Cellophane is going out to dance.
Cellophane gets on the bus to go there. The bus is pretty crowded,
so Cellophane grabs one of the poles to stand in the bus. He looks over
at the seats and a man stands up and offers Cellophane his seat.
FREEZE.
That man saw me limp. He assumed
therefore that, as an able-bodied man, he was superior to me in strength.
I'm going out to DANCE (I am tonight, actually).
Or so I would think if I was a
politically-correct piece of dirt. The guy's being courteous and I'm
making plenty of assumptions about him myself.
It's easy to see demons everywhere.
It's easy to find prejudice when they're ain't any.
The problem is that being too sensitive,
too PC, actually reinforces the biases we’re trying to break. We’re trying to be individual but with PC you
and I categorise each other and put ourselves into little different boxes
because of our ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, and so on. We tell each
other not to have negative stereotypes of each other, but by boxing ourselves
into these little boxes and conforming to PC, we make ourselves afraid to ask
each other questions that can touch.
Hence, we stereotype even more and assume. When someone challenges our ideas, we can
scream any ad hominem attack we want to on them because they’re different from
us. We can find some “ism” to call them. And so, we isolate ourselves even more from
outside thought and go into the dark, murky depths.
Sometimes I imagine there’s a wicked madman in a tall tower
laughing insanely while he’s playing with those boxes.
Now, I'm on the bus. The guy
offering me his seat looks like he's a thug. However, we strike up a deep
conversation. My assumptions about him are destroyed. I misjudged
him and it turns out he misjudged me.
But the only reason I know I misjudged him
is because we weren't afraid to ask sensitive questions. We did not categorise each other automatically
and use those categories. He did not
think “Cripple… so avoid asking him about it.”
I did not think “Thug… so avoid asking about it.” We walked out of the kingdom of PC talking to
each other. And so we got to know each
other as individuals… which is far more important than race, class, gender,
sexual preference, and so on.
I’m as guilty as any. But I
always try to remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s words, “I have a dream that my
four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Dr. Martin Luther King had that dream. We are busy destroying it with PC.
