Someone once said “that to destroy a civilization, society or culture, you must first destroy its language.”
The exact quote escapes me, but I believe it is attributed to Cicero. (I guess I need to look that up.)
My first exposure to political correctness, though I didn’t know it at the time, was in the early Eighties when a co-worker told me of a friend who designed video games. This was before the days of XBOX 360, Play Station, etc. Back then, video games were the large, imposing kind densely populating arcades, sometimes sharing floor space with pinball machines (an old favorite). The few I particularly enjoyed playing occasionally were, in order of my discovering them, Space Invaders, Centipede, its offshoot Millipede, and Tempest. (And who can forget Pong?!)
Though I played them a few times, I never developed a liking for Pac-Man, Galaga or Missile Command. Enough with the reminiscing.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be… This video game designer specialized in the types of games involving a mission communicated via a narrative, followed by clues given at periodic intervals until the player either meets the objective or runs out of time.
In his carefully considered instructions, he chose to avoid using the word “boy“, because of its potentially racist connotation.
Being a bleeding heart at the time, I simply shrugged it off as extreme thoughtfulness, never suspecting that this was just a small sample of the lengths that the PC (political correctness) wordsmiths would go to so convolute our language to create a collective conversational paranoia in our culture. The rationale behind the new terms was that some of the terms they came to replace were at best insensitive, and sometimes downright offensive. What decent, polite person wants to knowingly offend someone (or some group), after all?
Seemed reasonable enough. Far from being an inherently cruel language, English was being molded into a kinder, gentler version of itself.
So as not to exclude women, it became proper and more acceptable to use the more inclusive article he/she, him/her, his/hers, etc. Someone clever even offered to save us two keystrokes with s/he.
Almost no ethnic group escaped being renamed from their previous names that we didn’t know had been offensive until the new ones were introduced.
I’ve personally never been caused any slight by being called “white”, even though, depending on the time of year, I fall somewhere between beige and light tan. (The George Hamilton tan that once eluded my efforts now escapes my intentions.) Somewhere during this time is when I believe we first met (or became) hyphenated Americans.
When people are classified in groups, they tend to forget they are individuals, and then become quite easily manipulated as members of those groups. Merely possessing some physical, national or racial characteristic can be used to great effect in inferring stereotypes.
“It’s because she’s __, isn’t it?”
(Fill in the blank, there are plenty of choices.) With political correctness, and its insidious spawn “zero tolerance”, almost anyone can be put on the defensive for a poorly chosen word or phrase.
Evil intent can be inferred from some otherwise harmless behavior and presto, Zero Tolerance is invoked as a weapon against which reason, in short supply, is the only defense. I’d be willing to bet, if I were a gambling man, that most members of the groups whose leaders have raised victimhood to an art form are themselves not offended by the things their leaders claim are offensive.
An example that comes to mind is when Ross Perot, presidential candidate running as an independent in the 1992 and 1996 elections, addressing a gathering of the NAACP, used the term “you people”.
Harmless or inflammatory?
The same media who claims to objectively report on relations between races (and religious, and classes, and anyone else who can be polarized) is the same group of sharks which benefits more from division and unrest than from harmony between any two or more groups. How boring would the news be if everyone got along, and everything were fine?
Couldn’t sell many papers then, could we?
In the early Nineties, a very distinguished, well educated gentleman told me that, when he was assistant editor for a prominent newspaper in our nation’s capitol, he attended meetings of the editorial board to decide which stories would be printed in the paper each day. Stories considered racially positive or neutral, if they were even published, would be granted incidental space buried somewhere in the back pages.
Racially divisive stories, on the other hand, would merit front page headlines.
It is the print counterpart of the TV news motto “if it bleeds, it leads.” Not that it matters, but purely for illustration, the very distinguished, well educated gentleman I referred to was black.
That description is neither typical nor rare enough in any race to merit distinction, but when a person uses it (or the term “well spoken”) to describe an African-American (true heritage notwithstanding), he will encounter the wrath of the politically correct and their unwitting sympathizers. So if you say Indian instead of Native American, or Oriental instead of Asian American, or Hispanic instead of Latin American (or Latino), you may hear “they don’t like being called that anymore.”
Really?
Did someone survey a statistically significant number of Indians, Orientals and Hispanics (none of which are inherently derogatory terms) to see if those terms hurt their feelings? Better yet, did prominent members of those vast groups of people, with each respective group’s support, decide to stand up and demand to be called something more dignified than what they’d been called in the past?
I seriously doubt any such mass awakening occurred, other than in the minds of the social engineers responsible for political correctness. The abject stupidity underlying zero tolerance can quickly be discerned, if it has not yet been personally experienced, from a web search for the term “zero tolerance”. A little thought will reveal that zero tolerance policies toward almost anything remove subjectivity and judgment from apparent infractions of whatever rules they encompass.
If there is no tolerance for violating a policy, then mitigating circumstances become irrelevant.
There is no defense against zero tolerance, because zero tolerance won’t even tolerate reason. It is blind, unthinking, unfeeling execution of laws & rules.
You may not see a problem with this until you are on the wrong side of that law or rule.
In such a setup, there isn’t a need for a jury of one’s peers, or even a judge, for that matter. Either the rule was broken or it wasn’t, and if it was, then nothing else matters. Forget due process, the presumption of innocence, the right to face your accuser, etc.
For that matter, the infraction can be entered into a computer, which then returns the set sentence; no need for human intervention. Zero tolerance is just a euphemism for totalitarianism.
When it is invoked in a corporate environment where someone can anonymously register a complaint that he was offended, the alleged offender has no recourse, since he is assumed to be guilty.
Exigent circumstances are moot.
A company’s Human Resources department becomes a potent weapon for anyone who has suffered an offense, real or imagined. Company policy will even likely state such lofty goals as that its employees are to “treat each other with courtesy, dignity, and respect.”
That practice is conspicuously absent among the cowardly few who don’t have the courtesy, dignity and respect to personally approach the alleged offender in hopes of resolving the issue directly and without third party involvement. Instead, they choose to hide behind anonymity and wield who knows what consequences to the hapless victim, the alleged offender.
Only when direct efforts at resolution fail should a third party (i.e. HR) be brought in. Combine zero tolerance with the increasing criminalization of society (excellent articles about which abound), and you have a society full of people all of whom are guilty of something, ripe for the arresting. Increasing cries of “police state” are not as far-fetched as they once were.
Laws are for a moral people, but given enough laws, even moral people will become lawbreakers, whether by ignorance or by entrapment.
On a smaller scale, employees of corporations are forced, as a condition of their continued employment, to read, agree to and abide by an increasing number of policies and rules. Sooner or later, even model employees can be found to be in violation of some rule in the voluminous employee handbook.
Coupled with zero tolerance, any employee can be dismissed for any of a plethora of ready-made reasons. Had I known where the juggernaut called political correctness was headed back then, I might have mounted a campaign to thwart it.
Given the growing awareness in the public of the subtle manipulations to which it has been subject these last few decades, the time is right to reverse that ridiculous trend.
Stop using the artificial and condescending terms that make us sound as though we are groveling at the feet of whatever group we fear we’ll offend. Odds are pretty good they’re not really offended by the older, traditional terms.
If in doubt, ask.
I’d venture that few, if any people you meet on a regular basis truly object to the terms we used to say, and could likely say again without fear of reprisal. Since I’ve begun at least doing this with gender references, I have yet to encounter a woman (or male feminist sympathizer, which I once was) who retorted with “don’t you mean ‘he or she’?!” or words to that effect. Defeating Zero Tolerance will be somewhat more difficult, but at the risk of being overly simplistic (and perhaps cliche), it boils down to having zero tolerance for Zero Tolerance.
If you’re called to serve on a jury, and the trial involves some form of zero tolerance, seek to influence/reach a verdict which both serves justice and ignores any ill-conceived Zero Tolerance policy.
Many don’t realize (but more are learning) that jurors are duty-bound and empowered to rule on the law, not just the facts, contrary to what most judges instruct.
(See www.fija.org for more details.)
Check out these sites…. The Over-Criminalization of Social and Economic Conduct – scholarly, well researched treatment of the subject The Over-Criminalization of America (two and a half minute video) The Criminalization of America – excellent article by Jonathan Turley http://www.overcriminalized.com/ – entire site dedicated to the topic.
Fred Marshall III Copyright April 2010 All rights reserved.
Edited Version
