I don’t know what to think about the current moment in American politics anymore. All bets are off. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and can’t grasp the generational differences anymore. Maybe it’s because I spend much of my time in Nepal these days. Maybe it’s because my heart-felt need to end suffering and injustice has shifted from a political focus to a spiritual one. Maybe it’s because I spend far less time delving into U.S. news. I don’t know. What I do know is that I am increasingly unable to read where things stand in the supposed United States of America.
The title of the Atlantic article which I used to title this blog post both surprised and didn’t surprise me. Although I am an ultra-leftist and a humanities Ph.D., a woman of color and a native New Yorker, I have never felt comfortable with a too tightly held identity politics. That said, perhaps due to my contrarian so-called personality and habit patterns I have long chafed at both the term “political correctness” as a right-wing epithet and to the very referent it insults. I believe that language shapes perception and thus reality and advocate for the correct use of terms and calling out the hidden, nefarious assumptions embedded in our language usage.
And yet, these days, it seems that America has jumped the shark. The whole world may have jumped the shark. Everything, everywhere, seems to have gone too far. Do we still know how to do nuance? How to see each other? How to be with each other? How to understand and honor the complexity of the world and each other? Did we ever know how to be together?
Maybe I am actually part of the “exhausted majority” that the Atlantic article highlights even though I am actually part of the ultra left. Maybe I’m part of the exhausted minority. Maybe I’m just exhausted:
According to the report [PDF: Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape], 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.”
Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.
Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either.
[My emphases]
I urge you to read the article. With midterms only 24 days way, hounded by the feeling that once again this is the most important election of my life time—mostly I just feel at an utter loss to understand what is happening in the U.S., in the world, in the whole wide world that I like to imagine we all share.
It turns out that support for “political correctness” is widespread only among the well-educated, progressive, well-off elite. That said, dislike of PC culture doesn’t equate with racism. Indeed:
It turns out that while progressive activists tend to think that only hate speech is a problem, and devoted conservatives tend to think that only political correctness is a problem, a clear majority of all Americans holds a more nuanced point of view: They abhor racism. But they don’t think that the way we now practice political correctness represents a promising way to overcome racial injustice.
[My emphasis]
Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture
We as a nation are anti-racist. Let’s focus on that. Let’s be awake to that. Let’s try to open our eyes to where we are. Let’s help each other find out where we are and move together to where we’d like to be. One nation … I’d go so far as to say one world, one love. But with midterms looming, let’s just go step by step.
As the article concludes:
The gap between the progressive perception and the reality of public views on this issue could do damage to the institutions that the woke elite collectively run. A publication whose editors think they represent the views of a majority of Americans when they actually speak to a small minority of the country may eventually see its influence wane and its readership decline. And a political candidate who believes she is speaking for half of the population when she is actually voicing the opinions of one-fifth is likely to lose the next election.
In a democracy, it is difficult to win fellow citizens over to your own side, or to build public support to remedy injustices that remain all too real, when you fundamentally misunderstand how they see the world.
[My emphasis]
Good night, dear ones. I think we’re all exhausted. It does make me feel better though that I can still write these words and send them out to this community which I have been a part of for 14 years. That is something, isn’t it? Just a little something.
