Political Correctness? Trumpery Run Amok
Dean Howe’s Monthly Blog – December 10, 2015
At CIBU we want to demonstrate tolerance toward all cultures, nations, religions, genders, life orientations, and perspectives/points of view. Open-mindedness, mutual understanding, listening, accepting – those are the kinds of ideals that we seek to bring to the education we offer.
Recently, of course, the world has heard much from Presidential candidate Donald Trump about his position on Muslims entering the United States as well as on related subjects. Some have accused Mr. Trump of being politically incorrect; others seem to value his positions. Let me suggest, looking beyond the Trump debacle to more generic issues, that we need to re-think “political correctness” and perhaps move beyond that moribund concept. What we need, I believe, is the far broader idea of “moral awareness.” Needless to say, “moral awareness” begs the question as to how one defines “moral” – Is it, for example, a relativistic or an absolutist concept? I would offer the following as my own personal definition, which may seem to draw from moral absolutism, and would hope that my CIBU colleagues might support me here: “Moral awareness is a heightened sensitivity to, and acceptance of, the rights and dignity of all people everywhere; it includes a deep commitment to going outside one’s own paradigm and “seeing” and understanding the paradigms of others, even while it also asks us to exercise informed critical thinking and enlightened emotional, social, and cultural intelligence.”
We don’t have to accept the myriad perspectives, beliefs, views, interpretations, values, and so forth put before us today in an almost circus-like panoply, but we should seek to understand them with an open mind and heart and to take a position on them that is founded on broad-based moral grounds, not simply on “political” grounds. What is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad? – those are the questions we should consider, not what are the taken-for-granted norms, the majoritarian opinions, the perspectives of “the crowd,.” The latest political sentiment.
As I have noted in earlier pieces, at CIBU we include moral/ethical considerations as central to our curricula. Let Trump have his say. Our students, we would hope, will hear him openly and then decide, on moral grounds that include consideration of “the rights and dignity of all people everywhere” and keen critical reasoning, whether his messages trump the other candidates or are mere trumpery.
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