You Gotta Fight For Your Right Even As Some Accuse You Of Being Wite (Even When You Are Not)

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, 1^st place, 2^nd 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.