Political Correctness and Human Righteousness

Political Correctness and Human Righteousness
By Theodore Sares

While we talk about political correctness ad nauseam, we sometimes tend to overlook the perpetrators of this noxious activity. Just who are the ones who act as the enforcing agents; who are the, ugh, police people? Who are these self-appointed moral vigilantes who continue to impose their views on us?

Well, for starters, I suggest we look at the work place to see what we can come up with. It appears those who would remind us of what is correct and not correct at work seem to be none other than the Human Resources people. Rather than spend their time rectifying the despicable compensatory behavior of their bosses or trying to preserve a modicum of traditional employee benefits, they seem hell bent on pointing out the ABC's of what some greedy consultant told them was proper corporate behavior. I recall years ago when I was braced by one of these types for using the phrase "mensch" while referring to a Jewish associate. (Mensch means a caring, decent and honorable person who can be trusted and who always tries to do the right thing.) Given the horror in this lad's eyes, you would have thought I had just been booked for a stay at Pelican Bay. I do recall, however, that this same "enforcer" was discharged some years later for a rather explicit sexual harassment incident. These types, while probably well intended, seem to spend too much time finger pointing and otherwise acting as corporate enforcers, and not enough time demonstrating a modicum of courage in doing something about the obscenely excessive severance packages granted to those who fail. Indeed, during the period of corporate accounting scandals from 2001 -2003, HR people were shamefully invisible when they they should have been spending their time serving as protectors of company values.

At many schools, we have the administrators to help us behave properly......and to help make their task easier, they have a one size fits all approach; namely, the dreaded, take-no-prisoners bastion of political correctness, the zero-tolerance policy. If ever there was a road to hell paved with righteous intentions, this is the one. Think not? A 10-year-old girl at McElwain Elementary in Thornton, Col., was one of a group of girls who asked a certain boy on the playground if he liked her. The boy complained to a teacher with the result that school administrators, citing the district's "zero-tolerance sexual harassment policy," decided to suspend her. Nothing like spreading penut butter to evade consideration of each individual's personal history and the intentions that inspired their actions. Zero-tolerance policies do just that. They deny the unique worth and dignity of every student by homogenizing the playing field. How about reconsidering concepts like mediation, negotiation, forgiveness, compassion, and empathy? How about making zero-tolerance a last resort rather than the first option?