I wrote this essay for a diversity class I was taking for my MBA. I know it's long. No cliffs.
Few things in the world today threaten social progress and are as poisonous as political correctness. It has the potential to demoralize individuals, trivialize accomplishments and burden society with unnecessary expenses that can and should be prevented. The formula for the successful use of political correct terminology is quite simple. One can take any number of the following steps to properly reach politically correct terminology and behavior. Ignore any personal responsibility an individual has. Degrade the work of the best achievers in order to make the inferior not feel left out. Place every individual in their own special cocoon where failure and all of the harsh realities of real life are prevented. Create a multitude of social programs to help people out of problems that their own behavior caused. Reward self destructive behavior. Promote victimization. These tenets make up the backbone of the politically correct movement, and they are ruining society. In this essay, I will address these points and demonstrate how these ideas have a detrimental effect on society.
When all else fails, blame the schools
A serious flaw in the idea of political correctness is that it refuses to hold anyone accountable for their actions. Irregardless if the individuals have caused their own problems through deviant or promiscuous behavior, there will always be some sort of social program or agency to help them through the problems they created. This leads to a decrease in risk aversion because individuals know there is someone there to take care of things if they mess up.
Consider the case of three white British sisters aged 12, 14 and 16. All of them are new mothers having had children within a couple of months of one another. The mother lives under the absurd notion that the school is to blame for her daughters? babies for not properly teaching the children about sex. "I blame the schools - sex education for young girls should be better," said Julie Atkins, 38. "More and more kids are getting pregnant younger and younger and sex education needs to start a lot earlier.? Following the mothers own logic, the school system is also to blame for not teaching proper observation skills. How else could one explain that the mother seemingly never noticed the fact that her 16 year old had 2 miscarriages and an abortion prior to the birth of her first child?
At least in this age of political correctness, the sisters didn?t seem to have any discriminatory thoughts when picking out the fathers. The fathers consisted of Asian, black and white males ranging from age 14 to 37. Truly these examples of debauchery are equal opportunity professions. The girls are living on 31,000 pounds ? roughly 55,000 dollars per year of governmental aid, as well as free housing. The government aid to these three sisters must come as a great relief to the hard working families who pay taxes. A family who makes the equivalent of the girls 31,400 pounds in England pays 40% taxes.
The problem doesn?t seem to be getting any better. Social programs that reward such young mothers with money and free housing destigmatize the negative connotation with having a baby at such a young age. ?Earlier this year, the Government's tax and benefit system was said to be responsible for making Britain the single-parent capital of the world. The Centre for Policy Studies think-tank said married couples on average weekly salaries were only £1 better off than single mothers who never worked and had no contact with the father of their children.? With programs such as these in place, why would anyone want to get married and work hard, when they can pull in the same amount of benefits as a married couple without having to work? Society and individuals are left to pick up the tab for someone who has made poor life choices.
Triple quarter pounder with supersized fries and an extra bucket of fat
Healthcare is another benefit that people use without consequences for their own personal choices. Obesity and skyrocketing healthcare costs are crippling the United States, yet it is unthinkable and even illegal to penalize people for their self destructive habits. ?The latest statistics show 44 million Americans are not covered by any health insurance.? These Americans are unable to afford health insurance due to a variety of reasons, a major one being the treatment of costs with individuals who are obese or overweight.
A study by the United States Senate turned up the following results. As this Subcommittee well knows, our country is facing a largely preventable health crisis. Studies indicate that in 2002 alone, obesity directly contributed to $117 billion in health care costs. Obese and overweight employees claim up to $1,500 more in health care costs each year and incur 77 percent higher prescription drug costs than those with a healthy body weight. The obesity epidemic is associated with 39 million lost workdays and 63 million additional medical visits each year.
While some individuals may be more prone to obesity because of family genetics, there really should be no major argument on the fact that the majority of obesity is due to lifestyle choices. Simply put, many Americans are to lazy to get off the couch, get regular exercise and start eating healthy. Why then should a healthy individual pay the same amount for healthcare as someone who?s morbidly obese? Surely no one could argue against that the probability of the healthy person needing serious healthcare is significantly less than someone who is severely overweight. The reason has to do with besides being a social taboo, it is illegal to discriminate or penalize people for being obese. This comes despite the fact that ?businesses suffer an estimated $20 billion loss in productivity each year from absence due to illness caused by obesity.? That loss is a lot of potential spending and production poured right down the drain because someone was too lazy to get their fat ass off the couch and head to the gym.
Overweight individuals who pay the same for healthcare as a healthy individual have little motivation to change their ways. They can continue their own life style choices with the knowledge that when their weight related problems occur, they will be covered for treatments. Increasingly in recent years, fat people have become empowered by new politically correct terms that take away the negative stigma of being fat due to lifestyle choices. A fat person has become a heavyset, large, plus-sized or a person of substance. Some of these replacements have fallen out of favor, replaced by overweight or obese. However, with the rise of body-positivity and 'fat-positivity,' the simple term 'fat' has been reclaimed. 'Overweight' and 'obese' have connotations of disorder, sickness or disease; fat-positive theory states that people are of all different sizes and size is never an absolute indication of health or wellness.
While a minority of such individuals may be overweight or obese due to genetics, the majority of cases are due to lifestyle choices. The time has come to start forcing these high weight individuals to start paying the proper fractional amount of care they use. A jolt to the pocketbook would be a real eye opener that would likely result in some increased personal responsibility and major lifestyle changes in a short period of time.
Survival of the weakest
An increasing trend in the last ten years has been the coddling of school children from kindergarten all the way up through high school. Children are told that they are all special and are protected from failure at the expense of learning. How much people learn from their failures determines the success that they will have in life. Some people will fail at class and learn from their mistakes and become successful. Others won?t learn from their failures and will go on to fail at life. Darwin knew about it. He called it survival of the fittest.
Today such mundane items such as the color of a pen have come under attack. Many teachers no longer use red pens to correct student papers. ?Parents objected. Red writing, they said, was ?stressful.?? Many school systems have banned dodge ball in their gym classes over concerns that it?s too dangerous, competitive or aggressive. In commenting about her school systems decision to ban dodge ball, Diane Farr, a curriculum specialist in Austin, Texas said, ''With Columbine and all the violence that we are having, we have to be very careful with how we teach our children.'' Clearly any children?s game that leads teenage killers to go on a school shooting rampage needs to be removed from any schools curriculum. Dodge ball playing is obviously a precursor to mass murder that is unable to be prevented by properly locking up weapons or having parents involved in their children?s lives.
What teachers are really doing by banning dodge ball and red pens for correcting papers is limiting the amount of competition needed to help shape children into young adults. Where humans are today is a result of millions of years of evolution. We didn?t get to this point by coddling along members who are unable to make it on their own. I?m not advocating throwing babies to the lions or forcing a child to raise itself, but there certainly shouldn?t be a slow down of the entire society for the sake of one or two of its members. Law of survival in the wild, fall behind and get eaten. Slowing down everyone else so a few members aren?t offended or can feel included is a good way to end up with everyone eaten.
Rather than pushing the gifted children to excel, they are forced to either slow down with the rest of the class or have their accomplishments cheapened by the feel good attitude where all children are rewarded and treated as equals despite the distinct evidence to the contrary. In the Disney movie, The Incredibles, a superhero family grapples with the problems of fitting in with everyday society at the expense of hiding their superpowers. In one scene Bob the superhero husband has a fight with his wife about going to his son?s graduation.
Helen: I can't believe you don't want to go to your own son's graduation.
Bob: It's not a graduation. He's moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade.
Helen: It's a ceremony!
Bob: It's psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional...
Later in the movie, Bob or Mr. Incredible is fighting Syndrome, the arch villain and regular human who invented an array of devices so that he could possess super powers as well.
Syndrome: Oh, I'm real all right. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious gifts. Your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics the world has ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be Super! And when everyone's Super... no one will be.
Syndrome?s quote shows the damage that is being created with the all-inclusive politically correct attitude that permeates our school system. Children who are truly exceptional have their accomplishments cheapened by the policy of making everyone feel included. What motivation do they have to keep striving to grow and succeed if they are treated the same as everyone else? These special students are the ones who should be pushed because they are going to grow up to be the leaders and thinkers of society. They need to understand failure and how to deal with it.
Protecting students from failing cheats them out of valuable learning experiences and sets them up for future failures which are magnified because of inexperience in how to handle the situation. It?s like watching a sports team who cruises through the regular season blowing out every team they play. When they get to the championship game, they fall behind or get stuck in a close game and don?t know how to handle the pressure or play from behind. The team ends up panicking and losing the big game. Had the team faced some adversity in the regular season, they would have been better prepared for the big game. Failure also helps keep the ego in check and helps motivate people to work harder.
The metaphor of the sports team is the same for children. Exposing them to failure allows them to mature and learn how to handle failure when they reach the real world. Some children won?t make it, and that?s a sad but simple fact. That fact however, is why human evolution has taken place and how we have ended up where we are today. Thousands of years of learning and discovery have taken place because the weaker people didn?t make it.
Blame it on the rain
The title of Milli Vanilli?s lip synched masterpiece serves as a backdrop for a society that has taken the blame game to new heights. Personal life decisions and efforts are no longer the reason for failure. Rather the new culprit is anyone but the individual themselves. If only there hadn?t been sexism, racism, ageism or anti-religious feelings of some kind etc, the individual would have succeeded in all aspects of their life. Blacks are harassed by the police and denied jobs solely because of the color of their skin. White males can?t get a decent job because of all of the affirmative action programs out there.
Particularly troubling is the repeated reinforcement of victimization among minorities. They know they have been oppressed all their lives because their leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton emphasize this message at every opportunity. This constant reinforcement of victimization has tainted all aspects of their lives. Members of these groups explain that they cannot be held responsible for any of their actions of behaviors because they have been oppressed all their lives.
While it is true that blacks have faced an unequal share of discrimination and racism, they are not alone in their struggle for advancement and inequality. Irish immigrants were equally hated as much as blacks back in the mid 1800?s but they managed to bond together and improve their situation. The Irish made close community bonds to take care of needy families and organize themselves politically to force changes in the way society treated them. Now the Irish have matured and advanced from a point where they were universally hated to St. Patrick?s Day, where everyone considers themselves Irish.
The black community has not has as much success advancing as the Irish, a fact that can be partially contributed to the lack of unity within the black community. Blacks, who are successful and overcome their hardships to go on and succeed in life, are looked upon as Uncle Toms. The first black Secretary of State and highest ranking black official ever, Colin Powell, was called a ?house slave? by black singer and civil rights advocate Harry Belefonte Black children who are intelligent and speak with proper grammar are looked down on by their fellow black classmates as being ?too white? or not ?black enough.? Misery, unfortunately loves company. Very few of the 22 percent of blacks living in poverty seem to share goodwill toward their fellow men and women whom have decided to pick themselves up by their bootstraps to make a better life.
Compounding the problems of resentment within their own ranks is the repeated reinforcement of the ?victim? status by black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. There is no question that black community has suffered because of the effects of racism throughout the years, but past and present racism is not the reason that blacks are seven times more likely to commit murder than whites and six times more likely to be victims of murder. Racism is also not the reason that 61.2% of all black children born today are born to unwed mothers.
The continued plight of blacks is disappointing and frustrating because they possess the capacity to better their situation. Viewing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as leaders of the black community is an ironic exercise, because they have built their success and fame upon the suffering of their fellow man. Advancing the cause of black society is actually counter productive to the lifestyles of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Without suffering and minor events to sensationalize, there are no more front cover newspaper stories, no more TV cameras and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton become irrelevant in the matters of the black race. By constantly playing the race card and prophesizing victimization, these black ?leaders? are betraying their race and setting up current and future generations for failure.
If you can?t win, sue
Going hand in hand with the increased lack of personal responsibility is the propensity to settle every minor difference with a lawsuit. The application of common sense has been transcended by high powered lawyers. No matter how minute the dispute might be, someone has become a victim and they demand outrageous compensation for their ?suffering.?
In Moorestown Pennsylvania, graduation time was approaching for Blair Hornstine who had already been accepted into Harvard University with a score of 1570 on her SAT, a 4.689 weighted GPA and hundred of hours of community service. Blair suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome so she completed most of her high school career at home with private tutors. Since Blair couldn?t participate in gym class due to her chronic fatigue, she was able to take an extra advanced placement class. In the calculation of GPA, advanced placement classes were given extra weight, so Blair was at an advantage over the second place finisher Kenneth Mirkin, who finished a couple of thousandths of a point behind Blair with a 4.634 GPA.
The school district superintendent decided that since Blair was able to take an extra AP class while Kenneth had to take a gym class, both students should be awarded the valedictorian award for their graduating class. What would seem like a fair compromise and logical solution was unacceptable as far as Blair Hornstine was concerned. She had her New Jersey Supreme Court Judge father, Louis Hornstine, sue the school district to award her the full honor of valedictorian. The Hornstines also sued for 2.7 million dollars in damages for the agony of the suggestion that Blair share the honor of valedictorian when she held an unfair advantage because of her condition.
The case went to trial, and Blair won on the basis of discriminating against someone with a disability. So proud of her sole honor as valedictorian was Blair, that she didn?t even show up for graduation. She was also rewarded $60,000 in damages from the school system. While Blair had her victory and her admission to Harvard, she unfortunately didn?t possess the knowledge or maturity to compromise as an adult.
Another skill that Blair lacked was the creativity and originality to write her own newspaper articles. After Blair had won her court case, it was determined that Blair had plagiarized major parts of multiple articles she wrote for her school news paper ? a fact that she admitted to. This intelligent and community oriented young woman who was above sharing the honor of the title valedictorian, had no qualms with plagiarizing large amounts of the newspaper articles she ?wrote.? In a delicious bout of karmic fate, Harvard rescinded their admissions offer to Blair on the basis of her plagiarism.
The story of Blair and her inability to share are disappointing enough, but the resulting need to sue for millions of dollars is inexcusable. It is unfortunately a sign of the times for what society has accepted. Today batteries carry the warning label not to stick in the ear or nose. Superman capes come with the warning that they don?t actually make the user fly when the cape is worn. All of these warnings are necessary because of the stupidity that our increasingly litigious society has reinforced. People win multimillion dollars lawsuits for injuries that a shred of common sense would have been prevented. In the case above, they even sue and win for the trauma caused by the monumental suggestion of sharing. Twenty years ago, Blair Hornstine would have been laughed out of court. Today she wins $60,000 for the anguish caused by suggesting she share the title of class valedictorian. Political correctness and the surrounding someone?s always a victim attitude have now made her selfishness acceptable.
Where we go from here
The individuals in the preceding examples all exhibit several common traits. They exhibit a lack of personal responsibility for their actions based on either lifestyle choices or the false pretenses of victimization. Individuals who make poor choices are coddled by society?s many social programs. Others are isolated from failure and hardship in an effort to prevent adversity ? a result that leaves them less prepared for the real world.
All of these results are due to political correctness, an idea that is supposed to be all inclusive and palatable to everyone. No matter how good political correctness looks on the surface, it has a seedy underbelly that its supporters try to hide. Let?s just call political correctness what it really is, anti-Christian, anti-white and anti-male.
How else can it be explained that it is acceptable to have female or minority only associations, but associations that are all male or all white find themselves ringed with protestors? Why is it that Boston decided to rename it?s city Christmas tree this year a ?Holiday tree? despite the face that Christians are the only ones who currently celebrate Christmas with an evergreen tree? A Christmas tree is a Holiday tree just the same as a menorah is a candle holder. Thanks to political correctness, it is acceptable to rename the Christmas tree as a Holiday tree while renaming a menorah to a holiday candle holder would cause an outrage.
If political correctness is allowed to continue progressing unchecked, it threatens to cripple society in a way not seen since the fall of the Roman Empire when culture, innovation and society were set back a thousand years. We stand at the crossroads between progress and the new dark ages.
To start ending the problems that political correctness has caused, we should follow Bill Cosby?s advice when he noted, ?I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.? Certain members of society must be allowed to fail. Their self destructive behavior must not be reinforced or destigmatized. There needs to be a conscious effort to remove the victim mentality. Ending these poisonous ideas is crucial to the survival and advancement of society.
Final thoughts
It is my sincere hope that at least once in this essay I have offended the reader. It is through offense and outrage that problems can be finally addressed instead of burying our heads in the sand as political correctness tries to do. Problems with society do not disappear solely because of a sugar coating of more marketable terminology and graces extended to individuals who need a smack upside the head instead of a pat on the back. Hopefully in the near future, we will see the beginning of the end of political correctness, an idea that is truly retarded.
Few things in the world today threaten social progress and are as poisonous as political correctness. It has the potential to demoralize individuals, trivialize accomplishments and burden society with unnecessary expenses that can and should be prevented. The formula for the successful use of political correct terminology is quite simple. One can take any number of the following steps to properly reach politically correct terminology and behavior. Ignore any personal responsibility an individual has. Degrade the work of the best achievers in order to make the inferior not feel left out. Place every individual in their own special cocoon where failure and all of the harsh realities of real life are prevented. Create a multitude of social programs to help people out of problems that their own behavior caused. Reward self destructive behavior. Promote victimization. These tenets make up the backbone of the politically correct movement, and they are ruining society. In this essay, I will address these points and demonstrate how these ideas have a detrimental effect on society.
When all else fails, blame the schools
A serious flaw in the idea of political correctness is that it refuses to hold anyone accountable for their actions. Irregardless if the individuals have caused their own problems through deviant or promiscuous behavior, there will always be some sort of social program or agency to help them through the problems they created. This leads to a decrease in risk aversion because individuals know there is someone there to take care of things if they mess up.
Consider the case of three white British sisters aged 12, 14 and 16. All of them are new mothers having had children within a couple of months of one another. The mother lives under the absurd notion that the school is to blame for her daughters? babies for not properly teaching the children about sex. "I blame the schools - sex education for young girls should be better," said Julie Atkins, 38. "More and more kids are getting pregnant younger and younger and sex education needs to start a lot earlier.? Following the mothers own logic, the school system is also to blame for not teaching proper observation skills. How else could one explain that the mother seemingly never noticed the fact that her 16 year old had 2 miscarriages and an abortion prior to the birth of her first child?
At least in this age of political correctness, the sisters didn?t seem to have any discriminatory thoughts when picking out the fathers. The fathers consisted of Asian, black and white males ranging from age 14 to 37. Truly these examples of debauchery are equal opportunity professions. The girls are living on 31,000 pounds ? roughly 55,000 dollars per year of governmental aid, as well as free housing. The government aid to these three sisters must come as a great relief to the hard working families who pay taxes. A family who makes the equivalent of the girls 31,400 pounds in England pays 40% taxes.
The problem doesn?t seem to be getting any better. Social programs that reward such young mothers with money and free housing destigmatize the negative connotation with having a baby at such a young age. ?Earlier this year, the Government's tax and benefit system was said to be responsible for making Britain the single-parent capital of the world. The Centre for Policy Studies think-tank said married couples on average weekly salaries were only £1 better off than single mothers who never worked and had no contact with the father of their children.? With programs such as these in place, why would anyone want to get married and work hard, when they can pull in the same amount of benefits as a married couple without having to work? Society and individuals are left to pick up the tab for someone who has made poor life choices.
Triple quarter pounder with supersized fries and an extra bucket of fat
Healthcare is another benefit that people use without consequences for their own personal choices. Obesity and skyrocketing healthcare costs are crippling the United States, yet it is unthinkable and even illegal to penalize people for their self destructive habits. ?The latest statistics show 44 million Americans are not covered by any health insurance.? These Americans are unable to afford health insurance due to a variety of reasons, a major one being the treatment of costs with individuals who are obese or overweight.
A study by the United States Senate turned up the following results. As this Subcommittee well knows, our country is facing a largely preventable health crisis. Studies indicate that in 2002 alone, obesity directly contributed to $117 billion in health care costs. Obese and overweight employees claim up to $1,500 more in health care costs each year and incur 77 percent higher prescription drug costs than those with a healthy body weight. The obesity epidemic is associated with 39 million lost workdays and 63 million additional medical visits each year.
While some individuals may be more prone to obesity because of family genetics, there really should be no major argument on the fact that the majority of obesity is due to lifestyle choices. Simply put, many Americans are to lazy to get off the couch, get regular exercise and start eating healthy. Why then should a healthy individual pay the same amount for healthcare as someone who?s morbidly obese? Surely no one could argue against that the probability of the healthy person needing serious healthcare is significantly less than someone who is severely overweight. The reason has to do with besides being a social taboo, it is illegal to discriminate or penalize people for being obese. This comes despite the fact that ?businesses suffer an estimated $20 billion loss in productivity each year from absence due to illness caused by obesity.? That loss is a lot of potential spending and production poured right down the drain because someone was too lazy to get their fat ass off the couch and head to the gym.
Overweight individuals who pay the same for healthcare as a healthy individual have little motivation to change their ways. They can continue their own life style choices with the knowledge that when their weight related problems occur, they will be covered for treatments. Increasingly in recent years, fat people have become empowered by new politically correct terms that take away the negative stigma of being fat due to lifestyle choices. A fat person has become a heavyset, large, plus-sized or a person of substance. Some of these replacements have fallen out of favor, replaced by overweight or obese. However, with the rise of body-positivity and 'fat-positivity,' the simple term 'fat' has been reclaimed. 'Overweight' and 'obese' have connotations of disorder, sickness or disease; fat-positive theory states that people are of all different sizes and size is never an absolute indication of health or wellness.
While a minority of such individuals may be overweight or obese due to genetics, the majority of cases are due to lifestyle choices. The time has come to start forcing these high weight individuals to start paying the proper fractional amount of care they use. A jolt to the pocketbook would be a real eye opener that would likely result in some increased personal responsibility and major lifestyle changes in a short period of time.
Survival of the weakest
An increasing trend in the last ten years has been the coddling of school children from kindergarten all the way up through high school. Children are told that they are all special and are protected from failure at the expense of learning. How much people learn from their failures determines the success that they will have in life. Some people will fail at class and learn from their mistakes and become successful. Others won?t learn from their failures and will go on to fail at life. Darwin knew about it. He called it survival of the fittest.
Today such mundane items such as the color of a pen have come under attack. Many teachers no longer use red pens to correct student papers. ?Parents objected. Red writing, they said, was ?stressful.?? Many school systems have banned dodge ball in their gym classes over concerns that it?s too dangerous, competitive or aggressive. In commenting about her school systems decision to ban dodge ball, Diane Farr, a curriculum specialist in Austin, Texas said, ''With Columbine and all the violence that we are having, we have to be very careful with how we teach our children.'' Clearly any children?s game that leads teenage killers to go on a school shooting rampage needs to be removed from any schools curriculum. Dodge ball playing is obviously a precursor to mass murder that is unable to be prevented by properly locking up weapons or having parents involved in their children?s lives.
What teachers are really doing by banning dodge ball and red pens for correcting papers is limiting the amount of competition needed to help shape children into young adults. Where humans are today is a result of millions of years of evolution. We didn?t get to this point by coddling along members who are unable to make it on their own. I?m not advocating throwing babies to the lions or forcing a child to raise itself, but there certainly shouldn?t be a slow down of the entire society for the sake of one or two of its members. Law of survival in the wild, fall behind and get eaten. Slowing down everyone else so a few members aren?t offended or can feel included is a good way to end up with everyone eaten.
Rather than pushing the gifted children to excel, they are forced to either slow down with the rest of the class or have their accomplishments cheapened by the feel good attitude where all children are rewarded and treated as equals despite the distinct evidence to the contrary. In the Disney movie, The Incredibles, a superhero family grapples with the problems of fitting in with everyday society at the expense of hiding their superpowers. In one scene Bob the superhero husband has a fight with his wife about going to his son?s graduation.
Helen: I can't believe you don't want to go to your own son's graduation.
Bob: It's not a graduation. He's moving from the 4th grade to the 5th grade.
Helen: It's a ceremony!
Bob: It's psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional...
Later in the movie, Bob or Mr. Incredible is fighting Syndrome, the arch villain and regular human who invented an array of devices so that he could possess super powers as well.
Syndrome: Oh, I'm real all right. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious gifts. Your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics the world has ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be Super! And when everyone's Super... no one will be.
Syndrome?s quote shows the damage that is being created with the all-inclusive politically correct attitude that permeates our school system. Children who are truly exceptional have their accomplishments cheapened by the policy of making everyone feel included. What motivation do they have to keep striving to grow and succeed if they are treated the same as everyone else? These special students are the ones who should be pushed because they are going to grow up to be the leaders and thinkers of society. They need to understand failure and how to deal with it.
Protecting students from failing cheats them out of valuable learning experiences and sets them up for future failures which are magnified because of inexperience in how to handle the situation. It?s like watching a sports team who cruises through the regular season blowing out every team they play. When they get to the championship game, they fall behind or get stuck in a close game and don?t know how to handle the pressure or play from behind. The team ends up panicking and losing the big game. Had the team faced some adversity in the regular season, they would have been better prepared for the big game. Failure also helps keep the ego in check and helps motivate people to work harder.
The metaphor of the sports team is the same for children. Exposing them to failure allows them to mature and learn how to handle failure when they reach the real world. Some children won?t make it, and that?s a sad but simple fact. That fact however, is why human evolution has taken place and how we have ended up where we are today. Thousands of years of learning and discovery have taken place because the weaker people didn?t make it.
Blame it on the rain
The title of Milli Vanilli?s lip synched masterpiece serves as a backdrop for a society that has taken the blame game to new heights. Personal life decisions and efforts are no longer the reason for failure. Rather the new culprit is anyone but the individual themselves. If only there hadn?t been sexism, racism, ageism or anti-religious feelings of some kind etc, the individual would have succeeded in all aspects of their life. Blacks are harassed by the police and denied jobs solely because of the color of their skin. White males can?t get a decent job because of all of the affirmative action programs out there.
Particularly troubling is the repeated reinforcement of victimization among minorities. They know they have been oppressed all their lives because their leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton emphasize this message at every opportunity. This constant reinforcement of victimization has tainted all aspects of their lives. Members of these groups explain that they cannot be held responsible for any of their actions of behaviors because they have been oppressed all their lives.
While it is true that blacks have faced an unequal share of discrimination and racism, they are not alone in their struggle for advancement and inequality. Irish immigrants were equally hated as much as blacks back in the mid 1800?s but they managed to bond together and improve their situation. The Irish made close community bonds to take care of needy families and organize themselves politically to force changes in the way society treated them. Now the Irish have matured and advanced from a point where they were universally hated to St. Patrick?s Day, where everyone considers themselves Irish.
The black community has not has as much success advancing as the Irish, a fact that can be partially contributed to the lack of unity within the black community. Blacks, who are successful and overcome their hardships to go on and succeed in life, are looked upon as Uncle Toms. The first black Secretary of State and highest ranking black official ever, Colin Powell, was called a ?house slave? by black singer and civil rights advocate Harry Belefonte Black children who are intelligent and speak with proper grammar are looked down on by their fellow black classmates as being ?too white? or not ?black enough.? Misery, unfortunately loves company. Very few of the 22 percent of blacks living in poverty seem to share goodwill toward their fellow men and women whom have decided to pick themselves up by their bootstraps to make a better life.
Compounding the problems of resentment within their own ranks is the repeated reinforcement of the ?victim? status by black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. There is no question that black community has suffered because of the effects of racism throughout the years, but past and present racism is not the reason that blacks are seven times more likely to commit murder than whites and six times more likely to be victims of murder. Racism is also not the reason that 61.2% of all black children born today are born to unwed mothers.
The continued plight of blacks is disappointing and frustrating because they possess the capacity to better their situation. Viewing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as leaders of the black community is an ironic exercise, because they have built their success and fame upon the suffering of their fellow man. Advancing the cause of black society is actually counter productive to the lifestyles of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Without suffering and minor events to sensationalize, there are no more front cover newspaper stories, no more TV cameras and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton become irrelevant in the matters of the black race. By constantly playing the race card and prophesizing victimization, these black ?leaders? are betraying their race and setting up current and future generations for failure.
If you can?t win, sue
Going hand in hand with the increased lack of personal responsibility is the propensity to settle every minor difference with a lawsuit. The application of common sense has been transcended by high powered lawyers. No matter how minute the dispute might be, someone has become a victim and they demand outrageous compensation for their ?suffering.?
In Moorestown Pennsylvania, graduation time was approaching for Blair Hornstine who had already been accepted into Harvard University with a score of 1570 on her SAT, a 4.689 weighted GPA and hundred of hours of community service. Blair suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome so she completed most of her high school career at home with private tutors. Since Blair couldn?t participate in gym class due to her chronic fatigue, she was able to take an extra advanced placement class. In the calculation of GPA, advanced placement classes were given extra weight, so Blair was at an advantage over the second place finisher Kenneth Mirkin, who finished a couple of thousandths of a point behind Blair with a 4.634 GPA.
The school district superintendent decided that since Blair was able to take an extra AP class while Kenneth had to take a gym class, both students should be awarded the valedictorian award for their graduating class. What would seem like a fair compromise and logical solution was unacceptable as far as Blair Hornstine was concerned. She had her New Jersey Supreme Court Judge father, Louis Hornstine, sue the school district to award her the full honor of valedictorian. The Hornstines also sued for 2.7 million dollars in damages for the agony of the suggestion that Blair share the honor of valedictorian when she held an unfair advantage because of her condition.
The case went to trial, and Blair won on the basis of discriminating against someone with a disability. So proud of her sole honor as valedictorian was Blair, that she didn?t even show up for graduation. She was also rewarded $60,000 in damages from the school system. While Blair had her victory and her admission to Harvard, she unfortunately didn?t possess the knowledge or maturity to compromise as an adult.
Another skill that Blair lacked was the creativity and originality to write her own newspaper articles. After Blair had won her court case, it was determined that Blair had plagiarized major parts of multiple articles she wrote for her school news paper ? a fact that she admitted to. This intelligent and community oriented young woman who was above sharing the honor of the title valedictorian, had no qualms with plagiarizing large amounts of the newspaper articles she ?wrote.? In a delicious bout of karmic fate, Harvard rescinded their admissions offer to Blair on the basis of her plagiarism.
The story of Blair and her inability to share are disappointing enough, but the resulting need to sue for millions of dollars is inexcusable. It is unfortunately a sign of the times for what society has accepted. Today batteries carry the warning label not to stick in the ear or nose. Superman capes come with the warning that they don?t actually make the user fly when the cape is worn. All of these warnings are necessary because of the stupidity that our increasingly litigious society has reinforced. People win multimillion dollars lawsuits for injuries that a shred of common sense would have been prevented. In the case above, they even sue and win for the trauma caused by the monumental suggestion of sharing. Twenty years ago, Blair Hornstine would have been laughed out of court. Today she wins $60,000 for the anguish caused by suggesting she share the title of class valedictorian. Political correctness and the surrounding someone?s always a victim attitude have now made her selfishness acceptable.
Where we go from here
The individuals in the preceding examples all exhibit several common traits. They exhibit a lack of personal responsibility for their actions based on either lifestyle choices or the false pretenses of victimization. Individuals who make poor choices are coddled by society?s many social programs. Others are isolated from failure and hardship in an effort to prevent adversity ? a result that leaves them less prepared for the real world.
All of these results are due to political correctness, an idea that is supposed to be all inclusive and palatable to everyone. No matter how good political correctness looks on the surface, it has a seedy underbelly that its supporters try to hide. Let?s just call political correctness what it really is, anti-Christian, anti-white and anti-male.
How else can it be explained that it is acceptable to have female or minority only associations, but associations that are all male or all white find themselves ringed with protestors? Why is it that Boston decided to rename it?s city Christmas tree this year a ?Holiday tree? despite the face that Christians are the only ones who currently celebrate Christmas with an evergreen tree? A Christmas tree is a Holiday tree just the same as a menorah is a candle holder. Thanks to political correctness, it is acceptable to rename the Christmas tree as a Holiday tree while renaming a menorah to a holiday candle holder would cause an outrage.
If political correctness is allowed to continue progressing unchecked, it threatens to cripple society in a way not seen since the fall of the Roman Empire when culture, innovation and society were set back a thousand years. We stand at the crossroads between progress and the new dark ages.
To start ending the problems that political correctness has caused, we should follow Bill Cosby?s advice when he noted, ?I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.? Certain members of society must be allowed to fail. Their self destructive behavior must not be reinforced or destigmatized. There needs to be a conscious effort to remove the victim mentality. Ending these poisonous ideas is crucial to the survival and advancement of society.
Final thoughts
It is my sincere hope that at least once in this essay I have offended the reader. It is through offense and outrage that problems can be finally addressed instead of burying our heads in the sand as political correctness tries to do. Problems with society do not disappear solely because of a sugar coating of more marketable terminology and graces extended to individuals who need a smack upside the head instead of a pat on the back. Hopefully in the near future, we will see the beginning of the end of political correctness, an idea that is truly retarded.
but do you really think I'm going to read all that???
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