Were Politically-Correct Americans too sensitive to the indignities of the 2016 election season? As its place in civic culture erodes at lightning speed, we should take stock of political correctness and its impact on our lives.
In and of itself, political correctness is not enshrined in our Constitution. James Madison did not pass down to us the right to teach evolution and climate science in public schools, so it's a little too late for him to prevent Donald J. Trumpers from unspooling the ties to empirical truth and human kindness which we held to be self-evident. In light of new transition appointments, it turns out that long-mocked PC values are a critical tool of the civil rights movement.
Donald Trump's America is a new place where our barest bone civil liberties are safeguarded by our founding documents, but not much else. The chasm between legally permissible and morally defensible has opened wide. The Americans with Disabilities Act ensures that ramps will get a disabled person from point A to B…but cannot guarantee that that person won't be humiliated in public for being wheelchair-bound. Anti-discrimination laws ensure a Mexican-American can serve as a judge…but a Trump supporter may file a motion to be tried elsewhere on ethnic bases. Sexual harassment statutes have already been demoted to “enforcement-optional” as Trumpmen grab women's asses with impunity on sidewalks across the land.
The days when Black Oscars mattered seem frivolous when there is consensus outrage in Trump's America that a movement like Black Lives Matter would dare suggest a problem exists with law enforcement. Black American should be able to have a cake and eat it: have positive role models on TV AND be protected from brutality. But both aims seem far fetched now.
Once upon a 2015 we wondered whether to wish our gentile friends “happy holidays” or “Merry Christmas”, lest they get flustered about how to well-wish us in return. Now middle-America can breathe easy – just put on the Nativity pageant in our public schools and call it a day.
Donald Trump skirted the line of illegality when he suggested “second amendment people” do “something” to his opponent and that Russia hack her, but, boy, did he cross the line of immorality on innumerable occasions. And that's where we find ourselves today: the laws may shift (and very soon, if liberal Supreme Court justices don't survive), but morals already have. That largest minority, that great fraternity, white men, has decided it lacks the patience to honor others or the humility to realize that it is no longer their country alone.
Paying homage to each other's identities is tiresome at times, but rewarding. Far beyond the trilling of the “r” in someone’s name or hearing a gentile try hard to pronounce the Het sound in Hanukkah, political correctness tethers us to mutual respect. It may have its excess, and elements of it like quotas and affirmative action always deserves re-evaluation and debate, but it will rightfully remain a prized moral heritance that we should each affirm in our daily lives.
Bejamin Lehrer is a project designer at Lehrer Architects LA.
