Politically Correct is Morally Correct

It has been difficult for me to understand much of what is happening politically and socially in our nation right now.  In so many ways I am naive.  But with the latest discussion regarding Trump’s comments about women some of the fog in my mind has cleared.

My childhood included seeing three restrooms and two water fountains everywhere I went:  Men, women and colored, White and Colored.  I grew up in the Ozzie and Harriet world.  I grew up when every elected official south of the Mason Dixon line was a Democrat.  I grew up when smoking was cool.  My family did not own a TV until I was 8 years old and the shows were all black and white.  I grew up when the CEO and Congress were all men, almost all white men.  I grew up seeing the riots in Watts and at the Democratic convention in Chicago.  I grew up when there was both a draft and a war and women were not part of the effort except in voluntary support roles.  I grew up at a time when the locker room talk among high school boys and those men who did not mature beyond high school was similar to Trump’s comments.  I grew up at a time it was just assumed that women and Blacks were somehow inferior to white males.  I grew up in a time when people with special needs were ignored and kept at home.  I grew up in a time when being homosexual was a deep, dark secret.  I grew up in a time where using slang words for Muslims, Blacks and women was OK.  It was politically correct to use discriminatory language for any group that was perceived to be sub-white male:  wet-backs, niggers, fags, retards, pussies, camel jocks, and on and on.

I am naive in that I thought as a nation, as a pool of human beings, we had progressed beyond the acceptance of such nonsense in the 1950’s through the confrontation of such nonsense in the 1960’s to a world of accepting diversity, to a world where we all recognize that every race, every ethnic group, both genders, and people of various sexual preferences have the potential to make major, positive contributions to our world.  Contributions that are not grounded in characteristics determined at birth and religious belief or absence thereof, and determined by zip code.  More than that, I thought we had reached a time when we recognized the inherent worth of humanity.  I have been foolishly wrong.

I get it now when Trump says “Make America Great Again.”  He wants to return to the time when white men ruled and there was no such thing as being politically correct.  He can wave his arm and make derogatory remarks about all women and individual women and that should be OK.  He can wave his arm and make generalized statements regarding immigrants to this country.  He can mock people with special needs.  He can wave his arm and make generalized statements about any group that in his 1950’s mind merits a slang term. 

Political correctness, that is eliminating bias and discrimination from our speech and our behavior, is in fact moral correctness.  If one believes we can prejudge entire groups of human beings and lump them under some derogatory heading, then one feels freed from both political correctness and moral correctness.  And people who still harbor those old 1950’s notions that were part of our heritage at the time have not matured socially or morally.  Women did not earn the right to vote until 1920, and even then the vote was very close.  It was not until 1900 that women throughout the nation could own property separate from their husbands.  Blacks earned the right to vote in 1870, 50 years before women.  It has always been assumed in this nation that white males, especially white males who own property, have the right to vote and control.  Political correctness is our effort to express our moral correctness.  Any effort to return to the days of discriminatory language and behavior is, by definition morally wrong.

I hear pundits including women saying ignore Trump’s comments in all these areas.  Boys will be boys.  Poppycock and balderdash.  To forgive Trump is to sink to a moral depth we should have escaped by now.  To forgive Trump is to return to the time where discrimination was politically acceptable.  Such a regression is immoral.  It represents a culture and belief system that is immoral.  It represents our bigoted childhood which we should have abandoned long ago.  It should never, ever be the model we wish to re-establish.  It is wrong.

So, if it bothers you that I carefully edit my language to exclude discriminatory nouns and adjectives it is because I believe human beings regardless of characteristics deserve our respect.  Anything we say or do that implies some humans are inferior to or subordinate to other human beings is morally wrong.  Political correctness is moral correctness.  Abandoning that is not returning to a time of greatness.  It is sinking to a depth of moral morass from which we should have escaped to higher ground long ago.