For those of you who don't actually "know me," I am rarely politically correct. Nor do I have aspirations of winning the Henry Kissenger Award for Diplomacy. I believe it is always best to call things as I see them and shoot straight from the hip. This head on attitude has gotten me into interesting situations more than once. However, I tend to let the chips fall where they may... so here goes.
It appears profilers, high school teachers and college instructors all must exercise political correctness when attempting to jump the minefields of their professions. From where I sit this is total insanity, where competent trained professionals are trying to do their jobs in trying times. A well known online writer and psychologist has pointed out "Profiling (Ed: or teaching,) when you are not allowed to use observational data is not likely to be useful." cases in point:
1. FBI and ATF profilers were subjected to the PC police this week when trying to convey the profile of the DC Area Sniper. They tried to jump the PC minefield, while being forced to not state the obvious expanded profile of the shooter and ended up looking like idiots. The politically correct camp decided it was not correct to state the sniper could have been black, white, American or Middle Eastern.
Why not? Because it might offend the black or Middle Eastern communities, despite the possibility the sniper could have come from someone within their racial group. Come on!
2. Then this week a CalState LA art instructor was attacked for an art poster she produced to promote her students art show as to being racially insensitive. The poster was a simple black and white photo of a hangmen's noose with the caption "Hang Art." It was a cute play on words made to make people "think and be curious." Nothing more. Well some black students took offense, and demanded the instructor not only apologize, but RESIGN HER POSITION because in their opinion she was a racist.
Racist? Excuse me! I don't think so!
3. And finally a Pasadena Public School teacher was suspended for the remainder of the year because he wrote in an email that stated it was going to be difficult to raise the school's basic skills test scores of misbehaving and disruptive students. He also noted within the email that these problem students were overwhelmingly black-- and noted how this would effect the school over the long term, including teacher bonuses.
Race be damned, it is a well known fact student who are disruptive and a discipline problem in the classroom, are normally students on the lower end of the grading standard. These students if allowed to run rough-shod over a class will also hamper the ability of the other students to learn. If the majority of the problem student in his school are black and he's calling them on it, so be it. Wouldn't it behoove the black community in Pasadena to pick up on this clue and work on correcting the problem with the school? I can tell you this much-- put a bunch of White or Asian parents on this problem with their kids, and it would be resolved in about 2 weeks. So why are we trying to cover these problems up? Why aren't we addressing them? Oh that's right!
Have we come to the fork in the road where pointing out the obvious sound facts and information must be suppressed in the name of political correctness? I hope not. But from where I sit, it appears we're heading for train wreck. In the end everyone looses when we miss the mark by not addressing these problems head on. Being colorblind does not mean we have to stupid.
