested in my views regarding the subject of Political Correctness, whatever your own opinion happens to be. I imagine some are intrigued simply by the title, and are wondering what kind of rhetorical acrobatics am I going to exercise in order to attempt a cogent argument. And I know there are some who are already mentally composing your replies, hoping to find just the right mix of bombast and condescension with which to take me to task for daring to even express the possibility that PC is anything but pure evil.

I’ve been thinking about the concept of PC for some time, paying attention as the meme arises in my exploration of the world. A typical recent example: the firings of folks like Clint McCance, Juan Williams, Rick Sanchez, Dr. Laura… even Don Imus… or (for my contemporaries) all the way back to Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder. Accepted wisdom states that these folks were fired (or “encouraged” to resign), not because of what they said, but because their superiors were cowed by a misguided fear of being seen as politically incorrect. According to this view, these folks were fired for speaking the truth as they saw it – a truth that was uncomfortable for their employers. Said employers, in their desire to maintain a positive reputation among… well… among someone who is probably liberal and elitist, chose to ignore the passionate, patriotic truth, and ended the employment of these free speakers – possibly hoping to set a public example concerning what types of speech or truth interpretations will be tolerated by society.

In other words, truth is less important than the appearance of propriety.

For many, that’s central to their definition of PC – if a truth makes someone uncomfortable, or if it hurts someone’s feelings, the “correct” thing to do is to soften the language, obscure the truth, and distort reality so as to avoid hurting their feelings.

Let’s look at an example that popped up in the Facebook discussion that prompted this post. According to this view, the usage of BCE/CE (as opposed to BC/AD) as a chronological numbering system is a PC development designed to assert secular primacy over Christian tradition. It’s a movement with the express goal of forcing the world into a secular humanist mold, moving civilization ever further from God. By insisting on using BC/AD, we’re taking a stand for our faith against the crushing onslaught of anti-Christian thought disguised as an effort to protect the feelings of unbelievers.

The other example from my FB thread… Nidal Hasan’s tragic mass shooting at Ft Hood. According to this view that we’re exploring, PC had a role in allowing this event to take place. Common knowledge seems to dictate that although there was concern about Hasan’s views, no one took any action. The lack of action wasn’t due to the fact that he hadn’t committed any crime yet… it was out of fear of appearing to discriminate against Muslims – which led directly to this horrific attack. If it weren’t for PC, he would have been stopped before the events of Nov 5, 2009 could have taken place. Fear of appearing bigoted in the face of truth discouraged any preventative action.

While we’re looking at this particular viewpoint, we should take a quick peek at its roots. Theorists who hold this view place the origins of modern PC back in the Frankfurt School with its emphasis on Cultural Marxism (in case you didn’t spend lots of time in philosophy classes, I’m sure Google will be your friend here). From there, it was adopted by the New Left in the late 1950s… and eventually the disease of PC planted roots – firmly establishing itself in liberal thought. In this view, PC is a tyrannical plot to dismantle freedom of speech and to punish dissent… it’s a tool used by totalitarian regimes to control the thoughts (and behaviors) of the masses. Think of it as a secularized Spanish Inquisition.

Given our propensity to inflate the importance of our views, it’s no wonder that PC is described as the great disease of our society, the source of all of the woes of modern culture, the pinnacle of our victim-oriented mindset, the worst result of the secularization of civilization. (I also read once that hyperbole will destroy the universe!)

If all of that sounds a little harsh, that’s because it is. It’s the view from the far, far right. The majority of PC opponents skew a tad closer to the center than this… the nuts and bolts of the view are same, but some of the exaggerated language might not be as representative. Still, in general, the view is that PC means truth is less important than propriety.

As you might have guessed, I’m going to present a different perspective.

To begin, I propose the possibility that arguments against PC have far more to do with opinion than truth.

Let’s look back at the Ft. Hood shooting. Remember, the accepted wisdom is that PC prevented any action from being taken that might have saved lives on that day.

It should be no surprise that there are more facts than what shows up in “common knowledge” – that’s almost always the case. For more than a year before the shooting, there were investigations into Hasan. For example, email communications between Hasan and a known terror supporter named Anwar al-Awlaki were sent to the FBI terrorism task force (not known as a big hotbed of PC thinking). The FBI determined that Hasan was not a threat. “Because the content of the communications was explainable by his research and nothing else derogatory was found, the JTTF concluded that Major Hasan was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning.” (This quote is from the FBI regarding the findings of the task force.)

Of course, after the shooting took place, a much stronger microscope was applied to his life, views, beliefs, activities, associations, etc. Even then, there is no real consensus yet about the preventability of the attack. And why should there be agreement? The vast overwhelming majority of people who have “radical” ideas have never committed violence… but that is beside the point.

The point is that the belief that no pre-emptive action of any kind was taken against Hasan because of PC-based fears of the appearance of discrimination is an opinion – it is not a fact. Could more have been done? Very possibly (although again, before the shooting, he hadn’t committed any crimes), but again, we’re dealing with opinions here…

Let’s go back to the the numbering nomenclature.

In 525, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus made an attempt to move the numbering system away from Diocletian years in order to distance time-keeping from the memory of a major player in the persecution of Christians. He called it “Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi“. In 731, Bede threw in the concept of regressive dating for the years before the birth of Jesus, as well as the idea of not using a year zero.

The term “Common Era” (originally vulgaris aerae – love those Latin guys!) was in use as far back as 1615. In a 1701 book, a man named LeClerc included the phrase “Before Christ according to the Vulgar Aera” – and in 1716, a book by Prideaux (actually written in English) says “…before the beginning of the vulgar aera, by which we now compute the years from his incarnation.” During this time, and for the next 120 or so years, you were equally likely to see common era, vulgar era, Christian era, and of course, AD (or the English version: “in the Year of our Lord”).

In the Victorian Age, the word ‘vulgar’ changed from its original definition (‘common’ – as in ‘used by common people, not exclusive to royalty‘) to mean crude or indecent… so the phrase ‘vulgar era’ went away. From that point, AD became the predominant expression, although one would still – on rare occasions – encounter either CE as the Christian Era or CE as the Common Era.

This quick trip down memory lane does demonstrate the truth of one of the PC opponents’ points – namely that Christians were indeed responsible for the way year numbering works. The line of delineation indeed was the supposed year of the birth of Jesus. While this naming convention was certainly meant as a testament to their faith and as an honor to Jesus, it was an arbitrary choice. (It’s difficult to argue with the idea that the birth of Jesus was the single most consequential event of human history, in terms of its impact across people and time.) Many civilizations managed to keep highly accurate time without referring to Jesus at all… but the convention that is now the most widely used across the world is the one based on some folks’ best guess as to the year of Jesus’ birth.

I mentioned that I believe anti-PC views are based on opinion, not fact. Clearly, the origins of this timekeeping system are rooted in Christianity… so which part of this is opinion?

Motivation… as my friend Brian pointed out in the Facebook thread, it’s all about motives – on both the pro-PC and the anti-PC sides.

So let’s look at the motives surrounding the CE vs AD debate. It is the opinion of some that the majority of those who use CE instead of AD are players (willing or not) in an attempt to increase the secularization of society. Obviously the actual choice of which naming convention we use doesn’t impact the grand scheme of God’s Kingdom – but the motivation behind the choice might. Unfortunately, we can’t always know the motivations behind the decisions of others (or even of ourselves for that matter).

It is highly likely that some of the folks who actively use BCE/CE are only interested in furthering a more secularized society – but that is not universally true. For example, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (the publishing body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses) have been using BCE/CE exclusively since April of 1964. And whatever you think of them theologically, it’s unlikely that the secularization of society is their goal.

Another example – me. I am not 100% consistent in my usage, but I do use BCE/CE most of the time. What’s my motivation? I have several… one is that I have a serious character flaw that involves a propensity to tweak the noses of folks that I believe take themselves too seriously. But in general, I believe that words are important – and actually have the capacity to injure. I believe that forcing someone to say “Jesus is Lord” is not the same thing as leading them lovingly to Christ, and might even be an impediment (remember, AD means “year of [our] Lord“). I believe that choosing words that injure someone when I don’t have to flies directly in the face of what it means to love my neighbor.

Earlier, I showed one version of the historical roots of PC – the story generally accepted by the anti-PC critics.

Here’s a different version…

PC has its roots in the abolition movement in the years just prior to the American Revolution. Folks like Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine used rhetoric and logic to argue for the emancipation of slaves. Students of John Locke (like Jefferson and Madison) took seriously the view that “all men are created equal“, and worked toward acceptance of that view. As a quick aside, Moses Brown (co-founder of Brown University) was heavily involved in the abolition movement – which I believe to be an early source of the idea that academia is the seat of all things PC.

As time went by, PC followed the abolition movement forward toward actual emancipation and the Civil War, through Deconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, before catching up with the New Left. Scattered throughout this history, PC also touched on other movements: women’s suffrage, anti-war efforts, the sexual revolution and hippies and the Summer of Love, the ERA, gay rights, Native American rights, etc. etc. etc.

Here’s where we get down to the main point of this defense of PC.

Some say that history is written by the victors. One perspective on that view is that human history is the story of marginalization. To ensure that we all agree on terms, I’m defining marginalization as the social process of being relegated to a lower standing by the ones in power. People or groups who are marginalized are separated from the rest of society, forced to occupy the fringes, denied equality in all things – often including material resources, services, programs, etc.

I believe that the act of marginalizing someone is diametrically opposed to the message of Jesus.

This is a commonly accepted definition of PC: PC is a term which currently denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, religious, sexual orientation, disability, and age-related contexts. This definition is fairly safe, even if it does give some the heebie-jeebies.

Here’s a better definition: PC is the desire to avoid expressions or actions that marginalize, exclude, insult, or harm ‘others’ simply because they are ‘others’.

There is some depth to this definition, so let me talk about it a little more.

First, this definition distinguishes between the serious and the silly. By silly, I mean the stereotypical nonsense stuff that makes everyone laugh at PC, like saying “altitudinally challenged” instead of short, or “differently geographically aware” for men who won’t ask for directions. I’m not talking about that stuff at all – and I am certainly not defending it.

Secondly, this definition requires an understanding of ‘other’. Here I’m talking about the difference between individual consequence, and membership in an outlier group that’s different than mine. In other words, if I punch Bobby because he said something rude about my mom, that’s not a violation of this PC definition. If I punch Bobby because he’s from a different country, or of a different religion, or has fewer limbs than I do, or he’s attracted to someone I don’t think he should be allowed to be attracted to – that is absolutely a violation of PC.

I’d like to address one anti-PC argument that resonates with me. Specifically, the idea that PC speech or behavior is wrong because it obscures, ignores, or tries to change the truth.

I believe avoiding the injury of others does not require the hiding or changing truth. If I say “African American” instead of the variety of things our grandparents said, I’m not obscuring any truth. If I stand up to the folks who say things like “all terrorists are Muslims“, I’m actually promoting the truth. If you say “that’s so gay” around me, I’m likely to say something like “And for you, is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” Along with being lucky that I’m not as eager to brawl as I was pre-marriage, you might also be encouraged to consider that nothing was gained by your offensive speech. It’s not like some “truth” would be overlooked if you found a better way to express yourself.

It has been my experience that some of the folks who use the most politically incorrect speech in over-generalized fashion tend to play fast and loose with the truth anyway. For example, someone who says to me “It’s them damn spics comin’ over illegally and takin’ our jobs that’s causin’ our unemployment problem” is going to hear from me about both issues – the word choice designed to marginalize, and the lack of truth in the claim itself.

And here’s what really gets my goat (or would, if I had a goat): people who use the specter of PC to defend themselves. When a bigot’s word choice is called into account, we often hear something like “What? Oh, that’s so typical. Everyone is so afraid to say what they think. PC has taken over the world! At least I’m man enough to admit the truth! What happened to the First Amendment, anyway??”

That’s not it at all. What’s really happening is that they’re spouting off about something they don’t understand, and trying to shield themselves instead of taking responsibility for their mind-numbing bigotry. The First Amendment wasn’t designed to encourage ignorance, hatred, or (maybe even worse) a lack of caring that someone might actually be injured by words.

I realize that some folks will have legitimate differences of opinion with what I’ve ranted about here.

For example, not only do I believe that it’s a spiritual imperative to avoid marginalizing others, I hold to a liberal belief that correcting past marginalization is almost as important as preventing future marginalization. And there are lots of folks who don’t believe that we have any responsibility to correct any past marginalization. There’s a common view out there that there is no burden on our part to level any playing field – that we have no obligation to make up for significant past sins.

But I absolutely believe that there is no ambiguity in the call to avoid further marginalization of others. The Golden Rule. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies. The entire Sermon on the Mount.

In fact, I believe that Paul described the best definition of PC out there… Ephesians 4:15 “Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ…“