I was traveling on a Greyhound bus enjoying the 36 hour voyage home from college. A mother and her small son were sitting behind me. The little kid suddenly looks up at me in my big ugly cowboy hat through the space between the seats and asks if my hat was brown because I was brown. She instantly sputtered an apology. I wasn’t upset because the child didn’t call me anything offensive. He just made an innocent association. If he had been a grown man, however, I would infer he was trying to be provocative. Unlike children, we expect adults to take some time considering the effect of their words before speaking. Most of us are socialized to do our best not to piss off other people unnecessarily.
But when people rail against Political Correctness, they are saying that being courteous to minorities, homosexuals, or women is way too much trouble. Being polite to Black people is a terrible burden. Want to call undocumented immigrants murderers and rapists? Why not. Need to compare Black Lives Matter, an organization dedicated to restraining extreme state violence, to terrorists like ISIS, an organization that routinely beheads people on video tape? Go ahead. Every society has certain standards of civilized behavior. It is not wrong to consider every citizen in these standards. Continue Reading →