| Political correctness divisive instead of unifying
by Mike Roorda
Staff Writer
FILE PHOTO
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In the land of the politically correct, nobody is safe. There is always a new term lurking around the corner and another change in nomenclature that you should be aware of. Descriptions of entire cultures, races and all of the subcategories therein change overnight, each of them readily bristling with offence when the new term or name is neglected, forgotten or just unknown.
Gone are the simpler days of the original “Pink Panther” movies when Inspector Clouseau could bellow about his “little yellow friend,” his Asian assistant, who continually and comically tried to kill him. Then, the audiences would have a good laugh and smile knowingly but leave happy nonetheless. Not so today. A movie with such terminology would be banned immediately and labeled as “sensationalist” or “offensive,” and, some would argue, this is progress. Progress it may be, but is it the kind that we need?
As a very young child growing up in Paterson, N.J., I was continually inundated with different and new and exciting cultures and religions. I lived in the roiling melting pot that exists a mere twenty miles outside of New York City. My family had uprooted itself from predominantly white, rural Iowa and plopped itself down right in the middle of the busy city amidst the patchwork of races and cultures that coexisted there. It was a drastic change from the life that I had known up until then but my apprehension was not that I could not find the myriad of colored faces around me in the crayon box and qualify what they were, but that I did not have any friends.
Immediately I began canvassing the neighborhood. The immigrant Mexican family across the street did not have any kids my age, so that option was quickly exhausted. The next stop was the Jewish family down the street, but also to no avail, as their youngest was several years and grades older than I was, and in my young eyes, untouchable as an “older kid.” Finally, I began to look directly across the street from my house and quickly found out that there was someone there who was roughly my age and rather shy. I introduced myself to Troy shortly thereafter and we became fast friends. Troy’s family was Jamaican, but at the time, that and all of the previous distinctions that I have made, were unimportant to me. Sure I noticed them, and when I inquired of my mom why there were differences in the way that Troy and I looked, she simply replied, “His family’s from Jamaica,” like it was no big deal, and did not bring it up again.
Things went along well for awhile, and Troy and I did just about everything together. We spent many long summer days scheming up plans to make exciting new inventions. We dared each other to climb higher and higher in the huge tree in his yard. If we were feeling particularly risky, we would see who could jump the farthest off of the swing on my swing set or vault the bushes in front of my house until one or both of us landed in the middle and received the scrapes we knew were inevitable.
Things went well until we got into middle school. It was in middle school that people began to point out to me the differences between Troy and myself. It no longer was just “my friend Troy,” but had become, “Troy my black friend.” Soon after that, social mores shifted again and I learned very quickly that the term “black” was offensive and I had to use the phrase “African-American” from here on out. Somewhere along the lines between childhood and adulthood, Troy and I had our innocence stripped from us without warning. The world around us increasingly seemed hostile as we became aware of issues of racism, and the “gap between the races.” Slowly, a wedge was placed where friendship had once been, and it became painfully obvious that Troy and I were expected to act and dress in different ways because we were different colors.
It is from that incident that my revulsion for political correctness stems. Not that I believe that racial slurs should become acceptable vocabulary or that I think that we should all conform to one universal standard, but that the idea of a man needing to be broken down and qualified into a white man, or a black man or an Asian man, or anything else for that matter, does more harm than it does good. Especially as Christians as a part of a community at Calvin, the distinction of the color of a person should be far less important than his character. Yet we never receive any sort of programs or lectures on how to deal effectively with people of different character and interests than ours. In that arena we are left to fend for ourselves. The arena of political correctness however, receives more than its due of attention and publicity. We have entire weeks devoted to making sure that we use the right terminology and are conscious of our “differences.” Entire committees exist solely to ensure that students remain “informed” on the proper adjectives to use for the given year. How many of these problems exist independently of Calvin and how many are simply a product of our culture’s inability to simply leave them alone?
When someone picks continuously at an old scab, the wound will refuse to heal. So has America done with its relationships between the races. Almost all cultures have been wronged by one or another somewhere down the line, but the healing process will never begin as long as an increasingly politically correct nation stands determined to point out all of our differences at every turn and opportunity. The idea is that you will never know what slur to use if you are never told what not to say. The very practice of political correctness is what arms us and preps us to perpetuate the divisions. In doing so, politically correct efforts achieve the opposite of what they set out to do.
The continued effort to “make things right” is both misguided and damaging. The blacks indeed suffered atrocities at the hands of the white plantation owners, the Japanese were certainly wrongly imprisoned in interment camps in World War II and cheap Chinese labor was cruelly exploited during the pioneering days of the American West and the building of the railroads.
My aim is not to belittle or take any of the significance out of all of these events, but to say unless we learn from our mistakes and begin to move on, someone will always be offended. When did talking about the fight that you just got over with a loved one ever solve the problem? Would, once all was said and done, it be prudent to open up with, “Wow, you really did lay into me good back there”? Perhaps it would be. But would it continually be acceptable if the issue were then dragged out over months and years? Probably not, as each new mention of the argument would rekindle the same feelings and open old sores, not allowing the healing process to begin. While this example is obviously a reductionistic way of looking at things, I still believe that it holds some water.
The celebration of our differences is a good thing and should never be neglected, but dwelling on them to the point of obsession will never allow a sense of community or brotherhood to develop.
We, especially those of us truly attempting to live within the boundaries of “redeemed culture,” must lay aside our differences and learn to live as common men and women, not men and women qualified by something else.
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