Yeah, I think that it's gotten a hell of a lot better in a short period of time. Universal suffrage, lynch mobs are illegal, y'know. All around good stuff.
But there is a point where you get too sensitive, and that's not much better than apathy. It's wonderful that you can't legally have prejudice towards a race, religion, or sex, but sometimes those people really are just being dicks. No one wants to say anything because they are afraid of coming of as a bigot.
I mean, people aren't really going to be considered equal until the laws aren't necessary. But I have no idea how that is going to be achieved. There are always going to be discriminating assholes, who find something wrong with people. (It's so they can cope with having a tiny penis.)
Two things here - bigotry as a social force, and the law's rules about how to interact with them. These are fairly different, in that the former is about shaming people and so forth, and the latter is much more heavily restricted to preventing discrimination in hiring, pay, etcetera, and doesn't have as large an impact on social behavior as you might think (adding sexual orientation to the laws, for instance, probably wouldn't suddenly end hatred of homosexuals). I'm only gonna deal with the first because it's the only one I have anything at all interesting to say on.
The problem isn't sensitivity, it's a misunderstanding of what sensitivity means. The whole "too politically correct" mindset, and the examples of absurd overreactions that people with that mindset like to point to (the ones that exist, anyway, given the propensity to make them up to fuel a persecution complex), miss the idea that the concept is intended to illustrate. Most of the time it's looked at in terms of "What am I not allowed to do by society", which is backwards - the whole
point is that you shouldn't be centering your statements on your own perspective, and should try to consider others'. So thinking about what
you're allowed to do is obnoxious in the extreme.
Think of it this way - you wouldn't tell a dead baby joke to a family member who'd just had a miscarriage. I assume, anyway. You probably wouldn't tell that joke elsewhere and make her the subject, either. Why wouldn't you do that? When you understand that, try to extend that to knowing why you
probably shouldn't make a "dumb nigger" joke about a black guy, even if he happens to be both objectively stupid and black. Even if you, personally, think the joke is fucking hysterical. I say, "probably", because there
are situations in which you can actually do that*. Even if you're a white guy, actually! Almost universally, this is going to be because the context of the joke and the way in which you tell it make clear that you don't intend the literal meaning of the joke, and that absurdity is supposed to be part of the humor. And, you have to realize that if they're offended, you done fucked up no matter how much you thought you made your intent clear, and act accordingly as you would with any mistake. Because in the end, one of the key rules of not being a douchebag is making an
effort not to offend people.
Note that I'm only using humor as an example, because it's one of the most common areas where people complain about political correctness. In general, if your words
are interpreted as not aiming to hurt people, you'll do fine. What you
meant means jack shit in terms of whether you should have said it, whether you should apologize, and so on. It never hurts to clarify, but do it
after you try to make amends. Remember, keep your audience in mind before you speak, because you should make every reasonable effort to anticipate offense and avoid it.
*I cannot emphasize enough that this is far from guaranteed. The reason why people sometimes say "Black people can make fun of black people" is because that usually makes clear that they don't really mean the joke if it's part of a comedy routine, even though it's entirely possible for a person to have a racist streak aimed against themselves. It's not because there's any magic context that immunizes you from criticism.
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Topic: American Culture and the Decline Washington Foresaw (Read 4164 times)