Politically incorrect, but true

Today, I was coming out of the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, and I saw a little girl whose face and hand had been damaged in some way (she was missing fingers, and had some sort of plastic mask on her face). I often struggle when interacting with people with visible physical disabilities - it seems like it's considered impolite to notice, let alone ask about, a disability; on the other hand, it's like ignoring the elephant in the room, and I feel like it just adds more shame about the whole thing if you have to pretend a disability doesn't exist. Anyway, all this reminded me of another part of our MLK Day conversation: the hindrance that political correctness is to actually dealing with the prejudice and misperceptions between people.

We were speaking of it in the context of race, how you can't have an open dialogue about race if you don't let people express their feelings honestly - especially those feelings that we consider taboo. It's the difference between Northern and Southern racism. In the South, many whites don't feel the need to pull punches about their opinion of blacks; but at the same time, they're used to living and working alongside blacks, and they don't freak out about a large number of black people being around. In the North, whites have a long history of supporting freedom and equality and speaking positively about blacks - so long as they don't have to live or go to school or socialize with blacks at all, and dear heaven, don't let there be too many of them. Honestly, I'd rather have the Southern version ... at least then I know where I stand!

Political correctness keeps us from recognizing reality for what it is - and sometimes it lets us ignore reality altogether to make up our own. I was also reminded of the hubbub a few years back about the then-president of Galludet, the deaf university in DC. One of the biggest issues people had with her (to be fair, among other more legitimate ones) was that she wasn't deaf, and so couldn't understand deaf - or rather, Deaf - culture. As I started reading more about the culture, I could see where she was running into problems ... as with one movement's contention that deafness is not a disability, but rather an alternative state of human physical operation.

Somewhere in here I think we've gotten lost. I don't believe that any moral or personal judgments should be made solely on the basis of someone's deafness, nor does deafness completely limit one's ability to participate in and contribute to society - but it is a dysfunction. Plain and simple, ears are supposed to hear, and if they don't something is wrong, not merely different. I hesitate to give a definition of normal for many aspects of human behavior and appearance - but not hearing is not normal function, and it should be OK to say so without having to ignore the obvious.

Interestingly, my study of Leviticus this month provides a pretty sharp contrast to the language of PC; the Lord didn't seem to have any problem talking about - and even excluding from some things - deformed animals and people. And while I continue to wrestle with my sense of an implied value judgment there, it's much easier to talk about and wrestle with when the language is plain and true - whether we like what's being said or not.