In a (futile) pre-Christmas effort to rein in book spending, I had borrowed Jeff Sparrow's latest book from the library but it wasn't long before I realised that I wanted my own copy. Trigger Warnings, Political Correctness and the Rise of the Right isn't a book to scamper through and return within three weeks. It's a 'chapter-a-day sort of book, allowing time for thinking in between.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked if told by people not in the profession that teachers aren't allowed to celebrate Christmas any more. This anti-PC furphy went so far that the education department in Victoria had to put out a circular reminding us what had always been true: Christmas traditions are part of Australian culture. While in government schools which have been secular since 1870 when education became free and compulsory, teachers can't infuse the Christmas story with religiosity, they can certainly tell the Christmas story, decorate classrooms, sing Christmas songs, and of course have the students make presents and cards. Clearly, in a multicultural society like ours, it would be crass for any teacher to ignore other cultural festivals such as Diwali, Eid, and the Chinese and Jewish New Year celebrations &c. Likewise at Christmas my students were always free to make whatever kind of cards they liked. For me, the issue always was about finding a way for the activities to have some educational value. So we would study Christmas and other celebrations around the world (i.e. geography), and when I had Year 5 & 6 classes and they'd done that to death, we did Holiday Safety, at the beach etc. That wasn't being PC, it was to teach something useful at the end of the school year, when the older students were usually bored and restless.
The first chapter of Sparrow's book is about how this term political correctness a.k.a. PC arose. He reminds me that...
... right-wingers portray PC as an Orwellian scheme to end freedom of speech, a deliberate strategy to impose a progressive orthodoxy. In reality, radicals coined the term as a joke. The phrase first emerged within the American New Left as an ironic homage to Stalinist rhetoric, adopted by progressives to mock censorious comrades and to chaff the overly earnest. In Australia and Britain, the preferred term was 'ideologically sound' but the gag worked the same way. (p.12)
Yes, by the time PC had trickled down to usage by ordinary people like us, we used it to poke fun at our own lame efforts to Do The Right Thing. Carnivores at the BBQ teased the vegetarians about ideologically sound 'hayburgers' and The Ex would ask if his tie was ideologically sound before setting off to work in the morning. We still use it: asking friends if they would like some ideologically sound excess vegies from the vegie patch. So it's fascinating to read how in America, what was originally a satire on totalitarianism became, for the right, a signifier of totalitarianism. Key players in this transformation were Ronald Reagan, the Australian political commentator Nick Adams, the classicist Allan Bloom and NY Times reporter Richard Bernstein who wrote an article called The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct. (It's paywalled, but you're allowed one free visit each month, though I myself wouldn't waste it on this article).
Chapter Two traces the history of 20th century activism in the great social movements of our time: feminism, the gay and lesbian rights movements, and the struggle against racism. While it wasn't a neat progression, Sparrow characterises the activists of the 1950s and early 60s as 'palliationist', that is, middle-class, speaking on behalf of others, non-confrontationist, and 'respectable'. By contrast, 'direct politics', in the late 60s and 70s, had a focus on mass action, on grassroots mobilisation, on participation and self-organisation by workers, students and the oppressed. Crucially, whereas palliationist politics distinguished between interests, direct politics drew connections between issues so that counterculture, black, women's, student and anti-war movements were entwined and used the same (sometimes militant) tactics. But by the mid 70s, radicalism had moved on to pragmatics, and a once-widespread commitment to revolutionary change had given way to 'the practical pursuit of reforms', with many former firebrands becoming what [Todd Gitlin] called 'crisp professional lobbyists' or devoted to winning local office. This third shift into professional settings is termed 'delegated politics', (and in Australia, you can see it in feminist Anne Summer's career as a bureaucrat in the Hawke government's Office for the Status of Women. See also my review of Damned Whores and God's Police.) It is this shift into delegated politics that makes it easier for conservatives to frame action to protect minorities as a bureaucratic measure imposed by an unrepresentative minority. To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/14/trigger-warnings-political-correctness-and-t... ( )