c. 2003 Religion News Service
(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)
(UNDATED) In his 1991 book, “Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus,” Dinesh D’Souza decried the political correctness movement that he said was undermining liberal arts education on college campuses.
He argued the movement was being driven by newly tenured professors who, having been nurtured in the social and political foment of the 1960s, were now seeking to impose a postmodern world view on students through alternative curricula that opposed the traditional perspectives of Western civilization.
To the degree D’Souza’s assessment was correct _ and I think his point is well-taken _ the PC movement has had an effect that is more far-reaching than its progenitors ever envisioned.
To cite but one example, witness the state of affairs in the nation’s jails and prisons. Long recognized as behind-the-walls expressions of urban street life and culture, the nation’s jails and prisons reflect the same generational gaps in knowledge and values as are seen in the outside world.
Such cultural reference points as musical tastes, personal heroes, rites of passage and ethical standards are as reflective of the inmates’ age as they are of race, ethnicity and social class. Indeed, until a few years ago, one could discern a generation gap even in an addict’s drug of choice: inner-city baby boomers generally used heroin, while the members of Generation X smoked crack.
What this suggests is that notwithstanding the illiteracy that abounds in urban communities and, in particular, jails and prisons, a particularly virulent strain of postmodernism understood as a repudiation of tradition is infecting the social underclass. Curiously, this repudiation of traditional standards and values is reflected not only in conduct that might be expected _ rejection of conventional sources of authority _ but in unexpected behaviors, such as lack of familiarity with and often disregard for their own history.
That young blacks would display a laissez-faire attitude toward African- American history is particularly disturbing. For African-Americans of an earlier generation, black history was considered both a source of pride and a key to racial self-determination. How could we chart our future, we asked, if we did not fully understand our past? How could we combat negative stereotypes and media images if we failed to learn and embrace the accomplishments of our forebears?
It is a cruel irony that the political correctness movement that ushered in the postmodern age was itself the beneficiary of the civil rights movement. For once blacks won recognition as an oppressed minority, the door was open for other groups _ whether truly oppressed or not _ to attempt to do the same. Today, 30 years later, youths that will kill at the drop of a hat care little for the struggles of an earlier generation.
Little wonder that at a recent Martin Luther King Day luncheon, actor Ossie Davis, himself a veteran of the civil rights movement, bemoaned, nearly to the point of tears, the loss of King’s presence and vision.
And, he said, he saw no one on the horizon to continue King’s work.
DEA END ATCHISON
