Political Correctness

Last night, I was trying to write, but I ended up boiling and stewing over the Locus April Fool’s joke. In case you missed it, it was pejorative to women, Wiscon, and those of Arabic descent. I ranted about it on Twitter, and all the way driving into work today I was aggravated.

Well, I’m halfway through my day, and I have been so busy that I mellowed. I know too that spewing vitriol in response to vitriol really only escalates a problem. But there are some things that I want to talk about, not from a rhetorical ATTACK! position, (You, stay away from me! I have a liberal arts education, and I will cut you!), but rather from a position of consideration about this term political correctness, which seems to be a foundation for the prankster, as he felt his April Fool’s joke was widely condemned by humorless feminists who had buried all their discriminatory senses under a veil of political correctness. (or perhaps a burka, given his “joke.”)

What you need to know about me before I write this.

I am not a minority. I am not of Arabic descent. What I do for a living is what makes this so very off putting to me. I am a teacher and coordinator of an ESL program. By far, the number one language of our students is Arabic, as we have become a major center for Sudanese immigrants in the United States. Every day I work with the wonderful people of Sudan. I work also with many other students from many other countries. What we do here is try to communicate as human beings to other human beings. It is a wonderful environment to exchange new ideas and enjoy what multi-culturalism has to offer. And while we can never understand each other’s culture in the way we understand our own, we gain insights into each other’s.

It is my little utopia. Which is not to say that we don’t have issues. We have very human issues and even some discriminatory ones. But we do our best.

***

I remember when Elizabeth Moon came out with her statement about terrorism and people of Arabic descent. An oversimplification, perhaps, but she basically said, well, if representatives of your culture do bad things, you should expect to be disliked. My first thoughts were of my Sudanese students, many who are here because they specifically don’t agree with the politics being exercised at home, even though they are Muslim. These people do not deserve any kind of stigma with terrorists, but they seemed to be told too bad, you will get it, not only by Ms. Moon, but by our culture at large as well.

To personalize the analogy a little more, my family is full of bad people. Everyone else in my immediate family has done some prison time. Should I therefore expect that my reputation is dependent on theirs? I think I would have some warm language in that regard. I do not deserve an orange jumpsuit even though the rest of my family have checked out that tailor.

Wiscon at the time removed Moon’s guest of honor status, and they invited her to come to the convention to understand more. I could see why she wouldn’t take them up on it. She wasn’t banned, but given the convention, and its more broad reaching concerns of feminism and acceptance, it wasn’t a bad call. It did hit the SF establishment in all sorts of interesting ways. Moon is not short on defenders, who feel that her remarks are true, justified, and valid. They see the entire debacle as an attack on her right to say what she wants. That it isn’t. Her article is still up for all to see. What Wiscon did was act in a way that they thought was custodial to their members. There really wasn’t a way Wiscon could win on such a divisive issue. For example, I would have protested Moon’s appearance as guest at that Wiscon on behalf of my students if she hadn’t been de-instated.

But if you are in the SF/F community, you know all this. Many people have accused the convention of being spineless, and knuckling down to political correctness.

Here’s the meat and potatoes of today’s essay. What do we mean by political correctness?

Here’s a little research for you, from that scion of knowledge, Wikipedia.

This term denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and, as purported by the term, doing so to an excessive extent. In current usage, the term is primarily pejorative.

The term suggests that minimizing difference is the weenie way out, by not wanting to torque anyone off. People from the U.S. should say what they think! And damn the torpedoes! And if you offend someone, well, your truth and real opinion is more important than the offense. People are politically correct because they want to be thought well of. But, and here’s the kicker, really, don’t we all think, really, that blondes are stupid, or Arab-Americans have terrorist ties, or women are all unreasonable at that time of the month? And since that is truth, we should be less concerned with how people feel, than speaking what we perceive.

Funny. I thought we all wanted to get along.

I also wonder why the assumption is that people who say something kind or considerate, or who think about the viewpoints of others are viewed as the minority, rather than the majority, and that they really believe otherwise. I’m not getting political here, but I do know that a certain political party is finding themselves increasingly isolated by a majority that doesn’t see consideration as pejorative, but rather as inclusive.

So those who denigrate inclusiveness to the negative term political correctness are a bunch of haters trying to get you to feel badly about your inclusiveness, because they have issues of their own, and they want to blame you for them? I’m not a psychologist, nor do I play one on tv (I’m looking at you, Dr. Phil!), but I think that those who cannot see the insensitivity of trying to play ethnic and gender humor off as a shortfall in the offended person is really, truly twisting their own insecurity.

Their thought process? You don’t agree with me? You don’t think I can’t criticize Wiscon, women, and Arab culture? Lighten up! I meant it as a joke, and if YOU take it too seriously, you are too repressed and the problem is yours.

Hey man, own your own psychology. You are offensive, and when the majority call you on it, and rightly so. We call out your nasty, name calling behavior, and your shoving on the play ground, and you tell us we are in the wrong. I smell pathology.

As I ranted last night, I wonder if I want to be part of a community that has folks in it who run so counter to the experiences I work for in my real job. But then I think about how the Hugo noms look this year, and how members of SFWA are actively trying to change the SF/F culture. And I also think about this exchange shared with me by a colleague. It’s about gay rights, but I think you’ll get the similarity.

My colleague’s daughter was working an internship in an office and she was sitting around with several men who were in their 40s and older. This was in the 90s, so the thinking about gay rights was still pretty conservative. They were being very critical, and the daughter had had about enough. They asked her what she thought. She said she was pro gay rights. They laughed. She then went on to tell the men that it didn’t matter what they thought. That most people her age didn’t care, and the old men were going to die, and their views would die with them. Wow. Gutsy kid.

So, that’s why I’m going to keep being politically correct. No, make that inclusive. I’m going to do my damnedest to get this kind of crap out of the SF/F community. There is no room for any kind of active discrimination that is supported by the illusion that the problem lies with the insulted rather than the insulter, or that this kind of discrimination is disguised as humor.

And that’s all I got to say about that. For now.