How Can We Correct “Political Correctness”?

Everyone I talk to seems to agree that “political correctness” is out of control and a severe detriment to our society, as it plays out today.

One area that that falls into this category is in what we call “insensitivity”. It seems that whatever you say today might just offend somebody else regardless of the subject or the innocuousness of what was said. All it takes is for someone to take offense, a very subjective claim, to say the least. We are becoming a nation of “victims” who are becoming overly sensitive about anything negative said about him/herself, his/her political party, his/her church, his/her gender or sexual orientation, his/her race or ethnicity etc., etc. It is especially true when it comes to race. A off-hand remark, said in public, that could be taken as a knock on someone’s race or ethnicity, is a prime target for the race-hustlers to jump in and stir up the cauldron so that they can run in to get publicity by claiming “racial insensitivity”, and by getting the “offending” party to apologize in the least and getting him/her fired in a worst case scenario.

Just in the past few years, a woman T.V. anchor, on the Golf Channel, said in jest to another pro-golfer that the only way for him and his fellow golfers to dethrone Tiger Woods, would be to “lynch him in the back alley”. Her sin was trying to be funny and clever at the same time. She had no animosity towards Tiger Woods or to blacks and minorities in general. Her poor choice of words was sloughed off by Tiger Woods as a non-racial remark and he said it was no big deal. He is a personal friend of the anchor. Not good enough for one of the “Rhyming Reverends”, Al Sharpton. He got involved and the charges of “insensitivity” and “racism” were inserted into the debate, and the weak-kneed T.V. station suspended the T.V. anchor for two weeks when all that should’ve happened was for them to accept her apology and Tiger Woods acceptance of it and then move on.

In my former career as a classroom teacher, I had a couple of occasions when “political correctness” put me in a vulnerable position. In my role as a business education teacher, I had this student, let’s call him Lenny, in my class. He was an African-American who lived in a Catholic sponsored Home for Inner City Kids. Well, Lenny enrolled in my marketing class and performed very well on his tests, his homework assignments, and in his

class participation. I gave him an “A” for the first marking period. The second marking period happened to coincide with the basketball season. Lenny was on the basketball team. During the second marking period Lenny failed the class tests, and cut classes regularly. As a result, I gave him an “F” on his report card. When Lenny received his report card, he became irate and ran down to see his guidance counselor. Lenny said to his guidance counselor that he thought that Mr. Lehmann was prejudiced against black people because he gave me an “F”. The guidance counselor, took his report card and looked at it. He asked Lenny, “What grade did Mr. Lehmann give you in the first marking period”? He said, “He gave me an “A”. “Well”, said the guidance counselor, “What color were you then when he gave you an “A”? Case closed because the charge was bogus, but I had to answer the charge which put me in a position to prove my innocence. In today’s PC climate, I might have lost my job if the “race hustlers”, Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, decided that I was “guilty” of being insensitive or worse to this black student.

In another case, a girl received an F from me because she failed the class tests and cut class on a number of occasions. Upon getting her report card she reacted negatively and ran to my Dep’t Chairwoman, complaining that Mr. Lehmann was prejudiced against non-Jewish students for giving her a failing grade. The chairwoman, a Jew herself, looked this student in the eye and said, “Did you know that Mr. Lehmann is not Jewish? Suppose I was Jewish, would this bogus charge have had any more validity? Maybe only in the eyes of the P.C. police, who are unelected busy bodies and self-proclaimed arbiters of right and wrong?

This craziness has got to stop. Is that being politically “incorrect”? You make the call.

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann