[WillBlake] How do you distinguish Good PC from Bad PC? [Arlo] I don't know if there is a prescriptive rubric here, I just take it context by context, case by case, situation by situation.
Obviously, I think the PC efforts to promote tolerance and sensitivity towards the mentally-handicapped have been Good. I see evidence, personally, that the respect they receive has improved greatly since my teenage years. And, obviously, I think the PC efforts to attack Miss California and The Dixie Chicks are Bad, as I do the travel ban Britain placed on Michael Savage. I am of two minds regarding affirmative action. I know you may want to just interpret that as "he supports it", but when I back up and look at the historical context, I don't see evidence the situation for blacks was improving on its own. I don't know what an alternative is. I said this same thing regarding your Boston fireman example. For me, the larger context is in understanding WHY the results were what they were. Do they mesh with national trends? And then from there I'd ask, once we understand WHY, maybe we can come up with a solution. If its a matter of training and access to education, we can improve that. If its that blacks and hispanics are genetically inferior firefighters, then we can sleep easy knowing the all-white force is there exclusively by the virtue of merit. And same with the Court. When you answer why women in modern times are still under-represented, we can think about solutions to that. If its not, as you claim, discrimination, then what is it? But this has, again, been my point since the beginning. We can discuss a particular context (Savage, The Chicks, the mentally-handicapped) and talk about whether than context is Good or Bad. We might disagree, but we can actually have a substantive conversation over that. So again, I don't know of any prescriptive rubrics I personally use. I take it context by context. And that's why I find (as I said since day one) condemnation of "PC" to be empty, a strawman. It lacks context entirely. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
