Category Archives: Political Correctness

Peter Duttons denunciation of political correctness was simply a rhetorical tic: a way of swatting away a problem that he didnt want to confront. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Australians, said Peter Dutton this week, are sick of the political correctness.

Last year, Dutton urged us to rise up against political correctness, a phenomenon he blamed for stifling the enjoyment of Christmas music.

But his December revolution must have misfired somewhere. In 2017, hes still lamenting the PC scourge, in a discussion of marriage equality in which he urged CEOs to stick to their knitting rather than opine about government policy.

What is this all-powerful doctrine that deters Peter Dutton from his carolling? What, precisely, does political correctness mean? The short answer is: almost nothing, and thus pretty much anything you like. The long answer entails a detour through recent cultural history.

As the journalist Richard Cooke recently noted on Twitter, for most of the 20th century, conservatives maintained a pretty unequivocal position on censorship: they supported it.

Until quite recently, the Australian state was notorious for banning books, films, plays and anything much else that transgressed against traditional Christian morality. In 1941, the Postmaster-General described James Joyces Ulysses as a filthy book that should not only be banned but burnt. As late as 1972, Australia prohibited novels by William S Burroughs, Jean Genet, Henry Miller and Gore Vidal.

Today, conservatives decry political correctness for imposing a gag on ordinary people on behalf of a cultural elite. Yet that was pretty much exactly the logic of the old censorship regime that they backed: wealthy connoisseurs could ogle artistic nudes, while police ruthlessly suppressed racy magazines aimed at a mass audience.

It took extensive direct action by leftists to smash the old system: think of Wendy Bacon and the libertarians at Tharunka setting out to shock the establishment with their provocations, even at the risk of prison. Yes, Virginia, people went to jail in Australia (real jail, that is: not the make-believe jail Andrew Bolt seems to think he faces) for publishing stuff that conservatives didnt like.

Until the late 80s, the term political correctness was almost never used in the mainstream media. Insofar as the phrase circulated, it did so on the left but not in the way you might think.

Political correctness was not a terminology devised by the Frankfurt School for the nefarious program of cultural Marxists. Rather, it was a joke, a gag employed by anti-censorious lefties in the US.

As Moira Weigel argues:

Politically correct became a kind of in-joke among American leftists something you called a fellow leftist when you thought he or she was being self-righteous Until the late 1980s, political correctness was used exclusively within the left, and almost always ironically as a critique of excessive orthodoxy.

Jesse Walker makes the same point, noting that American radicals used politically correct [as] an unkind term for leftists who acted as though good politics were simply a matter of mastering the right jargon. The phrase only entered the mainstream during the so-called American campus wars of the late 80s and the early 90s.

In October 1990, Richard Bernstein of the New York Times published a piece entitled The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct, in which he decried a censorious regime enforcing a cluster of opinions about race, ecology, feminism, culture and foreign policy [that] defines a kind of correct attitude toward the problems of the world

Over the next few months, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, New York Magazine and Time chimed in with similar articles. The phrase spread across the world, including to Australia and has remained a stock term in the arsenal of rightwing populism ever since.

But how were conservatives able to present themselves so quickly as opponents of censorship, given their long history of opposition to free speech?

The articles that popularised political correctness as a phrase and as an idea came on the heels of several books decrying the influence of the campus left. In 1987, Allan Bloom published his remarkable bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind. In 1990, Roger Kimball followed him with Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education. In 1991, Dinesh DSouza chimed in with Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus.

As Weigal says, the first crop of anti-PC articles built upon these texts, which, without necessarily using the words political correctness, popularised a perception of American universities as hotbeds of subversion, intolerance and bien pensant gibberish.

Yet, in other respects, the arguments made by Bloom et al were very different from those mouthed by anti-PC warriors today. The Closing of the American Mind offered a spirited defence of the traditional university. For Bloom and Kimball, campus leftists, feminists and deconstructionists undermined the western canon with a relativism that declared Bugs Bunny the cultural equal of Shakespeare.

In that sense, the early anti-PC push came from men who were unabashedly elitist.

Kimball quotes Cardinal Newmans description of a university as dedicated to a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid equitable dispassionate mind and so on.

Its a passage likely to provoke a bitter laugh from anyone associated with todays degree factories. These days, your liberal education gets delivered by underpaid postgrads on short-term contracts, young men and women far too concerned with paying their rent to cultivate delicate tastes. The old fashioned university has largely disappeared destroyed by the rights enthusiasm for the market, not by the machination of radical academics.

In any case, the rhetoric once used to defend high culture against leftist barbarians now studs the speeches of men who have never read a book in their life. Think of Donald Trump: when he decries political correctness, hes not urging a return to Plato but defending calling women dogs and pigs.

Roger Kimball helped establish the notion of the modern university awash with sneering, politically correct professors. But Kimball blamed the tenured radicals for what he called the degraded pop culture that permeates our lives like a corrosive fog.

Fast forward to 2017, and opposition to political correctness means characters like Milo Yiannopoulos, who built his journalistic reputation by arguing about video games. Bloom sought to protect universities from vulgarity; Milo tells students their teachers are cunts.

Yet that fairly significant shift in the argument hasnt dinted the popularity of anti-PC rhetoric in the slightest. How is that possible?

Amanda Taub notes that the term political correctness almost never gets allocated any specific meaning. What defines it, she says, is not what it describes but how its used: as a way to dismiss a concern or demand as a frivolous grievance rather than a real issue.

When you label someone politically correct, youre saying that theyre innately ridiculous

You can see what she means if you re-read the foundational articles from 1990 and 1991. If, in some ways, they describe a vanished world, the voice in which they do so remains instantly familiar: all of them written in a lightly ironic or overtly sarcastic register, with the author presented as a common sense outsider wryly bemused by the preposterous antics thus chronicled.

While every piece contains multiple instances of liberal censoriousness, the specifics arent really the point. Indeed, theyre often wrong.

For instance, Are you politically correct? John Taylors influential piece for New York Magazine opens with a chilling account of PC students hounding Harvard professor Stephan Thernstrom:

Racist Racist! The man is a racist! Such denunciations, hissed in tones of self-righteousness and contempt, vicious and vengeful, furious, smoking with hatred such denunciations haunted Stephen Thernstrom for weeks It was hellish, this persecution. Thernstrom couldnt sleep. His nerves were frayed, his temper raw.

Scary stuff.

Yet, as Erica Hellerstein and Judd Legum explain, the account was fictionalised, with Thernstrom himself admitting that nothing like that ever happened. Yes, he was criticised by his students and then he simply decided not to offer that particular course any more.

Similarly, Newsweek eventually amended its equally significant 1990 article Taking Offense. The correction reads:

In our cover story about politically correct thought on campus Newsweek stated that at Sarah Lawrence and a few other places the PC spelling is womyn, without the men. Though some individuals at the college may follow this practice, the school does not, in fact, endorse the alternative spelling of women. Newsweek regrets the mistake and any embarrassment it may have caused the college.

Everyone makes errors. But these blunders neatly illustrate Taubs point: writers attacking political correctness need neither definitions nor facts since they never embark on a good faith engagement with their subject.

You can argue about the merits or otherwise of alternative feminist spellings. You can critique deconstruction and Marxism and anything else you like. But when you label someone politically correct, youre saying that theyre innately ridiculous and not worth taking seriously.

Thats the point of the term and thats why its become so ubiquitous.

When CEOs wrote to Malcolm Turnbull about marriage equality, Peter Duttons denunciation of political correctness was simply a rhetorical tic: a way of swatting away a problem that he didnt want to confront.

Marriage equality enjoys overwhelming support from the Australian public and has done so for a long time. The most recent polls show that, even in conservative electorates, the majority of people want the question resolved in the affirmative.

The opponents of equal marriage, on the other hand, are a small group of zealots, committed to imposing their cultural and moral values on the rest of us. No obfuscation changes that.

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'Political correctness' has no meaning. That's the main appeal - The Guardian

In a slew of recent interviews, the singer and songwriter best known as Father John Misty has made it clear hes not interested in being woke.

The man whose real name is Josh Tillman is letting his absurdist stage character out of the proverbial basement for a third album, Pure Comedy, set to be released April 27. Its all about the counterfeits of freedom, he told The New York Times last week.That theme resembles some Pentecostal injunctions against worldly pleasure and distractions.

Tillman, who grew up in a Pentecostal home with parents who were obsessed with the end times, has since rejected the church of his childhood. But Tillman says hes returned to many of the religious themes of his youth in Pure Comedy, which he describes as a secular gospel album.

The real takeaway from religion is the idea that were just passing through this world, he said.If so, why not help people? Why not speak the truth?

Consequently, Tillman is not a fan of political correctness or the outrage culture we frequently find ourselves in today, and hes not keeping quiet about it.

In an interview with Pitchforkearlier this month, Tillman explains why he doesnt adhere to the rules laid out by PC culture when writing songs.

When I listen to music, I dont think about correct, prescriptive, how-to-live shit, he says, taking a shot at political correctness in the music world. I think that life is messy and that human beings are insane. In some way, music demystifies the parts of us that were most afraid of. When I was growing up, I was taught that a sexual thought equaled sexual deed, and the thing that really disturbs me about the current liberal environment is how eager liberals seem to impress upon you how infrequently they ever have an incorrect thought.

Its categorically anti-woman, he said.

The pop music machine, he said, is categorically anti-woman. I know a lot of women in that industry. They were pitched an American narrative about success equaling freedom, when there couldnt be anything further from the truth.

Hes quoted in Pitchfork as saying that its childish to believe pop music is feminist.

When you lionize pop music, you lionize the very thing that feminism purports to be against, which is a culture of exploitation and overcharging. Which is what cracks me the f*** up when you read these ridiculous puff pieces about how wonderful major-labor pop music is, and the whole f***ing industry is run like you actually buy into the idea that that woman thats onstage, wearing next to nothing, is powerful. Because that is like being a child.

On pop music in general: A lot people make sh-tty music, and theres so much space in this world for sh-t music because we dont have values.

Hes sick and tired of being told to smile and act like his pain is no big deal because it doesnt fit into the leftist tiered system of privilege and intersectionality. He knows hes unwoke and doesnt care.

I have a pretty good idea of what it looks like on the internet today about me, he said. Im symbolic of a thing white people really hate about themselves. And the fact that I appear to be enjoying it is a bridge too far. Its like, You should be sitting around, hating yourself on Twitter, like all of us.

[. . . ]

I know who my audience is, he said. Not to say its only educated, isolated weirdos who grew up on message boards, and for whom the substance of their life is electronic distraction, but there are a lot of them. He added, I think they get a lot of messaging that their pain is invalid, is inauthentic, and the things in life that are hurtful and make you feel alone are [malarkey] problems, and you can make yourself look sophisticated by constantly laughing.

He speculates how his song Total Entertainment Forever, which contains the line:Bedding Taylor Swift / Every night inside the Oculus Rift, will play out on the Internet after his performance on Saturday Night Live.

The internet is going to read, King Indie Troll Father John Misty Slams Taylor Swift on SNL, he said.

Interpretive thinking, as an art form, is dying, he told The New York Times.We enjoy the dopamine rush of outrage so much more than the slow-burning nutrition you get from thinking with nuance.

Read more from the original source:

Why Father John Misty Is Done With Political Correctness - The Federalist

"From the state house down to the courthouse, it's just been unbelievable," said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, reflecting on his party's electoral losses over the past decade.

In a Washington Post podcast published Tuesday morning, Manchin offered a grave assessment of the party's future.

"If you can't win in red states that used to be blue, something's wrong," he said. "You're never going to be in the majority again."

Manchin sought to put the losses in perspective for Democrats, looking forward to predict ominously, "If we continue to lose what we're losing, and the amount of seats that we've lost in the last six to eight years it's unbelievable."

Since Donald Trump swept West Virginia in the presidential election, Manchin's perspective has been in demand among politicos seeking to understand why Democrats are faltering with the working class voters who once comprised their base.

"The best explanation is what most of them told me," Manchin said, paraphrasing the answers his constituents provided when asked about their votes for Trump, "The party that we knew, that was always helping the working person, is now the party as we see it from Washington, that's preventing working people from working because they've become so politically correct."

According to Manchin, when it comes to the environment, social issues, or bathroom politics, people think, "[Democrats] are going to tell me how to do it - I can figure that out."

"The Washington Democrat philosophy has become an overreaching philosophy," the senator said.

One week ago, MSNBC host Chris Hayes hosted a town hall with Manchin's colleague Bernie Sanders in West Virginia coal country, finding support from Trump voters for Democratic policies on issues such as healthcare. Manchin's perspective is yet another reminder that struggling working class Americans care less about partisan loyalty than about finding solutions for their communities.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"If it's an act of war, then you've got to start thinking of your response."

03/21/17 11:48 AM

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

Read more here:

Top Dem: Party's political correctness killing appeal with working class - Washington Examiner

Recently while going through my Facebook timeline, I came across a picture highlighting the differences between games made in the West versus games made in the East (Japan). It showed how Western gaming developers had totally gone offtrack with their games, resulting in a storm of criticism and a large number of unhappy players. Here is the pic in question:

Now, I do not necessarily agree with this but lets face it: This is not Western gamings golden age. Sure, were getting plenty of great games from Western developers, but its pretty clear that games are receiving a lot of backlash due to a few problems that seem to be taking root in the Western gaming industry. Lets explore them:

First of all, lets talk about why Western games are facing so much criticism these days. A lot of fans dont seem to be happy with the path that developers have taken, with the result being games, even ones that got relatively good scores from critics, facing heavy backlash from players. From my viewpoint, and the viewpoint of many other gamers, it seems like Asian (Eastern) developers arent restrained by the liberal politics which have wormed their way into the western tech industry. Political correctness has become way too important for Western developers, leading to little artistic integrity among them. Shoehorning ethnic minorities, people of different color and sexual orientation is often done at the sacrifice of a games story and its realism. Games are games, an outlet for people to forget their real life problems and enjoy their day. They are NOT PSAs meant to push political agendas. And that is where Western developers seem to have gone offtrack.

Lets look at some examples. Battlefield 1 faced a storm of criticism when it released for the number of people of color it showed fighting on the European front. It seemed every match, or rather, almost every squad in a match had a black soldier in it, leading to a large number of black soldiers on the battlefield during a match. Now, diversity is a great thing that should be encouraged. But Battlefield 1 is a game that had a goal of portraying World War 1 in a very realistic way, and having such a large ratio of black soldiers on the European front is not believable. Yes, there were black soldiers that fought for the Allies, and even some for the Germans (colonial troops). But the ratio of black soldiers in each match is a huge inflation, especially on the German side since very very few black German soldiers fought on the European front.

The point is, developers should not change history in order to fit their own progressive beliefs. Its not about racism, its about depicting history the way it was. Around the time BF1 launched, The Know posted a video on YouTube about how a former dev accused Battlefield sexism. The video went on to show its support by stating how DICE should have added female soldiers to the game, arguing that if the game could ignore real life problems like guns jamming and parachutes malfunctioning, then they could also add women to the game. Alongside making the thinnest argument in history, the video highlighted a major issue: Being politically correct is now more important to some people than respecting history, and this issue has spread to the world of gaming too. It may seem too far fetched now, but in the future this could pose a major problem since it is clear Western devs are now being influenced by these matters.

Everything offends someone. Its an unavoidable truth. But should we letit affect how we approach our art, our creativity and the outlets by which we experience the unlikely, the outrageous and the utterly fictional? Weve already let political correctness like this destroy gaming projects. If youre looking for an example, look no further than Six Days in Fallujah. Developed by Konami back in 2008 (which shows that even some Eastern developers are affected to some extent), this game was essentially finished and ready to be released. But it never actually came out. Peace advocates and war veterans protested against the game, arguing that the game shouldnt be played because the Iraq War was still ongoing. Nevermind the fact that there have been hundreds of games set in all major wars, from World War 2 to the Vietnam War. Konami essentially deprived its audience of a game because a few loud people wanted them to. And thats the problem. Games have begun to cater to the most minuscule of issues raised only by a few very loud people, and this practice is alienating the players.

By abstract notions of being offended and hurt, were tying developers hands. Were not letting them give us unique experiences through games. Were not getting challenged, were not allowing them to make us uncomfortable, were not letting them make us think. Were basically stripping them of their creativity.

And the other face of this problem is: Western game developers are actually letting a few people decide what their games should be like. Its the majority of the player-base that matters, and I for a fact know that most players enjoy challenges, they enjoy being put out of their comfort zone, they like it when a game portrays actual events. This is what sets Eastern developers apart from Western devs.

In the end, this poses a question for both the developers and the players: When are we going to realize that this mentality is destructive?

Read the original post:

Is The Western Gaming Industry Getting Destroyed By Political Correctness? - TheWolfHall (press release) (blog)

For those still unsure whether the nations public school system could use a reset, consider the recent news from New York.

Four years ago, the state introduced a literacy exam for prospective teachers and for good reason. Studies show that an effective, quality teacher is one of the most important factors when it comes to student achievement. They also reveal that too many education colleges accept students with subpar academic records. A 2016 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality found that 44 percent of the teacher preparation programs it surveyed accepted students from the bottom half of their high school classes, the Associated Press reported this week.

New Yorks Academic Literacy Skills Test was designed to ensure that those charged with educating the states children had acquired basic reading and writing skills.

The test results have been astounding. The AP notes that just 46 percent of Hispanics, 41 percent of African-Americans and 64 percent of white candidates passed the exam on the first try. The fact that virtually half of those seeking to become educators couldnt successfully navigate a test that the New York Post described as something a high school senior should be able to pass is another stunning indictment of teacher prep programs.

All of this, however, is apparently of no concern to New York education officials. Instead of applauding the examinations for identifying teachers who were likely to struggle in the classroom, the state Board of Regents on Monday voted to abolish the test requirement altogether thanks to the racial disparity reflected in the scores.

This is political correctness run amok. Certainly the state should strive to implement ways to improve the performance of minority candidates or to lure better minority students to the profession. But turning a blind eye to reality in an effort to promote diversity is to condemn thousands of New York kids to classrooms led by teachers ill-prepared for the rigors of the job.

Obviously, its not really about the children. Who knew?

This guest editorial was published by the Panama City News Herald, a Daily News sister paper with GateHouse Media.

See the original post here:

EDITORIAL: Political correctness runs amok in New York - Holmes County Times Advertiser

Adam Mansbach: You know even the term "political correctness" at this point I feel like has been compromised, has been diluted, and means different things to different people in a way that is counterproductive. I would vote to retire the term entirely. I guess where I fall is, on one hand if you are whining about the way that political correctness and some culture of respect prevents you from being an asshole, then youre an asshole. If the political correctness of the world stops you, impinges your freedom of speech and prevention from being misogynistic, homophobic, racistthen fuck you, basically. I guess thats ultimately where I fall on it.

I dont really know any artists, any creative folks who feel like some restrictive culture is preventing them from doing their art, you know. The people I see are flourishing in this space. I think respect is important. I think calling people by the words and the names and the pronouns that they choose for themselves is critical. Theres no reason in any sense to do otherwise that I can think of.

But I feel like the term itself, as far back as the 90s, was being bandied about in this spirit of mockery, and I remember books being published, like The Politically Correct Handbook and like things that just take it to a level of absurdity.

The simple ideathat people of various marginalized discriminated against groups were claiming ownership of the words used to describe themwas taken and satirized and made absurd by the right, a group of people who are not known for their sense of humor. And it became kind of a battering ram. Like Oh, you know, we cant say blah, blah, blah. And like Well you cant say short anymore, you have to say vertically challenged. And it was very deliberate.

I mean it was part of the war around language which is a very critical part of political discourse. The control of terminology is really, really important in the way that peoples views are shaped. And its something that the right has had a lock on surprisingly for a pretty long time, you know. Pro-life sounds good but isnt. But the way that the words and the phrases and the terminology shape the debate is really critical. So the term in my mind goes back to that and yeah, at this point I think we could probably put it to death and come up with something better.

Excerpt from:

Why It's Time to Retire the Term "Political Correctness" | Big Think - Big Think

Fresno Bee

Drop the political correctness. We all make jokes Fresno Bee Steve Wayte, owner of Roll One For Mi, a sushi restaurant in northeast Fresno, addresses the media over comments he made on Facebook during a press conference outside the business March 12 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA The Fresno Bee.

Read the original here:

Drop the political correctness. We all make jokes - Fresno Bee

For those still unsure whether the nations public school system could use a reset, consider the recent news from New York.

Four years ago, the state introduced a literacy exam for prospective teachers and for good reason. Studies show that an effective, quality teacher is one of the most important factors when it comes to student achievement. They also reveal that too many education colleges accept students with subpar academic records. A 2016 report by the National Council on Teacher Quality found that 44 percent of the teacher preparation programs it surveyed accepted students from the bottom half of their high school classes, the Associated Press reported this week.

New Yorks Academic Literacy Skills Test was designed to ensure that those charged with educating the states children had acquired basic reading and writing skills.

The test results have been astounding. The AP notes that just 46 percent of Hispanics, 41 percent of African-Americans and 64 percent of white candidates passed the exam on the first try. The fact that virtually half of those seeking to become educators couldnt successfully navigate a test that the New York Post described as something a high school senior should be able to pass is another stunning indictment of teacher prep programs.

All of this, however, is apparently of no concern to New York education officials. Instead of applauding the examinations for identifying teachers who were likely to struggle in the classroom, the state Board of Regents on Monday voted to abolish the test requirement altogether thanks to the racial disparity reflected in the scores.

This is political correctness run amok. Certainly the state should strive to implement ways to improve the performance of minority candidates or to lure better minority students to the profession. But turning a blind eye to reality in an effort to promote diversity is to condemn thousands of New York kids to classrooms led by teachers ill-prepared for the rigors of the job.

Obviously, its not really about the children. Who knew?

This guest editorial was published by the Panama City News Herald, a Daily News sister paper with GateHouse Media.

Read more here:

EDITORIAL: Political correctness runs amok in New York - News ... - Santa Rosa Press Gazette

I was at my weekly watercolor class when, across the table, a woman said, I dont even know anyone who voted for Trump.

I do, I replied.

I wasnt kidding. My Chinese Dietician, an educated woman, voted for Trump. Many Filipinos I know also did. Some friends of friends in Nevada are ardent Trump supporters.

Why? Because Democrats are failing to speak to them in a nuanced way about complex issues. Take immigration for example. Many citizens, including Democrats, have complicated feelings about the topic. Immigration should be managed, they believe. To have completely open borders is just not realistic. They want to be compassionate and humane, but they also want to be rational.

Yet, after suffering a humiliating defeat in the general election, what was the Democrats first instinct? To double down on sanctuary cities.

This kind of bunker mentality does not serve as a substitute for policy, particularly in Middle America. No wonder the Democrats lost!

And dont tell me that Hillary won the popular vote, that without the interference of James Comey, Vladimir Putin, and Julian Assange, she would have pulled through, that sexism was to blame.

The truth is, beating Trump should have been a cakewalk.

Dont also tell me that Republicans blocked immigration overhaul; Obama could have pushed his agenda through during the first two years when he had a Congressional majority.

If Democrats dont stop making excuses, they will lose the next election, and the next election, and the election after that.

The trouble is, Democrats joined the Republicans long ago in handing over the country to Wall Street and industry. I was aghast recently when a friend told me of a sweetheart deal a well-known high tech giant had offered a twenty-something from India. Details escape me, but the starting pay was way higher than salaries at which most professionals retire.

If the industry had that kind of money to throw around, I wondered, why did it not do more to help Americas youth train for jobs of the future? Why was it that, after enjoying the infrastructure provided by Silicon Valley taxpayers, the company was not giving more back to the community?

Why were Democratic politicians not demanding more from the industry? Why were liberals not pushing for reforms in our education system, which failed to produce the kind of workers that the industry of tomorrow needed, while half way across the world, Indian tech institutes were fine-tuning their graduates to a t? Why was American K-12 education run by a low-paid workforce and consisted of a hodgepodge of liberal arts information? Why could a few symbol manipulators become millionaires and billionaires while the rest of us could not even earn a living wage?

I posted something along these lines on Facebook during my post-election despondency. The vitriol I received was unbelievable. I was labeled a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and a Trumpian. I had to get off social media.

Yet, just the other day, an Indian-American friend, a staunch liberal, voiced similar sentiments, perhaps because her own child is struggling. I am afraid of talking about this; people will think I am a right wing reactionary, she added.

And that is the crux of the problem. People cannot even talk about their feelings of resentment and unfairness, let alone explore social and political remedies. Whats worse, Democratic politicians like Pelosi and Clinton dont see the angst, perhaps because they are the elite whose children havent experienced it.

I realize I am treading on thin ground as I write these words, that I am in danger of being misunderstood.

But I do believe that young people who were born here, who have nowhere else to go, who are living with their parents because their jobs dont pay them enough to cover the rent, should be a priority over people who want to come here. Only in a terribly lopsided world would we allow our industry to be so lazy as to do otherwise.

Does saying so make me a xenophobe? Or does it make me a patriot and a realist?

Even Bernie Sanders acknowledges that immigrant workers depress local wages. Right in our backyard, the University of California at San Francisco just announced a move of its information technology work to India, for example. Even as we hear stories of the displacement of American workers, we hear about high tech immigrants being underpaid. And all the while, a few others build mansions.

So, I want to ask Democratic politicians a question that has been roiling around in my head since November 8. How did Trump know what plagued the American working class? Sitting in his golden tower on Fifth Avenue, how did he feel the pulse of America? And why and how did the Democrats fail to sense it?

Dont get me wrong. I think Trump is a narcissistic power monger who is about to curb our civil rights, our press, and our judiciary. Whats worse, without regard to morality or the future of the planet, Republicans are abetting him for their own selfish gains.

This is why Democrats need to talk to middle America right now about these complex issues. They need to stop viewing the Midwestern voters through the prism of their old ideas and listen and see what is really plaguing them. They need to distinguish themselves from the Republicans by showing that they really do stand for the little guy.

Sarita Sarvate (www.saritasarvate.com) has published commentaries for New America Media, KQED FM, San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, and many nationwide publications.

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Trump is Right: Democrats' Political Correctness Is To Blame - India Currents

The PC-ers strike again. Appalachian State University in North Carolina is asking students to use gender-neutral pronouns in their papers, so that all readers feel included in what theyve written.

The universitys writing center recently released a guide on Inclusive Language & Gender Neutral Pronoun Use, offering students two options: change all their sentences so that the subject is plural (for example, switch out a student for students), or simply replace the singular pronoun he or she with they (proper grammar be damned).

To avoid confusion, the guide recommends students who choose tousethey as a singular third-person pronoun place a disclaimer at the top of their papers.

Surprisingly, xe or ze, or any of the other gender-neutral pronouns which have caught on at other universities, weren't suggested in the guide.

Director of University Communications Megan Hayes told Campus Reform that the use of gender-neutral pronouns isnt mandatory but a mere suggestion, adding that there is no university-wide practice or policy related to penalizing students for grammar use.

It sounds like professors at App State are going to have a much harder time grading papers this semester.

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This North Carolina University is Taking Political Correctness to a ... - Townhall