The destructiveness of the race "card"

Sometimes, when seeking justice, a news conference, an elevated voice and questions relating to racial inequality are vital tools to get results. Using these tactics, the Sacramento branch of the NAACP was an indispensable public servant in the effort to shed more light on abuses at Sacramento's Main Jail. But sometimes justice requires discretion. Sometimes the best way to help people is to shield them from the lights instead of joining them on stage.

Those thoughts came to mind last week in the wake of a controversy at Goethe Middle School, where a science teacher and a 14-year-old boy were embroiled in an ugly he-said/he-said. It made national news: The student urinated in a Gatorade bottle in class, said he had to because the teacher wouldn't let him go to the bathroom. The teacher denied it. The boy was African American; the teacher was not.

The child's family approached the local NAACP, whose leaders were quick to publicly excoriate the teacher, asking that he be fired and have his credential taken away. And what was the outcome? Was justice secured? Were the best interests of a 14-year-old really served? We may never know. Last week, the district backed the teacher, cleared him of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the story petered out, the media moved on, but the damage was done. To the teacher, the student, the media, the reputation of the NAACP and the cause of racial equality -- which is more subtle and daunting than ever....

Which brings us back to Goethe Middle School and the notion of picking your battles and choosing your weapons of equality more carefully. It's critical because the stakes are so high. Because if you're going to focus that kind of attention on a complex issue, you have the obligation to be right. If you're not, you foster a sense of cynicism in people who would like to support you. You give the bigots a chance to deny anything is wrong. People stop listening and they need to listen.

Is this an indictment of the local NAACP? No way. Leaders such as Reggie Fair and Rory Kaufman seem sincere. But it's also clear that while there may be deeper issues needing attention at Goethe, a dispute between a teacher and student is a dubious way to attack them. Because we may never know what happened here. We may have nothing more than a student and teacher who simply didn't get along and whose interests would have been better served behind closed doors. Do you feel more enlightened by the coverage of this issue? I don't, and I don't know who to believe. The only emotion here is regret -- for the teacher, the student and for the enduring cause of equality.

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Department of Euphemism Abatement

Here is an idea I offer gratis and for nothing to all those socialistically-inclined politicians looking for novel ways to tax people. What I have in mind is a tax on the public utterance of politically correct euphemism. Why not? Great Britain used to tax windows, for heavens sake. Why not euphemism? Like the tax on tobacco, this tax would have the triple advantage that modern bureaucrats look for in their efforts to expropriate your property: it would 1. fill the government's coffers; 2. deprive people of more of their hard-earned dollars, thus increasing their dependence on the state; and 3. reinforce everyone's sense of self-righteousness--though in distinction to the tax on tobacco, a tax on politically correct euphemism would conduce only to one's practice of truthfulness, one's mental as distinct from one's physical well being.

I had this splendid idea when reading a story in today's Australian newspaper about French preparations for riots in case Nicholas Sarkozy should, as almost every poll predicts, win the French presidency. Let me put my cards on the table and say that I very much hope Sarkozy does win. He would be the first non-anti-American French president in my memory. He also, unlike his rivals, seems to have some appreciation for political and social reality. Would his victory spark riots? Maybe. Everyone knows that one of the most popular French recreations is striking. The French government contemplates raising tuition for college by 3 euros a semester: Outrage! Everyone strikes. A scheme is floated to allow people to work more than 35 hours per week: Incroyable! Everyone strikes. Someone suggests that something must be done to fix the welfare system before it completely implodes: Can you believe it?! Everyone strikes. Striking has been a national pastime in France for decades. A relatively new innovation, however, is the widespread tendency to riot, accompanied by car burning. Two years ago, readers will remember, riots, avec car burning, erupted in many parts of France after a couple of Muslim teenagers were accidentally electrocuted. Theodore Dalrymple, writing in The New Criterion, set the scene:

"Two young criminals, who with others were interrupted by the police while attempting to break into a warehouse, thought they were being chased by the police (whether they actually were being chased has yet to be established) and took refuge in an electricity transformer, the modern equivalent of medieval sanctuary. To gain access to the transformer, they had to climb over two walls replete with warnings of danger. There, they were electrocuted to death.

(Read the whole thing here--registration may be required.) Result: thousands upon thousands of toasted Renaults. But I digress. Here's what caught my eye in the Australian:

Fears of a repeat of the rioting that swept France two years ago intensified as the final opinion polls pointed to an overwhelming victory for Sarkozy. A crowd of up to 40,000 Sarkozy supporters was expected on the Champs Elys,es in central Paris to celebrate the result. Police believe that gangs of youths from the suburbs might confront them.

Sarkozy has promised a "fraternal" republic but said last week that he did not regret having described young delinquents as "scum" in 2005 in remarks widely believed to have ignited the rioting.

There are two phrases worthy of note. The first is "gangs of youths," by which, of course, the paper (perhaps quoting the French police) means gangs composed mostly of radical Muslim teenagers and young adults, aided and abetted by other radicalized elements. But "gangs of youths" is so much more pleasingly non-specific: it doesn't put the onus on any particular "youths"--that might be discriminatory--and it allows one to sound hard-headed and realistic ("We've got theses gangs of youths threatening us, Mabel!") while actually avoiding facing up to the realities of the situation altogether. Humphrey in Yes, Prime Minister couldn't have devised a more anodyne phrase.

The other phrase worth noting moves in the opposite direction on the spectrum of candor: I mean Sarkozy's description of the car-burning miscreants as "scum"-- impolitic, possibly, but definitely le mot juste. And this leads me to the second and final part of my proposal for the commonweal. Just as The Australian (and the French police, if they originated the phrase) should be taxed for describing Muslim thugs as "youths," so Mr. Sarkozy should be rewarded somehow for having the courage to call things by their right name. I admit that administering the system would be complex, but after all the French invented the word bureaucracy: I am sure that a new government Department of Euphemism Abatement would be able to rise to the challenge. And what a service for the rest of Europe--the rest of the Western world--they would perform by acting to curb euphemism while also encouraging candor!

Update: A savvy friend proposes this excellent addendum (the best, or at least most gratifying, sentence is the last):

Actually, we could take it a step further by borrowing a concept from the global warmers, who propose a cap and trade system for using carbon dioxide emissions. If you want to use a portion under your allotted cap, you can sell it to someone else. Under this regime, we could have a cap and trade system on politically correct utterances. The government could allocate a sum of such utterances, and CBS could sell some of its unused portion to Rush Limbaugh, etc, or even to Don Imus. Al Sharpton might even get an allocation either to use or to sell. There could be a commission appointed which decides who gets how much of what, and what constitutes a politically incorrect utterance. After a time, we might reverse it and do the same about pious pronouncements concerning equality so that the person who says that a cheese pizza is as good as Shakespeare would have to buy an allotment of such utterances from those who would rather die than say something so politically correct as that. Under such a regime, of course, colleges and universities would have to allocate a large share of their endowments to underwrite the writings and teachings of their faculty members.

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Biased EU court is pro-homosexual

Polish President Lech Kaczynski has been found guilty of violating the European Convention on Human Rights in a ruling released today by the European Court of Human Rights. Kaczynski was found to have violated the Convention for having banned a homosexual activist 'Gay Pride' demonstration in 2005 as the then-Mayor of Warsaw. A press release by the court noted that in the case known as Baczkowski and Others v. Poland (application no. 1543/06), the court ruled unanimously that there had been:

* a violation of Article 11 (freedom of association and assembly) of the European Convention on Human Rights;

* a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the Convention; and

* a violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination).

The case was launched by the homosexual activist group Foundation for Equality. The ruling was made by seven judges including Judge Lech Garlicki from Poland. Either party may appeal the ruling to another hearing of the full court of 17 judges.

The Court release noted that "it attached particular importance to pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness."

Pro-family observers however scoff at the Court's vision of broadmindedness since in the last few years, the court's rulings have demonstrated a hostile closedmindedness towards those holding traditional life and family values.

* In March of this year, the same court ordered Poland to compensate a mother who was denied abortion.

* The court also denied an application from two cohabiting sisters to receive tax benefits granted to homosexual couples

* In 2002, the court forced the UK to recognize a man who had had a sex change as a woman and to permit him to marry another man.

* Last year the court ruled states may deny parents the right to home school their children

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Government cannot be the parent

Restrict violence on television?

Television shows have gotten so violent and sexually oriented that the FCC recommends banishing some programming to the after-9 p.m. time slot. But what about the crime stories on the 6 p.m. local news? In an April 25 report, the Federal Communications Commission said exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behavior in children; at least, in the short term. The FCC suggested possibly restricting "excessively" violent TV content to hours when children aren't likely to be watching. The FCC also suggests that customers be able to "opt in" or be able to receive - and pay for - only that programming that they are comfortable bringing into their homes.

"We recognize that violent content is a protected form of speech under the First Amendment, but note that the government interests at stake, such as protecting children from excessively violent television programming, are similar to those which have been found to justify other content-based regulations,'' the commission said.

While various surveys, such as a 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation report, show a majority of parents say they are very concerned about the amount of sex and violence their children are exposed to on TV, free speech is a paramount concern and should not be sacrificed by telling programmers when they can and can't run certain shows.

Should newscasts showing violence taking place in the Iraq war not be shown until after prime time? Where will the line be drawn? "It's a difficult issue because the social studies on whether minors' exposure to violence has harmful effects are unsettled,'' said David Hudson, an attorney and scholar at the First Amendment Center in Nashville. "The federal courts have been unreceptive to extending obscenity-type regulations of sex to violence.''

In a 1975 report, the FCC told Congress that violence was unlike obscenity because of the totally different statutory framework involved. It said that, in the absence of any prohibitions on violence in programming, "industry self-regulation" was preferred. This should still hold true today. In its April 25 report, the FCC said that, in addition to time channeling, another possible means of protecting children from violent TV content is to strengthen blocking technology, particularly the "V-chip" system. "However, out of a total universe of 280 million sets in U.S. households, only about 119 million sets in use today, or less than half, are equipped with V-chips,'' the report said.

Surely, programmers cannot be blamed for that fact. In this matter, parents also must play a role in what their children watch. As FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate of Nashville said in her statement on the report: "We parents must take responsibility for the media that is viewed inside our homes, but also must be active in changing the media landscape outside our homes. "I encourage all parents to let your local TV station know when something you find inappropriate is aired, and be sure to notify your representative in Congress. If enough parents speak out, perhaps ... we will actually see an increase in the amount of family-friendly, uplifting and nonviolent programming being produced.'' The issue needs a family-oriented - and family-initiated - approach. The matter should be driven by decisions in the home, not in the highest seats of government.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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