Why Ben Carson is Incorrect about being PC

"Speak out for those who cannot speak."—Proverbs 31:8

Ever since Ben Carson spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast with President Obama present, February 7, 2013, it has felt like open season for columnists to turn their frustrations and rage towards politically correct language and all things liberal: climate change, affirmative action, diversity, etc... 

Victor Davis Hanson, for example, is one of the more recent critics.  Last week, Hanson's editorial, "When Racial Preferences Become Payback" argued that the politically correct language game that now speaks of "climate change," once upon a time "global warming," points to a problem in liberal agenda items.  That is, they are making it  impossible for true diversity to thrive.  In his view, political correctness is so (purposefully?) ambiguous that it hides contradictions.  When he turned his focus to political correct language concerning people groups, he concluded, "It is well past time to move on and to see people as just people."

I live for the day when people are seen just as people.  The problem here is that Hanson assumes that because President Obama, and other high profile racial minorities, have achieved notable places in US society then racial discrimination against minorities is a thing of the past.  Of course, he's right that these individuals can no longer be seen as tokens given the number of successful minorities in plain view.

But it is a popular fallacy, and a fallacy only, that minority status is determined by population size.  In truth, minority status has everything to do with power and almost nothing to do with population size. And he's just wrong when he implies that class never factors into preferences.  Not only does class factor into preferences, higher income people often receive preferential treatment, if not for the mere fact that, by definition, they have more access to resources.  And contrary to the opinion of some who cry out against so-called "reverse-racism" most special programs exist for impoverished people on all sides of the color line rather than for those singled out solely for their racial identity. 

Still, in a nation that disproportionately criminalizes African Americans—as Michelle Alexander argues in The New Jim Crow—, a nation that can indefinitely incarcerate people on suspicion of illegal immigration (See Arizona), and where police can shoot unarmed minorities and keep the media away (See Flatbush protest), the issue of of diversity training, or better-yet "cultural competency," is very important. And even more, we must continue to press for laws that insure civil rights for minorities. In the 2012  national and local elections many states tried to make it more difficult for minority districts to exercise their voting rights (even right here in my own city of Harrisonburg, VA).  

We need legal protections for all people because the worst discrimination is systemic and institutional. Laws can't stop people from disliking minorities, but laws can protect the less powerful from an even greater deterioration of their quality of life.  

If liberals are ambiguous, then it's even truer that comments like Hanson's hang their arguments on tenuous connections.  Attacking the language of climate crisis, climate change, or global warming has almost nothing to do with racial preferences, except that people like Hanson try to make some connection between political correct language and a hypothesized liberal conspiracy to hide a destructive agenda.  Language is only a game when it doesn't describe a reality but obscures it.  There are legitimate problems that need helpful language to describe them, that's true of systemic/institutional racism and our destruction of the environment. Ultimately language has less to do with political correctness than with the need to search for language that will lead us to better solutions to the problems we face.