Unlearning Political Correctness
Buzz Submitted by : Dean Owen
Buzz: Unlearning Prejudice
Dean Owen's Buzz Providing a Different Look at Racism
Unlearning political correctness does not mean that political correctness should not exist, anymore than when Dean Owen wrote "Unlearning Prejudice" does not mean that prejudice should exist. In either way of looking at prejudice or political correctness we are marching into the arena called unintended consequences.
What we found hilarious yesterday has through the lens of political correctness, the comedy we should shun today, and through that same lens of political correctness for decades in a row, we have not arrived to the promised land of tolerance, but to a greater rise in populism. Instead of examining that the precept of political correctness made some of us haters of hate - hating hate is an oxymoron because it is still a form of hate.
Dean addressed British comedies from the 70's which today are condemned by those who carry the weapon of political correctness. The chief problem with day one of this form of correctness that it was political. Dean brings up Fawlty Towers. Some how political correctness has shaved away essential layers of appreciation that are necessary to what made shows like Fawlty Towers really funny for the times they were written for, and how they help rather than hinder an intelligent view of prejudice. Why be prejudiced against those shows unless we are sensitive to revealing our own hidden prejudices?
Engaged in political correctness we can take really funny comedies and slice and dice them to present them in their worst light, nor do we watch the entire show for context, so the German's episode of Fawlty Towers has several elements missing from the clip that change the context of what we see, now as we live in a soundbite political correct culture :
I have no problem with people who are cradle to grave in political correctness and who actually believe that political correctness was meant to save coloured people like me - and that as a non-white human being I should be thankful to whoever decided political correctness was the "right" way to behave. It was an indoctrination, a belief system and it has failed.Where it has lent some context is in getting back to the stuff it was meant to save us from. Now we can view that in a new light but we can only do that if we unlearn political correctness. There is absolutely zero intelligence in creating a philosophical social value that serves only to push things out to the edges where they get nurtured into something more extreme. If we are not prepared to look at ugly things directly, then we begin to see things that are ugly that are completely taken out of context. There is no point in engaging political correctness if it becomes an immediate reaction to what it is we see, because that is what prejudice is. How can we unlearn prejudice, if we do not know how to unlearn political correctness - instead of the racist being the obnoxious jerk, it became the politically correct. It is time to unlearn this bias.
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Comments
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #9
Even better Deb [ Deb \ud83d\udc1d Helfrich ] is that if fresh water becomes scarce because of privatization or ecological mismanagement, at least the continent of America can run a non-fracking pipeline between the Arctic and the Antarctic. Then should we differentiate between an Arctic American and an Antarctic American but I recognize that this is opening up a can of polar worms - how can this world have nationalities everywhere but those born in the Arctic and the Antarctic and so have to figure out which nation they actually belong? The Nationality of Santa Claus? https://www.adn.com/commentary/article/arctic-politics-what-nationality-santa-claus/2010/12/23/ What is really galling is that there are arctic indigenous people and not a single one of them as a bee http://www.arcticcentre.org/EN/communications/arcticregion/Arctic-Indigenous-Peoples If there was a place for the United Nations to operate, then the natural place is Antarctica, it has no indigenous people http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/can_you_live_in_antarctica.php It is about time someone at beBee provided these people a Polar Hive.
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #8
The key to diversity is noticing our own reaction to other people and on that score it is unlearning our own reactions to political correctness as well as political incorrectness. Reaction is a different mindset to appreciation and/or equanimity, and reaction is actually the easier or more default option.
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #7
Dear Pamela, what US citizens seem to forget is that America is a huge continent that includes North America and South America, so if Europeans are from Europe, why are not Americans the sum of both America's. The United States is a representation of states that could otherwise have been as varied as European countries, while the most incredulous thing about America in total is how Canadians do not consider themselves as continental Americans. I have never seen US citizens as the same because how can one mistake a Texan for a New Yorker or a West Coast American for a Mid-Westerner. Then we go into any American city like New York and the cultural differences are signficant - and as we keep on drilling down, we get to the level of a human being, who happens to hold a United States passport, but who is also unique as an individual finger-print. We are of the same persuasion when it comes to diversity.
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #6
The Coopers was a skit on "Goodness Gracious Me" - which featured four Indian comedians, of which Sanjeev was indeed the brightest, unlike Not The Nine O'clock News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxxDtSHa97Q which became a classic with Rowan Atkinson obviously being the stand-out comedian. Mel Smith of course passed away sadly in 2013. Some skits on Goodness Gracious Me were just plain daft and silly, while others were drawn from caricatures i.e. "Asian Top Gear" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6h0lkq-Sno but Sanjeev Bhaskar was a cut above the rest because of his creative mind. Another person who was pretty good at comedy was President Obama. He got painted by Trump as a symbol of political correctness when the reality is that Obama stood up and said uncomfortable things that were hardly politically correct http://reason.com/blog/2016/05/15/obama-blasts-political-correctness-fragi but he was not politically incorrect either, whether it is politically correct or politically incorrect, the problem is going to one extreme or the other - the Victorian sensibility or the Savage Trump - savage because he reminds me of Joseph Goebels statement that "a lie told many times becomes the truth".
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #5
and #6 Yes, conversation that includes tiny chinks of discovery like at the beginning of this year when there was the story of an Israeli woman whose book was banned from the Israeli curriculum because it was about a love story with a Palestinian man in New York http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35265002 With race and racial realities, all groups wear their cultural armor and chinks in the armor equate with choosing vulnerability - but chinks of discovery are ours to find, for otherwise the meaning of chinks in the armor mean we are trying to exploit a vulnerability in another, for even if we get through to another like that, we may serve only to harden that skin and so finding chinks in people is really an act of fault finding and judgement, which is what political correctness ends up doing, and where one see's the value of political correctness I see a new armor called playing nice. When we talk about manipulators in society, we should ask where did that two faced nature come from. My own heart will tell me if my arteries were lined with ignorance or my own blood flows with red heart of humanity. A learning journey that does not include learning new wisdoms about our own virtue is a learning journey that is superficial, then we can recite what it is we learned but yet not have that enter the wholeness of our own being. When we talk about freedom, it means that someone down the line paid a huge price for something we now take for granted, it does not mean that we risked anything, but it does mean that we begin to learn about all those who paved the way, so we are in this position in our time, to actually live a life that resembles what we call humanity. The chief reality of freedom is recognizing when the fight has been fought and the freedom it gained or was won is recognized and channeled into our own ways of being.
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #4
and #6 Yes, conversation that includes tiny chinks of discovery like at the beginning of this year when there was the story of an Israeli woman whose book was banned from the Israeli curriculum because it was about a love story with a Palestinian man in New York http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35265002 With race and racial realities, all groups wear their cultural armor and chinks in the armor equate with choosing vulnerability - but chinks of discovery are ours to find, for otherwise the meaning of chinks in the armor mean we are trying to exploit a vulnerability in another, for even if we get through to another like that, we may serve only to harden that skin and so finding chinks in people is really an act of fault fining and judgement, which is what political correctness ends up doing, and where one see's the value of political correctness I see a new armor called playing nice. When we talk about manipulators in society, we should ask where did that two faced nature come from. My own heart will tell me if my arteries were lined with ignorance or my own blood flows with red heart of humanity. A learning journey that does not include learning new wisdoms about our own virtue is a learning journey that is superficial, then we can recite what it is we learned but yet not have that enter the wholeness of our own being. When we talk about freedom, it means that someone down the line paid a huge price for something we now take for granted, it does not mean that we risked anything, but it does mean that we begin to learn about all those who paved the way, so we are in this position in our time, to actually live a life that resembles what we call humanity. The chief reality of freedom is recognizing when the fight has been fought and the freedom it gained or was won is recognized and channeled into our own ways of being.
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #3
and #6 Yes, conversation that includes tiny chinks of discovery like at the beginning of this year when there was the story of an Israeli woman whose book was banned from the Israeli curriculum because it was about a love story with a Palestinian man in New York http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35265002 With race and racial realities, all groups wear their cultural armor and chinks in the armor equate with choosing vulnerability - but chinks of discovery are ours to find, for otherwise the meaning of chinks in the armor mean we are trying to exploit a vulnerability in another, for even if we get through to another like that, we may serve only to harden that skin and so finding chinks in people if really an act of fault fining and judgement, which is what political correctness is trying to do, and where one see's the value of political correctness I see a new armor called playing nice. When we talk about manipulators in society, we should ask where did that two faced nature come from. My own heart will tell me if my arteries were lined with ignorance or my own blood flows with red heart of humanity. A learning journey that does not include learning new wisdoms about our own virtue is a learning journey that is superficial, then we can recite what it is we learned but yet not have that enter the wholeness of our own being. When we talk about freedom, it means that someone down the line paid a huge price for something we now take for granted, it does not mean that we risked anything, but it does mean that we begin to learn about all those who paved the way, so we are in this position in our time, to actually live a life that resembles what we call humanity. The chief reality of freedom is recognizing when the fight has been fought and the freedom it gained or was won is recognized and channeled into our own ways of being.
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #2
That is the power of comedy where we laugh with rather than at people. The Coopers is something I can identify with see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKc9EXo_CoU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h-t8vVi0zc because as an Indian we have met people from "Chigwell" :-) There is a private joke that goes around among Indians about "Coconuts" and the first time we hear it, we may ask what is a coconut and the response comes back, people who are brown on the outside but white inside. This is why political correctness has actually led to the idea of reverse racism. Instead of dissolving racism, new forms have emerged where people feel that their rights have been attacked and so we get Brexit and Trump, and then the kind of responses from the politically correct are no longer politically correct in their reactions to a SNL skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOm9YrcPxRQ now instead of a white man hating a black man, a blue man is hating a red man due to a democrat-republican skin. Colour is in the meaning we personally give it and comedy when it reveals our tribalism is best when it reveals all.
CityVP Manjit
7 years ago #1
The chief problem with political correctness is that it gets people to say the right thing while they are now privately thinking the wrong thing - and racism then is experienced by people like me in a much worse way, which is meeting two faced people. When I came to Canada I was very pleased to see that it was a highly tolerant society, yet genuine tolerance in Canada depends on what part of the country one is. In a town like Toronto, this two faced political correctness is far more prevalent than Torontonians admit because the city is a multiracial melting pot with over 135 different languages. I knew something was not right when I watched some people in Toronto reveal deep anti-americanism in their reaction to 9/11 - that is when I realized that if that was the hate they were hiding for Americans, what are they saying about immigrants like me behind my back. The reality I found is that political correctness can create a tough skin but then racism becomes skin deep - get a little deeper into the layers and I have found that hidden racism. It is therefore much wiser to acknowledge differences, and actually valuing differences, then it is to pretend or hide that there are no differences - which is actual "diversity". Once we make this about two faced people rather than political correctness - we get much more closer to the realities of human nature See: http://tiny.cc/1teohy At the same time let us focus on beautiful correctness - and learn to see beauty in people also.