What's wrong/right with being PC

[Craig Clark]

Henry M wrote:
 
> I'm glad that the first days of Women's Studies courses were so, 
> shall we say, bipartisan. But am I the only one on the list who has 
> been burnt repeatedly by comparatively less thoughtful, knee-jerk 
> partisans? Am I the only one that has found the party-line of many 
> movements to be an open declaration of war? 
 
> Why is generalization towards PCism bad, towards feminists 
> (you may not believe this, but I am a feminist/humanist) and women bad, 
> but "all men are oppressor/rapists" OK? 

> I know that you don't espouse these views, but can you honestly tell me 
> that you haven't seen them in mainstream "feminist" literature and 
> heard them vented by upset women and the pc men who feel their pain?

What Henry is talking about resonates unhappily with what is 
happening in South Africa at the moment. Here's a pleasant anecdote.
Our Minister of Health, Dr Nkosazana Zuma, spent 14.27 million 
Rand of tax-payers' money on an AIDS awareness stage musical written
by someone who admits to not having actually done any research into 
AIDS/HIV positivity until two weeks before the show opens. The show 
itself contains many factual inaccuracies, including the statement 
that a person who contracts the HIV virus will *always* develop AIDS, 
and the statement that death from AIDS follows within a few weeks of 
infection by the HIV virus.
 
Dr Zuma also lied to parliament, telling the elected representatives of 
the South African people that this money was actually donated by the
European Union for this express purpose when in fact the EU had already 
sent her a telegram asking for their money back. 

Mike Ellis, Health spokesperson for the liberal, centrist Democratic 
Party, suggested that Dr Zuma was irresponsible and not trustworthy, 
and called for her resignation. Immediately there were howls from the 
government: "Ellis is a racist! The REAL reason he wants Zuma to 
resign is that she is black, and he is white, and he can't bear to 
think that a black person could be a member of the cabinet!"    

How does this link to PC? Well, there's an amazing piece of PC logic 
that, post facto, has been articulated in all these cases (the 
Ellis-Zuma case is only one of several). It goes like this:

(1) Ellis is a member of an historically-privileged group. Even 
though he has an impressive record as an opponent of apartheid from 
within the anti-apartheid Democratic Party, he has therefore been 
subtly socialised into believing that black South Africans are 
inferior. Therefore, although he thinks there is no racial dimension 
to his opposition to Zuma, he is wrong. He may think that he is 
calling for accountable and prudent government, but at a deep 
unconscious level, he is calling for white minority rule.

(2) It is not racist to explain Ellis's actions in terms of race. 
Racism refers ONLY to the power relation "White = Superior /
Black = Inferior". It is therefore impossible for black people to be 
racist. When the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstands Beweging (Afrikaner 
Resistance Movement) called for whites to kill blacks, this is racist, 
but when the Pan Africanist Congress called for blacks to kill 
whites, this was not racist.

I believe these arguments are total bullshit, and I believe that they 
are used by the new elite in South Africa to set themselves above 
criticism. Incidentally, when a black South African criticises the 
ANC government, it is because they are stooges of the racists. One of 
the country's most articuulate and intelligent journalists, Kaiser 
Nyatsambuza, was accused rather subtly of being a supporter of the 
National Party  (the party that imposed apartheid in the first place) 
about a week ago, for daring to suggest that the cult of personality 
surrounding Nelson Mandela was detrimental to the development of 
democracy.

These are extreme cases of what I think Henry and many other critics 
of PC are saying: that the desire to build a genuinely democratic 
society can ultimately be twisted to non-democratic ends. We've read 
(or are reading) _Gravity's Rainbow_, so this shouldn't surprise us 
- this is what happened with the Counterforce after all. Not all 
opponents of PC are neanderthal gay-bashing males who think that 
blacks are savages and that women should shut up and get on with the 
business of having our children. Many of us genuinely do stand for 
democracy, tolerance and diversity, but we don't like the way that PC 
is utilised by those not quite so committed to these ideals.

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"