The Human Stain, Philip Roth’s seminal novel regarding Political Correctness, racism, and the insipid hypocrisy of leftist morality, is a fitting backdrop to Barack Obama’s improbable presidency. In the story, Professor Coleman Silk, a half-Black Jewish professor, posing as a White man, is taken down by the mechanical application of PC rules to an accidental insult he gave to two African-Americans. Now, we can introduce the 800-pound donkey in the room. Let’s ask a simple question: Could Barack have been elected president without the doctrine known as Political Correctness?
Or is simply to ask the question an unforgivable act of racism? In fact, the vast majority of Americans realize no person as inexperienced, untested, wildly liberal, or of such questionable past could ever have hoped to be elected without some kind of uncanny boost. But what is the result of this presidency based on nonsensical ideological doctrine? And what can be done to fight off the rise of the unscrupulous, unethical, incompetent and unqualified spore of the PC movement? This is the question addressed in this essay.
I. The Human Stain In brief, the novel The Human Stain depicts a professor who twists ethnicity to his advantage, then was ironically tagged a racist when he made an innocent remark deemed anti-Black. Here is one writer’s summary of The Human Stain:
Professor Coleman Silk is driven from his position as Dean of Faculty at a small, New England liberal-arts school called Athena College because of a remark willfully misconstrued as racist. Coleman, a professor of classics, wonders why he has never seen two of his students in class. “Do they exist or are they spooks?” he asks his class. The absentees are, of course, black, and a decorous mob of the politically correct immediately launches itself at Coleman’s throat, despite his honest protests that he had used the word only in its primary signification, as a synonym for “ghosts.”
Roth’s tome is well-worth a read. The underlying premise of the story is electric—the implicit hypocrisy of Political Correctness against the backdrop of sin, ie the human stain, making for powerful, topical drama. Barack is like Coleman because both hid their true ethnic roots to gain political advantage. For example, Barack is arguably only half Black. He masks his White roots to gain leverage on opponents.
We are left with the question in The Human Stain, of whether the ambitious and aged Silk could have risen while still sharing his true racial history with his colleagues. Even his own family is unaware of his true identity. Likewise, could Barack have ever been elected without a pro-minority bias, egged-on by a PC media; further—could he possibly retain over 40% support today despite a wholly flaccid and injurious reign? Common sense says, “No!”
II. What is Political Correctness, From Where Did It Arise? A. Cultural Marxism The idea behind Political Correctness was hatched by a group of progressive German academics, the Frankfurt School, before WWII .......
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