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Political Correctness treads lightly around African Americans. Shelby Steele's book "White Guilt" is a priceless commentary. You can read my review here.
Recently Professor Jerry Hough of Duke, a school considered to be in the "Ivy League Plus" group, was raked over the Politically Correct coals for saying that the New York Times was not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about race and the Baltimore riots that involved the torching of a CVS drug store and the looting of condoms.
Hough commented on the NYT website that "Every Asian student has a very simple old American first name that symbolizes their desire for integration. Virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration."
And Hough was raked over the coals.
Hough did not back down. "I am strongly against the obsession with ‘sensitivity,' The more we have emphasized sensitivity in recent years, the worse race relations have become. I think that is not an accident. I know that the 60 years since the Montgomery bus boycott is a long time, and things must be changed.
The Japanese and other Asians did not obsess with the concentration camps and the fact they were linked with blacks as ‘colored.’
Coach K did not obsess with all the Polish jokes about Polish stupidity. He pushed ahead and achieved. And by his achievement and visibility, he has played a huge role in destroying stereotypes about Poles. Many blacks have done that too, but no one says they have done as well on the average as the Asians."
I love it. Hough mentioned that which Political Correctness renders unmentionable: that many groups in the US have faced discrimination and stereotyping, and that many groups, like Polish-Americans, Slovak-Americans, and other Bohunk Americans, survived, thrived, and overcame through their own hard work with not one ounce of help from Political Correctness.
Professor, we, Polonia, salute you.
I think that the reasons for this all this are rather prosaic:
ReplyDeleteThe left-wing has a vested interest in African Americans perpetually seeing themselves as victims. That is why we have political correctness, and that is why American history classes put so much emphasis on slavery, the Civil War, segregation, and the 1960's Civil Rights movement. It never ends. No matter how much time passes, and how much progress is made, it is never over, for the simple reason that left-wingers don't want it to be ever over.
Were African Americans to see themselves less as victims dependent upon constant government programs, this would lessen the 95% black vote for the Democratic Party. This, in turn, would spell doom for the left-wing agenda, which consists of ever-expanding government power, endless government-assistance programs for the victims, murderous taxes upon the productive, and social engineering on everyone.
I was doing research at the Baltimore library main branch last fall for the L8/L2/G1 portion of the Ghostblimp story and had made a breakthrough when a commotion broke out nearby. A black woman started yelling that "This is worse than anti-bellium days!" and "just like Jim Crowe.." at the top of her lungs in an attempt to mimic Martin Luther King or Baptist preachers. She was berating the little librarian who was now the center of attention of everyone in the room trying to work. The the speech went on and on with the librarian trying to get in the occasional "..but we told you on the phone.." before she was shutdown from speaking any more.
ReplyDeleteFinally heard what the topic was about: The woman had attempted to get a book sent from one branch to a more convenient branch. Baltimore has great libraries but some are closed stacks and rare document repositories and it's not like getting a copy of a popular novel through interlibrary loan. They don't do it for rare documents- period!
The woman had wanted a rare document sent to this library and when told she couldn't, made this scene " for justice".
Now the weirdest part - for those who don't know Baltimore - is that Baltimore has a free bus system that covers most of the city the tourists go. certainly the museums and libraries.