I, Sid Yiddish, am done with political correctness and social media mob mentality. It is
time to bury this shit for once and for all. Especially on social media and in
universities, where it seems to have taken over for worse than better.
In my defense of
this thought, I present the following three incidents, in which I was the brunt of political correctness and angry social media mob mentality. For worse, not better.
Example 1: The
argument of white privilege; verses
the idea of quality of work. I got into a conversational thread as I do often
on Facebook, in which I defended the idea of quality of work verses the idea
that because a prominent late night TV host happens to have several white men
and only two women on his writing production team that somehow that is
offensive and unfair. I defended my position the following way: “It's not
really and shouldn't be about color or gender. It is his choice on who he works
well with and that what should matter most.”
The person in whom
I was engaging with, someone who I consider a pretty good friend, in real life,
responded in the following manner: “Unlike you (meaning me, Sid), I think this
type of answer comes from being a white man in society. Despite your
eccentricities, there are things afforded or allowed, indulged to you that are
not to others. Sadly for women and all people of color, having their work being
overlooked, ignored, denigrated, not taken into consideration, solely because
of their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation is a sad reality. And yes, in an
ideal world it shouldn't be about color or gender. But I believe that in an
ideal world, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, queers, and so on would be hired
regularly at those jobs. TV and writing for TV is very much a white man's
game.”
Although I knew
what she was trying to say, she was saying in such a way that was insulting to
me. And so I responded again: “By no means, because I am "supposedly white" that I have more privileges
or have had better or greater opportunities than you or anyone else. If you
don't like the situation, then do something to change it. But try not to bemoan
the dilemma of your gender or color of your skin because as you well know,
plenty of others have gotten their jobs not based on color, but based on their
quality of work they bring forth to the table. That is what it should be about.
Quality, not quantity.”
And again she
responded, leaving me with a few articles to read, explaining why my whiteness
was so horrible told to me through other writers, who could easily defend her
position better than she ever could.
I left her with
this response: “I see, so because I disagree with you, because of my whiteness you think that reading these
articles will help me to understand better, even though I was born to who I was
born to? I don't look at myself as, "well, I'm better than you, because I
am white." You know better than
that. In fact, if you really want to know something about privilege/race in
this country, go and research how Walt Disney treated white Jews (animators, actors, actresses, etc) between the
1930s-1950s. You really need to understand that it has nothing to do with being
white. That is just an excuse. It has
more to do with production and quality of work. No one should be hired on a
team just for their color of their skin or gender alone. That is just wrong.”
And even after
all of this, she responded: “If that's what you think I said then this is a
useless dialogue.”
To which I
responded: “it’s not useless to me. It’s useless to you because I don’t agree
with you or the writer of the original article.”
I don’t know if
she responded further or not, but in my mind, I thought, “it
is your choice not to watch him if you don't want to, but ah, I think there's a
bigger issue abound and it has nothing to do with color or race or privilege.
And that is called sour grapes.”
Example 2-At Columbia College Chicago during my second
year of grad school, I was part of a classroom competition in my Connected
Studio Practice class, in which we students had to anonymously submit four
images and one minute video to be judged by a panel of prestigious arts related
judges, to show us what competition is like for art fellowships in the real
world. I submitted my work and patiently waited.
Came the judgment day and we all waited impatiently,
except for me mostly because I felt if I were to have taken the prize it was
either going to happen or not happen. When it came to my turn, the judges
viewed my work as sensual and warm. They didn’t like the artist statement past
the first paragraph and that was okay with me. The judges expressed pure adulteration
for my images and video. After one more student was judged, the vote came forth
and wouldn’t you know it? I won.
In fact, all the winners were men, 1st
place, 2nd place and the 2-runners up. Winning meant bragging rights
and $100. And $100 comes in mighty handy when you are jobless and paying for
college on your own.
Moments after the competition, the howling by the
losers began. It went something like “why did all men win? The judges are bias.
They are against women, “ howled the losers and the resident professor feminist.
The funny part was that all three judges were women and all three of those judges’
preferred good performance art and not art that doesn’t say much. Now, I’m not
saying that my cohort wasn’t as good or even better than me; they all well
could have been and another day might have scored even better than me, but on
this day, they didn’t. And I
wondered, why all the fuss? Fair is fair.
Example 3-between 1990 and 1995, I wrote for several
alternative and independent presses, two of them being, Nightlines/Outlines and
Gay Chicago. I never had a problem with the first publication, but I sure as hell
had a major problem with the latter publication? Why? Because I wrote articles
that were fair and balanced. And the entertainment/features editor kept editing
out the balance, meaning the reality of the negativity that plagued the subject
matter. And all he cared about was just showing the happy, positive side. As if
no evil or terribleness existed in the gay and lesbian community of Chicago.
In those days when I wrote for those two publications
(and others), I wrote for them because I wanted to learn all about the
communities I was immersed in. the Internet was still young. I still believe
that despite my handicaps (as in being one over another), I still wrote well
because I understood.
The editor at the time never had problems with my
articles, until one day when he became unusually livid because I dared to ask a
question in an interview I submitted to him, with Phranc, the all-American
Jewish lesbian folk singer.
He asked me at that point if I was gay or not. I told
him that didn’t matter and that I was still capable of writing and asking
important questions. With that, the editor fired me on the spot and told me, “I
don’t have the time or the energy to explain to you what political correctness
is.”
That was 1990.
That editor has since moved on, won a ton of awards
for being “politically correct or perhaps kissing ass. It could have been both
ways, but I never knew for sure, but I suppose I can ask those who know him.
I remember the reaction 3 years later , in 1993, at the holy union
of two friends of mine-the shock and hisses that went through attending friends,
as my friend Don recalled the story. He was just as stunned.
Political correctness with a mob mentality within a
bunch of nodding heads doesn’t belong anywhere. And yet, there is way too much
of it. That sadly is what political correctness and social media has become, a bunch
of talking heads that all agree on the same issues and bash anyone who doesn’t
agree with them, even if they are correct just because they are incorrect.
Or perhaps it’s just a conglomerate of something
greater and that is an out-of-control attacking electronic dog army of angry
people who are collectively controlled by the stroke of computer keys. You see
them everywhere online, including blogs, in shared vengeful videos, on Youtube,
in comments sections of Internet articles, in college and university classrooms
(students and professors combined), on buses, in the streets, at art shows, in
alternative and mainstream media, talk radio, television morning news.
Chilling.
Just chilling.
Americans are out of control.
