New at Reason

David Weigel | May 26, 2006

David Link wonders why California's schools are enforcing political correctness for literary gays.

Comments

|5.27.06 @ 4:16AM|#

A good example of this type of thinking in schools is Diane Ravitch's The Language Police. It demostrates the extremes of political correctness pretty well.

|5.27.06 @ 4:39AM|#

This doesn't strike me as a very good example of political correctness in action. High school history and social studies classes tend, as a rule, to present fairly simplistic and straightforward (pardon the inverse pun) picture of historical figures. One comes away with the general impressions "Hitler, Stalin -- bad; Roosevelt (FD and Teddy) -- good; slavery, communism -- bad; abolitionism, capitalism -- good." The fact that neither of the Roosevelts were saints doesn't really pertain in the context of learning about their achievements. Is this political correctness in action? I don't think so. So why is it suddenly PC when applied to Harvey Milk?

You could make an argument that high school social studies should be more nuanced than it is all around. But that doesn't seem to be what David Link is arguing.

|5.27.06 @ 7:57AM|#

This doesn't strike me as a very good example of political correctness in action.
Perhaps not, but the use of "gay" for "homosexual" IS a good example; dictionary(.com)'s Usage Note for "gay" is a convoluted hoot since it follows "Language Police" standards.

|5.27.06 @ 11:47AM|#

Yes, Michael M, I think you have it. Unless Link's vision of a nuanced curriculum for high school social studies is one that incudes the details demonstrating that Harry Hay and Morris Kight "could be a couple of very pissy queens." Let's teach Hay's flaws as well as his virtues, Link insists, and let's be particularly attentive to flaws that re-inforce negative stereotypes about gay men.

|5.27.06 @ 12:09PM|#

Whenever reading an article from the right, left, in between or outsiders (etc...) I try to keep an open mind.

But I especially look for instances that support the contention in the article. For instance, if you are CSM doing an article about the groundswell of suits aimed at NSA/Telecommunications "info" sharing, I want an example. (for instance, more than one or two lawsuits).

Here his only example of what is wrong with the CA law is that it doesn't present "Harry Hay and Morris Kight" as "a couple of very pissy queens".

So he puts me in a funny position. I don't like mandatory respect laws. But frankly, I really wouldn't respect a history book that referred to anyone as "a pissy queen". It sounds like his main objection is that that one isn't allowed to put emotive, personal analysis into history books.

Was that his point? I doubt it.

I'll tell you this though. I am enjoying the populist non-arguement/screedization that Reason it turning to.

In no time at all, you guys should be right up there with the NYT as far as contentless articles go. Congrats.

|5.27.06 @ 12:35PM|#

"adverse" reflections on individuals because of race, gender, or any other group identity

goes to the motivation
because of race, etc implies that the adverse reflection is based on a bias toward the group not the individual, so this wording would not prevent negative statements based on individual shortcomings

|5.27.06 @ 1:11PM|#

Just another example of how the left helps to perpetuate the very same sterotypes they (we all) are tring to get rid of. In acknowledging the sterotype and attempting to forcibly dissipate it our discerning children are just encouraged to take the blank canvass of their minds and create a partition for straight white people, another for gays, another for minorities and so on. Perhaps in the next generation we will be ready to move on...

|5.27.06 @ 1:25PM|#

Johnny,

"I'll tell you this though. I am enjoying the populist non-arguement/screedization that Reason it turning to.

In no time at all, you guys should be right up there with the NYT as far as contentless articles go. Congrats."

This was an editorial not an article. Most of the content is in the print magazine and is doled out to us who can't afford a subscription in small quantities. Editorials, of course, as I'm sure you know, present someone's opinion on a matter and are not to be taken as definitively as articles.

|5.27.06 @ 1:48PM|#

This article really rubbed me the wrong way (so to speak). The writer says, "Certainly, textbook authors should not go out of their way to find flaws." - yet (as Johnny pointed out) the worst he can come up with for two gay men we've never heard of is that they were "pissy queens"? How awful! Then he raises the example of Harvey Milk, who was murdered along with Mayor Moscone for helping pass a gay rights bill. It seems doubtful that any flaws on Milk's part played any role in this, so I'm thinking that one would certainly need to go out of one's way to look for them. Unlike the long-whitewashed flaws of major figures like Columbus - which most definitely had a direct bearing on their achievements. A law which prohibits language that "reflects adversely" on minorities IS silly - unforntunately this writer didn't do a very good job demonstrating it.

the use of "gay" for "homosexual" IS a good example [of political correctness in action]

Dude, you lost that battle about 30 years ago. The usage note in question is from the American Heritage dictionary - whose usage panel is composed of a large number of notables, both lefties and right-wingers. So... if you prefer the good-old days before homosexuals took our perfectly good word "gay" for themselves... just stick with The Washington Times.

Tim Cavanaugh|5.27.06 @ 5:38PM|#

Perhaps not, but the use of "gay" for "homosexual" IS a good example

How many generations are we past this "when I was a boy, 'gay' meant 'happy'" wheeze? Welcome to 2006, Mr. Van Winkle.

|5.27.06 @ 5:41PM|#

eric,

Editorials without even reasonable anecdotes are screeds. Right, Left or Libertarian.

While I think that GB for example is a pitiful example of a man who has never succeede in anything for himself and rose to his present heights solely becuase his old man was important, who's every business endeavor would have failed without said help, I would oppose with all my heart anyone who attempted to put such ridiculous analysis into a 1-12 text book.

However the writer of this "editorial" seems to think that would make a good history entry, rather than my personal screed.

Not buyin' it. This article is a screed. Plain and simple. More worthy of a hit piece written for the Heritage Foundation.

|5.28.06 @ 1:32AM|#

Unless this law applies to private schools, I don't see the problem. If you send your kid to public school, you do so knowing that the primary purpose is for political indoctrination. If you didn't want them to get a whitewash, propogandistic version of history, you wouldn't send them to public schools.

While I would not want any child of mine to be politically indoctrinated... if I was one of the parents who did want my children indoctrinated an therefore sent them to public schools - I could think of a lot worse forms of indoctrination than having respect for minorities and gay people. I find the glossing over of FDRs faults (like tossing 20,000 Japanese Americans in Gulags) to be a lot more disturbing than if some gay guy was a "prissy queen".

|5.28.06 @ 7:31PM|#

You know what would have made this piece stronger?

And example of history being whitewashed in the classroom in the way the author asserts it is under this law.

Some lecture notes with a glaring omission. A text book rejected for something innocuous and true. A touched up photograph being printed somewhere.

Come on, throw me a frickin bone here. I'm being asked, once again, to believe that there's a horrible PC bogeyman running around, without even the thinnest shred of evidence, on a website whose contributers and readers accept without question that "the PC Police" are out there ruining lives.

|5.29.06 @ 9:24AM|#

joe, I think the more appropriate thing to ask for, considering the subject, is for someone to throw you a frickin boner.

Larry A|5.29.06 @ 10:14AM|#

What bothers me most about the PC anti-discrimination laws is that they only proscribe discrimination against a laundry list of recognized minorities.

I.e. textbooks can't call Hay and Kight "prissy queens" but they are obligated to expose the flaws of Washington and Jefferson.

|5.29.06 @ 10:25AM|#

Objection, assuming facts not in evidence.

Larry A|5.29.06 @ 11:33AM|#

Facts not in evidence?

Really?

Why is it necessary to add another special category, homosexuals, to the law if it already protects everyone evenly?

|5.29.06 @ 12:08PM|#

The "fact" not in evidence, Larry A, is that the existing laws, and the new law, actually forbid teachers from discussing the less savory details of minority historical figures.

It's been asserted, but as a number of us have noted, no one has presented even a single case of such a thing happening.

The law forbids "adverse depictions" of someone "because of" the racial, gender, ethnic, etc. group they belong to. The "fact" that it is intended, or is being used, to forbid teaching anything bad about "a laundry list of recognized minorities" is wholly unsupported by evidence.

And, BTW, the logic of your argument would compel those who believe it to accept that the negative facts being taught about Washington and Jefferson - their ownership of slaves - is part of their racial, ethnic, and gender identity. As a Pasty-American male, I'm offended by your insensitive stereotyping.

|5.29.06 @ 5:57PM|#

Harvey Milk.

A second tier politician in a third tier city. Why should he be in history books, other than that he got shot? When history books have approving vignettes of Mimi diPietro, then maybe it's time to add the Harvey Milks of this world.

|5.29.06 @ 7:13PM|#

SY,

What's the correlation between a mobster mayor and the first openly gay man elected to office in the U.S.?

|5.29.06 @ 9:22PM|#

Who was a mobster mayor? Mimi was never a mayor, just a city councilman in a medium size city. He happened to be a lot more interesting than Milk (IMO), but that doesn't make him worthy of mention in a general history course.

And who was the first elected man who openly averred that he rather enjoyed munching carpet? And what does that have to do with what he does or doesn't do that's worthy of historical note? The sort of gratuitous insertion (rim shot) of Milk into grade school courses makes no sense.

I remember when I was a kid in school; because there were a lot of Jews in the history class, it was deemed very important to note and discuss the great Revolutionary contributions of some guy named Hymie, who apparently bankrolled a bunch of stuff and got a nice thank-you letter from George Washington. Really wince-inducing. I can't even remember the guy's name, but am still pissed off that this took an hour away from Gouverneur Morris.

|5.29.06 @ 9:31PM|#

Wisdom from Mimi:

"The one good thing about Baltimore is we ain't got no volcanoes here."

"The problems with the courts is that we got too much flea bargaining."

|5.30.06 @ 1:46AM|#

SY,

Sorry, my mistake, I was confusing him with the mayor at the time, Tom "Big Tommy" D'Alesandro.

Anyway, I think the reason Milk should be pointed out is that for most of human history, being meant that you couldn't hold hands with the person you loved in public because your life would be destroyed (often literally).

The level of bigotry directed at homosexuals throughout history has been particularly intense, because even groups who were historically oppressed, were overwhelmingly bigoted against homosexuals.

It's not about what Milk accomplished so much as it is about a turning point in American society where the level of bigotry was insufficient to prevent him from being accepted into a position of power. Barney Frank should also be noted. It was another, and even more significant turning point in the level of bigotry in America because he wasn't elected by an overwhelmingly gay population.

Being openly homosexual isn't about letting the world know which gender you prefer to fuck, it's about being who you are without fear of attack. It's about being able to put up a picture at work of the person you're in love with without fear of being fired (not that I think a private employer, even a bigoted one, shouldn't be able to hire or fire whomever he wants) or hold hands with that person in public without fear of violence.

|5.30.06 @ 1:49AM|#

...for most of human history, being a homosexual meant...

|5.30.06 @ 5:39AM|#

What is that, the copy for some kind of weird greeting card?

|5.30.06 @ 6:39AM|#

Being openly homosexual isn't about letting the world know which gender you prefer to fuck

Au contraire, that's exactly what it is.

|5.30.06 @ 7:21AM|#

And Big Tommy's influence lives yet today in the form of Nancy Pelosi. Though I'm not sure what gender she likes to fuck, nor do I want to think about it.

|5.30.06 @ 9:00AM|#

SY has a point, given that being openly heterosexual means that many of my coworkers apparently feel the need to let the world know which gender they like to fuck, on a daily basis and in great detail.

|5.30.06 @ 9:15AM|#

May I assume that your co-workers are not the objects of K-12 historical study?

|5.30.06 @ 9:20AM|#

Sounds like a GREAT reason for getting the government out of the school business!

|5.30.06 @ 9:30AM|#

Mike, if I were gay, I'd kiss you!

|5.30.06 @ 9:39AM|#

SY,

Being gay isn't just about who you have sex with. It's about who you love, and who you form a family with.

If you can't stop thinking about ass fucking when you see two men playing with their kids in a park, that's something for you to work out.

|5.30.06 @ 12:19PM|#

joe, where in the world do you read anything like that in what I've written? Projection?

My point remains, that sort of stuff is generally irrelevant to who is or isn't important historically. And making someone historically important as a token nod to a political pressure group is condescending and clumsy.

The real answer is to let parents pick schools with the sort of curriculum they find appropriate. But as long as public schools are still frittering away my money, I want them to spend zero time on Hymie Whatsisname and Harvey Milk, and more time on James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Maybe slip some Friedman in when nobody's looking...

|5.30.06 @ 1:32PM|#

SY,

You and I agree in terms of public schools and parental choice, but you're being absolutely evasive when it comes to homosexuality.

Like I said, Harvey Milk and Barney Frank should be in history books not because of what they did, but because their elections mark an important point in society in regards to bigotry.

You said that being openly homosexual is about letting the world know which gender you like to fuck. (I think that's where Joe got the idea that if you see two men together, you must be thinking of them fucking, which logically follows if you really believe that not being afraid to show your affection for someone of the same gender must be an announcement of some kind, instead of mere casual, comfortable behavior.)

A question you shouldn't avoid: if you see a picture in a co-workers office of him and his wife or girlfriend arm in arm (or maybe you've got a picture up yourself?), do you actually think he's merely trying to tell everyone at work, "I like to fuck women. This is woman I go home to and fuck."

If you see a man and a woman walking in the park hand in hand, do you think they're trying to tell the world that they like to fuck people of the opposite gender?

Even though there are homosexuals in most every city in America you won't find two men holding hands in the park in most of those cities because there's not a small chance they'll be physically attacked for it. This is partly because when some people see two men holding hands, for some reason, all they can see is them fucking each other.

|5.30.06 @ 2:59PM|#

If you see a man and a woman walking in the park hand in hand, do you think they're trying to tell the world that they like to fuck people of the opposite gender?

Yes, though generally a more specific thing of, "I like to fuck this particular person." Who knows, maybe they're bi, maybe they're gay and one's a TV, could be anything. Unimportant and uninteresting to me. And totally unimportant to history. Abe Lincoln's actions and decisions about the secession and war are important. Whether or not he was a part-time pole-smoker isn't.

See, the premise that La Sheila put forth is fundamentally a flawed one- that somehow we're ignoring the contributions of homosexuals in our history courses and texts. And of course we need a law to put them in there in a certain proportion, whether they were important to the flow of history or not.

No one is keeping Alan Turing out of math texts. It's just that information theory is more pertinent than ass-fucking in that context. Similarly, when I win my Nobel in chemistry, I will not see the relevance of me being a Jew, a libertarian, or an avid carpet-muncher, the question will be my profound insights into molecular organization.

|5.30.06 @ 3:24PM|#

Abe Lincoln's actions and decisions about the secession and war are important. Whether or not he was a part-time pole-smoker isn't.

I absolutely agree. What I'm saying is that history is more than the study of individuals. It's also a study of society, its progress and its shortcomings. When a member of an oppressed group achieves enough social acceptance to be elected to office, that's historical and should be noted. It shouldn't necessarily be "on the test" but an American history class that didn't discuss the evolution of prejudice and bigotry in American society would be incomplete.

Now, you still haven't explained why you think that people who hold hands are making an announcement as opposed to just enjoying the closeness of someone they care for. It seems, on the face of it, to be a baseless assertion. Gay Pride parades are, without a doubt, announcements. Walking in the park holding hands? That just feels nice.

|5.30.06 @ 3:40PM|#

It's not that I'm hung up on the announcement thing, I'm just not a PDA kinda guy. It just creeps me out (gay or not, makes no diff to me, unless it's two hot babes in which case I start daydreaming). But to paraphrase the great Fran Liebowitz, going out in public is an invitation to be creeped out. It's still irrelevant to history.

Who was the first Jew elected to a city council of a third-rank population center? Who gives a flying fuck?

|5.30.06 @ 3:55PM|#

No, I understand (especially in re: hot babes). I'd say the first Jew elected to congress would be history, but I definitely see your point about Milk and the irrelevance of a city council seat.

|5.30.06 @ 4:28PM|#

but I definitely see your point about Milk and the irrelevance of a city council seat

milk was in fact NOT the first openly gay elected official - i think he was third. but there's the fact that he & the mayor were murdered by a resentful lunatic over a gay rights bill. that makes it historical in my opionion. plus, don't forget the twinkie defense.

|5.31.06 @ 12:29AM|#

Thanks, rhywun, I didn't know that.

...mmmm...twinkies...

rape stories|5.31.06 @ 1:12PM|#

Best of the text i read about a problem.