My Thoughts on the Current Nature of Racism
I know everyone has his or her personal opinion on political correctness, and some have opinions without even having to look at any evidence, but this is somethign that I feel has some merit.
First of all, I intend to keep the argument based mainly through popular media; I'm sure it can be developed through other mediums as well, but I'll keep it simple for now. It also helps to observe the time frame of what I'm talking about, because we're talking the earlier 1970s or so of television programming.
At this time, two huge television events of racial significance had taken place (I'm sure you can name a few others, but these were, in my opinion, the most significant): the first interracial kiss on television (a Star Trek episode, which I believe may have aired in the late 1960s) and several serious episodes, including one with Sammi Davis, Jr. on All in the Family involving both racism and fear of other races due to misunderstandings. A new politically correct atmosphere was slowly coming onto the scene during this time in which you started hearing of protests against the old Lone Ranger, and stuff like that due to its depiction of Native Americans as stereotypes.
However, fast forward a bit, and you come to the very first episode of a new show called Taxi. Now I'm sure a lot of people have seen this show since then and have no idea of the controversy this show caused. In this first episode, Danny Devito makes a comment to a new driver that he should never pick up people with wheelchairs because it takes twice as long to pick them up and he could do two fares in that time. Louie Depalma, his character, was supposed to be a bad guy, but this started a HUGE letter writing campaign and an fizzled boycott campaign. The politically correct people were extremely upset at handicapped people being referred to this way.
It is my argument that right about this time is when political correctness became problematic rather than socially innovative. Recently, there's a huge protest against the new Charlie’s Angels movie because Lucy Liu's father is John Cleese, a white guy. It is so obvious this was done tongue in cheek, but like so long ago, they can't see a joke that has no racial problematic situations. For some reason, there’s been little protest that Bernie Mac, an African American has been chosen to play Bill Murray’s brother.
I guess my point is that I think we are starting to really go the direction of creating conflict where diversity exists just because diversity exists. Somewhere down the line, we forgot that original idea of desegregation was to bring people together; yet, for some reason there is much more payoff in keeping people apart.
And this comes from all angles, from both those of marginalized minority status and powerful white guys, like Bill O’Reilly, that seem to think that being rich and opinionated also makes them correct. My fear is that we’re moving further and further away from racial disappearance and instead we’re clinging to old racisms just for the sake of trying to find some common bond, quite often with people who believe in hatred rather than forward moving thought.
At least that’s my thought.
Stumble It!
I know everyone has his or her personal opinion on political correctness, and some have opinions without even having to look at any evidence, but this is somethign that I feel has some merit.
First of all, I intend to keep the argument based mainly through popular media; I'm sure it can be developed through other mediums as well, but I'll keep it simple for now. It also helps to observe the time frame of what I'm talking about, because we're talking the earlier 1970s or so of television programming.
At this time, two huge television events of racial significance had taken place (I'm sure you can name a few others, but these were, in my opinion, the most significant): the first interracial kiss on television (a Star Trek episode, which I believe may have aired in the late 1960s) and several serious episodes, including one with Sammi Davis, Jr. on All in the Family involving both racism and fear of other races due to misunderstandings. A new politically correct atmosphere was slowly coming onto the scene during this time in which you started hearing of protests against the old Lone Ranger, and stuff like that due to its depiction of Native Americans as stereotypes.
However, fast forward a bit, and you come to the very first episode of a new show called Taxi. Now I'm sure a lot of people have seen this show since then and have no idea of the controversy this show caused. In this first episode, Danny Devito makes a comment to a new driver that he should never pick up people with wheelchairs because it takes twice as long to pick them up and he could do two fares in that time. Louie Depalma, his character, was supposed to be a bad guy, but this started a HUGE letter writing campaign and an fizzled boycott campaign. The politically correct people were extremely upset at handicapped people being referred to this way.
It is my argument that right about this time is when political correctness became problematic rather than socially innovative. Recently, there's a huge protest against the new Charlie’s Angels movie because Lucy Liu's father is John Cleese, a white guy. It is so obvious this was done tongue in cheek, but like so long ago, they can't see a joke that has no racial problematic situations. For some reason, there’s been little protest that Bernie Mac, an African American has been chosen to play Bill Murray’s brother.
I guess my point is that I think we are starting to really go the direction of creating conflict where diversity exists just because diversity exists. Somewhere down the line, we forgot that original idea of desegregation was to bring people together; yet, for some reason there is much more payoff in keeping people apart.
And this comes from all angles, from both those of marginalized minority status and powerful white guys, like Bill O’Reilly, that seem to think that being rich and opinionated also makes them correct. My fear is that we’re moving further and further away from racial disappearance and instead we’re clinging to old racisms just for the sake of trying to find some common bond, quite often with people who believe in hatred rather than forward moving thought.
At least that’s my thought.
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 4:01 AM
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