Book Review by Paul Trout: John K. Wilson's "The Myth of Political Correctness" by John K. Wilson

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The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education

John K. Wilson
Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995
205 pp., $14.95 pb
Paul Trout
English
MSU-Bozeman

There is no question that the phrase "politically correct" has been used successfully to discredit a wide assortment of values, ideas, programs and attitudes embraced by the left, especially the academic left.

Not surprisingly, ever since the term started to draw blood in the early 90s, those who smarted from the nettlesome PC label have attempted to convince a dubious public that "political correctness" does not even exist, or is too negligible to deserve attention.

This is the thesis of The Myth of Political Correctness by John K. Wilson, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and editor of--as well as the main contributor to--Democratic Culture, the newsletter for Teachers for a Democratic Culture. By pulling together all the arguments and statistics that PC deniers have used to fend off the damaging charge of "political correctness," Wilson hopes to provide a "sustained rebuttal to the conservative attacks" (25). Sustained it is, but convincing it is not.

In Chapter 1, Wilson contends that "political correctness" is a big lie, concocted by conservatives funded by "right-wing foundations" and by "liberals and journalists who dislike the academic left" (2). By distorting, exaggerating, and then repeating ad nauseum a few anecdotes about so-called PC repression at some elite universities, these forces have conspired to create the "myth of political correctness," which has convinced a clueless American public that a "vast conspiracy" (4) "under the control of a secret cabal of leftist professors" now threatens the civil liberties of "conservative white males" (2-3).

In Chapter 2, Wilson pushes his argument farther: the real threat to academic freedom, he contends, does not come from PC but from CC--conservative correctness. According to Wilson, conservatives have exploited fear of "political correctness" to wage "culture war against radicals of all kinds" ( 118), fomenting a "backlash" against "anyone who advocates progressive ideas" (14). In subsequent chapters, Wilson examines widely trumpeted PC anecdotes about the canon, speech codes, sexual correctness, and reverse discrimination, arguing that "when closely examined," these cases simply "unravel" (xv). This is precisely what happens to Wilson's book.

But before I address the work's deficiencies, a few concessions are in order. There is no doubt that some PC stories have been distorted--and exaggerated--in the telling and the retelling. This is what happens when winning the culture war trumps scholarship and telling the truth. But sometimes inaccuracies do not signify conspiratorial propaganda (whether right or left) but writing to a deadline. Of course, when the facts are (finally) known, they should be objectively reported. If this bromide now sounds a bit quaint, it could be because academics on the Left have been so assiduous in Reconstructing such terms as truth, facts, and objectivity. It seems hypocritical and self-interested for one of them to now evoke the terms in self-defense.

Nevertheless, Wilson is to be commended for correcting the record in several cases, and for admonishing right-wing culture warriors to get the facts straight (for example, about the canon, which is not being trod to dust under the jackboots of multiculturalists, about the ballyhooed Thernstrom case, etc.) and to eschew the dehumanizing, demonizing rhetoric of which they are too fond ("liberal fascism," "stalags of state-subsidized sensitivity fascism," "liberal thought police." etc.).

To admit that some anecdotes have been exaggerated and distorted is not to admit, however, that the reaction to "political correctness" has also been excessive. Wilson contends, quite understandably, that the whole issue of alleged PC repression has been blown out of proportion. While this claim will appeal to those chafing from the term, it is a claim that is ultimately tendentious and vacuous, for it is unprovable. Who has the scales in which to weigh cultural concerns? How could a culture as pluralistic as ours agree on a standard that convincingly determines when cultural attention moves from being justified and reasonable to being "exaggerated" and "excessive"? Although Wilson has corrected the record here and there, he certainly has not discredited enough stories to support his argument that PC is some sort of mythic confection. By now there have been too many reports about too many incidents of coercion and intimidation for them all to be simply dismissed as invented or wildly exaggerated. Indeed, a number of these reports have appeared in centrist, and even liberal, periodicals (such as Mother Jones) and have provoked academics from across the political spectrum to speak out against them (more on this in a moment).

In Zealotry and Academic Freedom (1995), Neil Hamilton, a professor at the William Marshall School of Law, carefully and soberly recounts enough stories of PC zealotry to make the point that the coercive policies and practices endorsed by the academic left now constitute a more dangerous threat to academic freedom than any other wave of zealotry, including McCarthyism (143-145). And it is not just "conservatives" who understand the nature and source of this threat. Wilson is forced to acknowledge that many centrists, moderates, liberals, and even some Marxists, have also opposed PC (1). He accounts for this opposition by suggesting--insultingly--that they either were duped by conservative propaganda (156, 17), or were "alarmed" by radical attacks "on liberal ideas about rationality, free speech, and objectivity." He adds, "liberals were also concerned at the intolerance of leftists, who did not accept liberal notions about the marketplace of ideas" (24).

Does not this disconcertingly frank explanation concede precisely what Wilson denies--the existence of intolerant leftists who do not accept widespread and traditional notions about free speech and reason? It is this leftist assault on cherished liberal values that provoked, for example, the eminent historian C. Vann Woodward to articulate one of the most incisive definitions and critiques of "political correctness" yet written:

In the present crisis the attack on freedom comes from outside as well as inside and is led by minorities, that is, people who speak or claim to speak for groups of students and faculty.... In behalf of their cause and to protect feelings from offensive speech they have, as we shall see, proved themselves willing to silence speakers and professors, abuse standards of scholarship, curriculum, and admissions, and impose conformity or silent submission on the campus (in Beyond P.C. 31).
Many others who are not die-hard conservatives have also spoken out against the well meant but puritanical and coercive practices and policies to be found at too many of our best universities. If Wilson wants to brand these scholars with the dreaded label of "conservative," he is free to do so, but the ruse will console only die-hard PCers deeply into denial.

Wilson is even less convincing when he argues, provocatively, that "the greatest threat to freedom of expression in America" comes from conservative correctness (164). In a bid to make his case, Wilson must employ an exceedingly elastic definition of "conservative." For instance, under the heading "conservative correctness" Wilson lumps any restriction imposed by administrators (107, 12), any rule or act that upsets campus gays and lesbians--even when these occur at decidedly"liberal" campuses (46) or in the "most liberal" departments (43)--and every vile, bigoted act he can dig up, even when the identity and political beliefs of the perpetrator are unknown (31). Thus, when a male student sends a message to a female student in which he threatens to stalk her (41), this becomes, for Wilson, a case of conservative correctness! Given this sweeping definition, it is not surprising that Wilson thinks conservative correctness, like Chicken Man, is everywhere.

Not content with using a bloated definition of "conservative," Wilson also searches through a number of fourth-tier and sectarian campuses for anything that looks like "conservative correctness," finding his own alarming examples at such influential schools as the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, Messiah College, Campbell University, Bethel College, Nyack College, the College of Saint Scholastica, Viterbo College Millsaps College, and Ohlone College (2).

Granted, small regional and religious schools are rarely bastions of free thought for obvious reasons, and it is hypocritical, as Wilson contends, for conservatives to talk glowingly about the academic freedom at such places as Brigham Young University, Boston University, and Hillsdale College (135). I share Wilson's suspicion that the right's recently acquired commitment to academic freedom is not as permanent or even-handed as it claims, especially given the right's continuing willingness to ignore, palliate, or applaud violations of the academic freedom of leftist professors (10-11, 32, 57, 77, 135). The cases that Wilson manages to find at these schools proves that there is such a thing as right-wing PC, and he does well to remind us all that "intolerance is not a monopoly of the left" (55). But it is a telling revelation that Wilson chooses to express it this way.

For Wilson to make a plausible case that conservative correctness is now a greater threat to free speech and academic freedom than PC, he would have to draw examples from large secular universities, the same ones that have furnished so many alarming examples of Leftist coercion. The debate about PC has justifiably focused on these major universities because they educate so many students and establish precedents and set the pace for smaller and less influential campuses.

Why, then, does Wilson not draw examples of conservative correctness from such schools as Stanford, Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin, Duke, etc? The answer is simply: they don't exist. As Neil Hamilton puts it, "the left so totally dominates departments of humanities and social sciences at elite universities that moderate and conservative faculty have almost no presence." Because "there are virtually no faculty members from the far right at universities or four-year colleges,...there exists no threat to academic freedom from the far right within the faculty itself" (101, also 106).

In his chapters on speech codes, sexual correctness, and affirmative action, Wilson tries to explain the extent to which certain features of the "progressive agenda" have been misunderstood or wilfully distorted. Although his treatments of these topics does not amount to a convincing case that there's no such thing as PC and it's a good thing, too, he does make some subtle distinctions that culture warriors on the right too often overlook. But even in these sections Wilson's arguments suffer from logical inconsistencies, elastic definitions, and the tendentious interpretation of evidence.

Those at the political extremes always see themselves as a beleaguered minority desperately contending with a hostile majority threatening to overwhelm them. This mindset may help explain Wilson's sincere but preposterous thesis. Far to the left, Wilson believes that he is fighting for his intellectual life in a country that, from his point of view, is overwhelmingly "conservative," where every institution, from elementary education to the military-industrial-political complex, is saturated with socially endorsed capitalist values. No wonder he is outraged that the "conservative" majority--despite owning everything else--won't let leftists at least control higher education as their last redoubt.

John Wilson is not only a precocious graduate student but an indefatigable and battle-tough combatant in the culture wars. This may have been his undoing. The flaws to be found in The Myth of Political Correctness illustrate the consequences of writing polemics before one has mastered the argumentative and intellectual skills and values of traditional academic research: "accuracy and thoroughness in the collection and use of evidence, reasonable assertion, impartiality in the determination of the weight of the evidence, careful analytical reasoning, and fairness in argument or controversy" (Hamilton, 93).

Those who esteem such skills will take little pleasure in the fact that The Myth of Political Correctness is such a shallow and ineffective endeavor to find--and face--the truth.

Notes
Among the centrist-to-Marxist opponents of PC are such distinguished and influential scholars as: C. Vann Woodward, Nat Hentoff, Mortimer J. Adler, Todd Gitlin, Eugene D. Genovese, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Louis Menand, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, David Bromwich, Derek Bok, Nuretta Koertge, Stephen Carter, John Patrick Diggins, John Searle, Irving Howe, Edward W. Said, Shelby Steele, David Riesman, James David Barber, Nadine Strossen, Russell Jacoby, Susan Haack, Steven Marcus, Daphne Patai, Helen Vendler, Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, Irving Louis Horowitz, Alan Kors, Jacques Barzun, Edward O. Wilson, Donald Kagan, Julius Lester, Allan Dershowitz, Colin Diver, Benno Schmidt, etc.

Wilson palliates a case of "political correctness" that even he says is legitimate by saying that the incident was not significant or worrisome because it occurred at "a small liberal Christian college, not a leading secular university." He conveniently overlooks the fact that his own evidence that "conservative correctness" is now sweeping the country is also drawn from the same kinds of schools: Marquette University, Gonzaga University, Bringham Young University, Idaho State University, Southwestern Michigan College, Pacific Luthern University, Saint John's University, Loyola Marymount University, Campbell University, Converse College, McKendree College, Elmira College, Jamestown College, Mount Vernon College, Stephen F. Austin State University, Ohio Northern University, Southwestern Theological Seminary Saint Martin's College, North Idaho College, Dallas Baptist University, Palm Beach Atlantic College, Wheaton College, and Montana Tech.
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Norman Davies on Poles and Jews

Norman Davies wrote the marvelous popularizing behemoth "Europe: A History" a decade or so ago as well as several books on Polish History including "God's Playground." One of the things I like the most about Davies is that he is a political moderate. About twenty years ago in the New York Review of Books (to which I advise all persons to subscribe) he wrote something that has been rolling around in my head recently. It seems especially apropos today, not only to anti-Semitism but to the increasingly elastic usages of the term "racism." Here it is.

“One must seriously inquire whether the concept of anti-Semitism is adequate to the task of defining and explaining the historic conflict of two nations. For one thing, the word "anti-Semitism" appears to be infinitely elastic, being applied to everything from the advocacy of genocide to a dislike for bagels. Nowadays in America, it is widely used to condemn any criticism of Jews, or of the Jewish state, Israel, irrespective of the merits of such criticism. Furthermore, like all its dialectical counterparts, such as "anti-Sovietism," it can easily be used to smear all expression of dissenting opinion, since any protesters to the smear can automatically be tagged with the same lousy label.

“Worst of all, when applied to complex international or intercommunal relationships, it assumes from the start that the main source of any antagonisms where Jews are involved must lie with the Jews' opponents. In the nature of things, anti-Semitism cannot be invoked to explore the attitude and conduct of the Semites, nor to consider the happier aspects of the Semites' relations with their neighbors. When applied to the history of Poles and Jews, it cannot do other than suggest firstly that there are no redeeming features to the tale, and secondly that the Poles are to blame for all the misery.

“Anti-Semitism, therefore, looks to be a sadly blunt and one-sided tool, capable of probing only one side of multidimensional problems. It is as though one were asked to write the history of Ireland armed solely with the concept of "anti-Protestantism," or to analyze Moslem–Hindu relations in India on the sole basis of "anti-Islamism," or to expound on Russo-American relations on the sole basis of the "anti-Americanism" of the Russians. No one in his right mind would deny that an irrational hatred of Jews has been a recurrent and deplorable ingredient of Poland's many social and political conflicts. But that ingredient is but one item in a far more complicated and unsavory menu. Another ingredient is the irrational hatred of some Jews for Poles.” (NYRB Nov 20, 1986)

When dealing with the set of issues that Davies concisely raised in the above quotation, some things to think about are these. We do, it seems, automatically feel special sympathy for someone we see as the underdog. This is part of the reason why so many people consider the Palestinians as the Good Guys and the Jews as the Bad Guys. It is a knee-jerk reflex and it has certain good uses but can simplify things to the point that they are not historically accurate. Just because a group has fewer guns than another group, or grievances which may be argued as legitimate against another group, does not mean that it has the right to behave as destructively as it can. It doesn't mean that its members should deserve our exclusive sympathy for committing violent or, on a smaller scale, even rude acts against the group with more guns.

Introduction: what this site is about.

I am a fairly liberal person who votes Democrat. I live in Berkeley, California. I believe in socialized medicine, socialized daycare, higher taxes for the rich, and free or very inexpensive high quality education. I believe in the things that I think are consistent with a Democrat of about Franklin Roosevelt's era.

However, there are some things of which the American Left approves with which I cannot agree. The biggest ones are the excesses surrounding multiculturalism, especially the fetishization for ethnic diversity that often runs head-on against other beliefs of mine. Don't get me wrong. There are few things I would rather see more of (aside from peace, prosperity, scientific advances, functional colonies offworld spreading human civilization elsewhere, a cure for cancer, human happiness, etc) than persons of a wide variety of ethnic groups in, for example, the higher reaches of academia.

However, the manner in which this goal is achieved, and whether it should be thought of as a "goal" that needs to be "achieved," are questions whose answers -- at least the ones the American Left, especially in Berkeley, California, have given -- are tricky. For example, should a massive social engineering effort really be necessary to achieve this goal? How much money should be spent on it? Should individuals be pulled into the most elite instititutions by those institutions' outreach staffs just because those individuals happen to be of a "desired" ethnic minority to complete a palette, sometimes almost regardless of the individuals' levels of skill or interest in a subject?

Aside from admissions, how about some of the classes one finds in the academic setting today? I have taken an "American Cultures" class at the University of California at Berkeley. In this class I was instructed quite straightforwardly that white people are bad, nonwhites are good; men are bad, women are good; Christianity's effects have been absolutely negative;straights are bad, and non-straights are delightfully deviant and fascinating. And this was meant to be an upper-division history course. Its teacher is a perfectly respectable professor whose father played an important role in the United Nations. He wasn't a wide-eyed fanatic. This is the mainstream attitude of a whole lot of people. The obsessive identification of, identification with, and sole concentration on, history's victims trumped every other consideration in that course and in the minds of many people. Further, the obligation of insulting all things related to European culture is an active sentiment in these circles as well. Is this a reaction from centuries of oppression? What the benefits of this overlordship were to the oppressed is a highly arguable point, but even if what happened in the past has largely been a straightforward case of oppression, the overreaction to it that I see daily is not rational or reasonable.

A friend of mine told me that the word "overreaction" in the last sentence made her uncomfortable. Let me linger on it a moment. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, nor do I want to be inflammatory at all on this site. However, I don't think that the free exchange of ideas will be possible if the word "overreaction" is prohibited. The status quo of any discussion on ethnicity amongst caucasians on the left very often (since the late 1960s) has taken the form of a futile ballet of one group of people delicately tiptoeing around the sensibilities of persons who consider themselves or their ancestors as oppressed, as Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn explains in her interesting book "Race Experts." The first group feels it cannot speak frankly lest it cause offense, and that it must constantly apologize to the point of being self-demeaning, an utterly unproductive action. This status can only harm honest discussion. But honesty need not equal obnxiousness. A balance needs to be struck. Compromises need to be made both by the party whose language might hurt others' feelings and by the party whose feelings might be hurt. However, at least from having lived in Berkeley, I can say that the first party has been making all the compromises and the second party, at least as I have seen it, not as many.

Obviously this site is not meant to be a cranky conservative site that castigates "political correctness" or PC. There are already plenty of sites like that. It's meant to be for fairly leftish people, or formerly leftish people. Anyone may post; I will remove counterproductive or insulting postings. I will be posting things I find bothersome in relation primarily to the sort of extremist multiculturalism in the San Francisco Bay area that, among other things, denies agency to minorites by encouraging them to identify themselves as human beings primarily in terms of their or their ancestors' oppression; as well as the extremes to which I occasionally see feminists go, often colored similarly.

My hope is to create a critical forum for these issues that, for once, does not issue from the far right.

Even aside from the universities, let's look at a situation in a Berkeley elementary school, below from a local paper produced in the city of Berkeley.

This is from the Berkeley Daily Planet, Weekend Edition, April 21-24, 2006:

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Academic Choice Students Excused from Core Course
By SUZANNE LA BARRE (04-21-06)

It has survived heated criticism, a curriculum overhaul and a new name, but Freshman Seminar can’t stand up to Academic Choice.

Following a 4-1 vote by the Berkeley Board of Education Wednesday, students enrolled in the Academic Choice enrichment program at Berkeley High School are no longer required to take the concentrated ethnic studies and social living course required of freshmen, known in recent years as Freshman Seminar.

Instead, they will enroll in a year’s worth of ancient civilization and geography that will make time for a month-long social living segment as mandated by state law. Ethnicity and identity studies will be dispersed throughout the program’s four-year arc. The new curriculum goes into effect this fall.

“We’ve been struggling for years to provide a meaningful social studies course,” said Berkeley High School Principal Jim Slemp. “Since I’ve been there, we’ve been working on it and not succeeding. … There may be better ways to meet those goals than what’s currently being offered.”

Freshman Seminar, or Identity and Ethnic Studies (IES), as it was known pre-2004, provides lessons in identity, diversity, health. The curriculum has been a rite of passage for freshmen at Berkeley High since the early 1990s, but one that has earned mixed reviews.

Some say the course lacks structure. Instructors are free to teach—or not teach—as they please. Bradley Johnson, who served as student school board director during the 2003-2004 school year, complained that the ethnic studies course victimized ethnic minorities, demonized white students and inculcated students to the teacher’s ideology.

In 2004, the board approved an IES curriculum revamp and conferred the new name Freshman Seminar. But most agree the program is still flawed.

“Some people like the program. Some love it. But a lot of people really hate the course,” said school board Vice President Joaquin Rivera. “It has been extremely controversial. We’ve tried to improve it in many ways and with a few exceptions, it has not been successful.”

Susan Helmrich, one of more than a dozen Academic Choice parents who attended Wednesday’s board meeting in support of the new courses, described her son’s Freshman Seminar as “an absolute disaster.”

Another parent quipped that her child watched movies and learned how to play poker in IES.

Others expressed concern that the existing curriculum does not offer UC credit to Academic Choice freshmen. Academic Choice is a program within Berkeley High School for high achievers.

The newly approved freshman course offers one semester of world geography and cultures, and one semester of ancient civilization, both of which are designed after UC-approved courses. There is no guarantee they will earn accreditation, however.

Support for the curriculum is not unanimous. The proposed course was submitted to the Berkeley High School Shared Governance Committee, comprised of school site council representatives, faculty, staff and students, three times, and never received a two-thirds majority approval.

On Wednesday, School Board candidate and Berkeley High School parent Karen Hemphill spoke out against the course.

“I think the proposal is a short-sighted answer to a long-term problem,” she said, detailing the benefits of coursework that emphasizes identity development, ethnicity and diversity. “Lack of academic rigor is not due to course content, but due to lack of accountability for teachers.”

Student Board Director Teal Miller agreed teachers make the course, but that doesn’t mean other possibilities should be dismissed.

“I had an amazing IES teacher, however the more I talk to students at Berkeley High over the past three years, the more I realize I was in the minority in having a phenomenal teacher,” she said. “Taking it from a different perspective is important because of the other students I talked to who sat for a year and did nothing and I think that’s really unfortunate.”

School board directors Rivera, Shirley Issel, John Selawsky and Nancy Riddle approved the new Academic Choice curriculum. Terry Doran opposed it, saying he did not feel world history was necessarily appropriate at the freshman level, and preferred a contemporary course.

Only one other program at Berkeley High, the International High School—a small school slated to open this fall—provides an alternative to Freshman Seminar. Students at the other small schools and the comprehensive high school are still required to take Freshman Seminar.

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=04-21-06&storyID=23942

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Again, having experienced the Berkely zeitgeist on matters of ethnic diversity, I have a very easy time believing that Bradley Johnson's comments are unfortunately correct. The majority of people I have seen who disagree with sentiments like his are either people in their fifties who argue along the lines of "well, there was no recognition whatsoever of ethnic minorities in my day, so this is a step in the right direction." While I am sympathetic to their point of view, I would assert that it is not they who are being educated in Berkeley high schools but their children and grandchildren who have grown up in a much different world. Almost all agree that a recognistion of and appreciation for ethnic diversity is a fine thing -- even those who only from the perspective of self-interest because it is better to be able to select from a wider variety of national cuisines. The problem is when one has, as a mandatory course, something that is likely to become infected with the very denigration of European culture that I found in a university course at UC Berkeley. I fail to see how most high school courses will refrain from the simplistic game of "let's reverse the color of hats on the bad guys and good guys" if a UC Berkeley course couldn't refrain from that.

Terry Doran's comment that ancient civilization is not appropriate for a freshman level and that a contemporary course is preferable is confusing and even distressing. First, students are surrounded by contemporary culture. What they need is to break out of that and study something alien. Secondly, at what level would he prefer students to learn of the civilizations of the past? This is extremely important information. A proper understanding of Roman maritime culture, for example, puts diversity in perspective for us today -- and is interesting in its own right. The realization that slavery has existed in every single culture in the past puts American slavery in a decidedly less demonic perspective and makes it an understandable institution if highly regrettable. A perhaps paranoid thought in my head even makes me wonder whether there are people who profit by maintaining anger between blacks and whites; they would surely not want blacks to learn about the widespread nature of slavery.