POLITICAL correctness comes at a steep price. It diminishes our confidence in the fact that we can freely explore and discuss all the important issues in our society. It introduces an element of fear into public expression: the fear that some innocently intended remark will be misinterpreted as racist and bring dire consequences for the one who made it.
If any measure of political correctness is justified, it can only be because certain kinds of hatred and contempt, such as racial hatred and contempt, are contrary to values so fundamentally important as to warrant balancing them against the freedom of thought and the openness of debate.
If that is so, then the values behind political correctness must be more important than partisan advantage in any election. On the other hand, if partisan advantage is more important than enforcing political correctness, political correctness cannot be worth the price — not, at least, if open, fearless discourse is a vital value.
Last week, the Democratic party demonstrated that in its view, partisan advantage is more important than political correctness.
When he was seeking the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., infamously declared Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., now the nominee but then just one in a large field, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
The claim was ridiculous — even if Biden only meant the first among Democratic candidates for president. Obama was preceded in seeking the nomination by Rev. Jesse Jackson. I am no fan of Jackson’s, but he is not dumb, dirty, ugly, or, usually, half as inarticulate as Biden was on that occasion. And his performance in the 1988 primaries and association with Democratic leaders makes it difficult to classify Jackson as beyond his party’s mainstream.
But Biden’s remark did more than erroneously criticize at least one past presidential candidate. It suggested that black Americans are not normally mainstream, articulate, bright, clean and nice-looking. And that is not merely obviously insensitive, but patently untrue.
Yet Biden is now the Democratic candidate for vice president.
Obama’s most successful primary opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., actually suggested that Obama might not live to see the convention. Perhaps there was nothing racial on her mind — but a white woman contemplating the possible murder of a black man who who did not treat her as someone whose social standing he could not equal, but challenged her for the political power she wanted and expected to attain, suggests to me one thing: She was hoping a U.S. senator would be lynched.
Maybe I’m reading too much into that one. But consider another infamous remark the former first lady made in the campaign: her mention of “hard-working Americans, white Americans.” “White Americans,” in that phrase, clarified what she means by “hard-working Americans.” The implication, then, is that she thinks all hard-working Americans are white, or in other words, that she does not regard Americans of other races as hard-working.
If you think I’m pulling quotes out of context and ignoring mitigating factors, let me remind you: That’s how political correctness works.
Remember “nappy-headed hos”? The context of that remark was a radio broadcast that poked fun at a wide variety of people and generally displayed a crude sense of humor. Don Imus was knocked off the air for it. (He later got a job with another network.)
Or, on Grounds, remember “Ethiopian Food Fight?” The context of that cartoon was a series of comics that sought to provoke people into thinking. It provoked people into driving Grant Woolard off The Cavalier Daily.
But if you’re important enough to the Democratic party, you get immunity, or at least a reduced punishment. The party needed Clinton to bring her supporters behind Obama, and apparently it needed Biden for something he can bring to its ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.
Some will defend Biden and Clinton by citing their policy records. But policy records are poor evidence of attitudes on race: Policies may be adopted to buy votes — or to take care of people a politician thinks, contemptuously, can’t take care of themselves. And it is virtually inconceivable that someone who opposes affirmative action because it undermines respect for black professionals’ achievements would be exempted. The appeal to policy records just means that important Democrats get a free pass.
Anyone who is serious about political correctness should condemn Biden and Clinton. Anyone who still supports Biden and Clinton should never again condemn anyone for remarks like theirs. And all of us should take a lesson from this Democratic convention: A few ill-chosen remarks are not worth repudiating a person one has good reason to value. Political correctness is not worth the price.
Alexander R. Cohen’s column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.cohen@cavalierdaily.com.
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