By Comrade Z
Welcome back, folks. Hope you had a great summer. And to all you freshmen out there: relax; you may be a little homesick the first few weeks, but by Thanksgiving you will realize that Austin really IS the center of the Universe. You studied hard enough in high school to avoid that vo-tech institute in College Station and made your way into a real university. Congratulations!
As you old timers know, college is not all hard work: after partying, joining clubs, and meeting members of the opposite sex, you still probably have a little time to kick back and attend classes. Therefore you may actually come into contact with professors. While generally a harmless lot, professors can sometimes interfere with your college experience, not to mention your education.The most dangerous type we know of is the sort who think that teaching you some English or History or Government isn’t enough; they decide to go beyond the call of duty and try to fix your life as an added benefit. The sad fact is that some of them, not a majority, but some, believe that all you people were raised in a backward, evil society, and that it is their job to cure you of all the false ideas and values that have been taught to you by your parents, ministers, teachers, and friends. This type of prof is known as politically correct, or PC, for short.
PC profs tend to cluster in the Liberal Arts, but you will meet a lot of terrific profs there, so don’t get us wrong. Basically, you will know you have a PC prof when you go into a class like English literature and all the professor talks about is Marxism, feminism, sexism, racism, homophobia, how bad we were in Vietnam, how evil the ’80 were and so forth. In a few cases, these folks don’t seem to really be English professors; they seem more like full-time social activists who have day jobs teaching school.
At any rate, you might wonder what makes the PC crowd tick. Such a question is interesting not only to the psychologically inclined, but also to anybody trying to make sense of contemporary American society. Regrettably, quite a few highly placed people in media and politics share elements of the PC world view being promoted by the type of professor (or TA, or activist, writer, etc.) we are talking about. So to clue you in a bit, we have, after months of diligent research and years of observation, developed the following guide.
PC is a complex ball of wax, but we trust we’ve gotten the basics down pretty well. If you know nothing about PC, we genuinely believe you may count yourself as a competent amateur once you have worked your way though what follows. Hold on to your hats, and leave common sense at the door. You’re about to enter the world of Hillary Clinton.
Sensitivity—The politically correct term for political correctness.
Insensitive—The condition of refusing, or failing, to be PC; e.g., this article I’m writing.
Classism—The first and most famous of the many evil “isms.†It refers to the oppression of poor people by wealthy people. Class oppression these days usually means being against Democratic tax increases and the welfare state. If you are a college student trying to make something of yourself someday, you are probably an aspiring “classist†yourself.
Diversity—Originally meant a healthy exposure to people with different backgrounds. But to the PC crowd, it means quotas for minorities and women.
Multiculturalism—Two things: 1) quotas and 2) the projection of left-wing politics onto unsuspecting Third World societies and American ethnic minorities. To be considered truly multicultural, it isn’t enough to be a minority or woman, you have to have the correct politics to go along with it.
- For example, Cubans in Cuba who are still trying to prop up Fidel’s Utopian revolution ARE multicultural, but Cubans in Miami, who overwhelmingly feel that Elian Gonzalez would be better off living in the U.S.A., are not multicultural.
- Studying the political writings of the North Vietnamese Communists would be an exercise in multiculturalism; studying the biographies of Vietnamese boat people who escaped and founded a successful new life in America would not be multicultural.
- Reading the books of Angela Davis, a black professor who is a commie radical feminist, is multicultural; reading the books of Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell, two black professors who are not communists and who think affirmative action is a bad social policy, is not multicultural.
DWEMs (Dead, White, European Males)—White guys are the PC movement’s equivalent of Satan. The PC crowd especially likes to go after fellows like Aristotle, Plato and Jefferson, who supposedly have managed to somehow become indirectly responsible for supporting all the racism, sexism, and oppression in the known world. Unfortunately, not all “people of color†realize this. For instance, when thousands of Chinese students died at Tiananmen Square in 1989 demanding democracy and freedom, they were quoting Thomas Jefferson and parading a model of the Statue of Liberty. The PC crowd thinks they should have been busy studying the writings of Marx and Lenin. (Marx and Lenin were white guys, too, but that’s beside the point.)
Hegemony—This is part of a political theory based on the writings of an obscure Italian Marxist named Antonio Gramsci. It is based on the assumption (seldom stated as it is here) that average citizens are too stupid to know what’s for their own good, and that they will unthinkingly accept whatever they read or hear in the news. Thus, the people who control the news and other modes of cultural expression control the minds of the “masses†- the poor, the working class, minorities, and women - and thereby prevent them from starting a Revolution and destroying capitalism.
False Consciousness—A concept associated with the Marxist idea of “class consciousness,†or being true to your social class. It is the mental condition to which oppressed poor people, women and minorities fall victim whenever they are duped by the hegemony imposed by the DWEMs and start to think that American society isn’t such a bad thing after all. Essentially, false consciousness means being poor and not being a socialist or communist, being a woman and not being a radical feminist, or being a minority and not hating white people.
Rage—The most frequently expressed emotional condition experienced by politically correct people. Often heard as, “I am OUTRAGED by your . . . blah, blah, blah!!!â€
Womyn—The politically correct way to spell “women.†It takes the “men†out of the picture.
People of Color—The politically correct term for ethnic minorities.
Consciousness Raising—The transformation of politically incorrect women and minorities into politically correct “womyn†and “people of color.†Look in Webster’s under “brainwashing.â€
Eurocentrism—The belief that European-inspired ideas, fashions, culture and values are in many instances superior to those of other cultures. Naturally Europeans are Eurocentric, as well as are most Americans, Canadians, Australians, more and more Japanese, Indonesians, Chinese, citizens of former communist countries and just about anyone else who has come under the spell of that queer notion that Western liberal democracy has resulted in more freedom and more wealth for more people than any other social movement in the history of the world.
Deconstruction—A fashionable academic philosophy imported from France (hmmm, sounds kinda Eurocentric). The main idea seems to be that, since life is absurd, philosophy and literature professors should be absurd also. Deconstruction is very PC, because if everything is absurd or meaningless, then none of the DWEMs’ writings (Magna Charta, Declaration of Independence, etc.) makes any sense. If enough people will start to believe this, then the ideas of the Eurocentric DWEMs will no longer have any authority in the minds of oppressed womyn and people of color who are now controlled by the white male hegemony. Then the consciousness of the people will become raised to the level that they will become enraged enough to start the Revolution, and then there will be no more classism or oppression and everybody will be sensitive to diversity and multiculturalism, and then things will be really happy and neat.
Like it is in Cuba.
Enjoy the semester, and always remember: you’re not crazy, they are!
A Quick Primer on Political Correctness
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