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Imprimis, On Line -- July, 1992
Imprimis, meaning "in the first place," is a free
monthly publication of Hillsdale College (circulation
360,000 worldwide). Hillsdale College is a liberal arts
institution known for its defense of free market
principles and Western culture and its nearly 150-year
refusal to accept federal funds. Imprimis publishes
lectures by such well-known figures as Ronald Reagan,
Jeane Kirkpatrick, Tom Wolfe, Charlton Heston, and many
more. Permission to reprint is hereby granted, provided
credit is given to Hillsdale College. Copyright 1992.
For more information on free print subscriptions or
back issues, call 1-800-437-2268, or 1-517-439-1524,
ext. 2319.
--------------------------------------------------
"The Ideology of Sensitivity"
by Charles Sykes, Author, Profscam
--------------------------------------------------
Volume 21, Number 7
Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
July 1992
---------------
Preview: As readers of Profscam and The Hollow Men
will know, Charles Sykes has devoted the last several
years to investigating firsthand what actually goes on
at American colleges and universities. In this Imprimis
issue, adapted from his forthcoming book, A Nation of
Victims (available in September from St. Martin's
Press), he argues that it is not merely political
correctness, but "the politics of sensitivity" that has
overtaken higher education. Mr. Sykes participated in
Hillsdale's Center for Constructive Alternatives
February 1992 seminar, "Thought Police on Campus: Is
Academic Freedom in Danger?"
---------------
When Newsweek magazine reported on what it called the
new "Thought Police" on America's university campuses,
it described academia's new rage--"political
correctness"--as "strictly speaking, a totalitarian
philosophy." Nothing escaped its attention; nothing was
too trivial for its ministrations; no one was immune.
From the reading lists peppered with ideologically
approved Third World writers to a disciplinary
apparatus poised to stamp out the slightest offense to
the sensibilities of designated political and ethnic
groups, campus opinion was smothered in a paternalism
that would have been the envy of any college chaplain
of the 19th century. Struggling to place all of this in
some sort of historical and philosophical context,
Newsweek reported that politically, "PC is Marxist in
origin, in the broad sense of attempting to
redistribute power from the privileged class (white
males) to the oppressed masses." But even as the
magazine sought to trace PC's lineage, the inadequacy
of categories of political philosophy was obvious.
Despite the usual paraphernalia and rhetoric of
left-wing politics, the peculiarly claustrophobic
atmosphere of campus life often seems less like Big
Brother than Big Nanny. The focus of Big Nanny, after
all, is on "sensitivity," which is not a political term
at all, nor one that is terribly helpful in sorting out
the relationships of various economic classes.
Instead, "sensitivity" is a transplant from the
world of culture and psychology, in which taste,
feelings and emotions are paramount. Political
correctness turns out to be a form of the larger
transformation of society reflected in ascendancy of
psychological over political terminology. What began as
the attempt to politicize psychology (and psychologize
politics) had led to the swallowing of each by the
other and the emergence of a new form of therapeutic
politics.
I should clarify here what I mean by the
therapeutic culture. In general, the term refers to the
psychologization of modern life profiting therapists,
support groups, and new ailments du jour. But it has a
larger implication as well: the substitution of medical
standards and terminology for what had traditionally
been moral, ethical and religious questions. As a
society we have grown far more comfortable with saying
someone is sick than with saying they have done evil.
Therapeutic politics is an equally radical
departure. While it remains ostensibly concerned with
moral issues, it does not primarily concern itself with
what is just or unjust; or even with whether something
is true or untrue. These considerations are not
irrelevant. But they are overshadowed by concern over
"self-esteem" and "feelings." In the therapeutic
culture, all of us are trembling on the verge of
confusion and anxiety. But for the politics of
victimization, the new ethos has been a windfall.
Psychic frailty has replaced class as the focus of a
new politics.
Armed with the new political/therapeutic
categories and heirs to four decades of the endless
elaboration of grievance and psychological fragility,
victims could be transformed from capable citizens in
need of fundamental legal rights into frail
psychological growths, easily blighted by the slightest
gesture, facial expression, or word that they might
find uncongenial. Consider this: If the distinctive
format of traditional liberal education was the
patriarchal and phallocentric Socratic dialogue, the
model for the new order is the therapeutic workshop and
consciousness-raising session. Such approaches do not
seek debate or a reasoned balancing of rights, but an
embracing of victims, often accompanied by the coached
acknowledgment of guilt.
The results, predictably, have been dramatic.
Once "feelings" are established as the barometer
of acceptable behavior, speech (and by extension,
thought) becomes only as free as the most sensitive
group on campus will permit. One of the central dogmas
of the new victimist politics is that only members of a
victim group are able to understand their own
suffering.
Some postmodern political theorists, including
Harvard's Judith Shklar, argue that traditional
conceptions of justice are inadequate because they fail
to take into account "the victim's version." Shklar
argues that "the sense of injustice should assume a
renewed importance" in political thinking, "for it is
both unfair to ignore personal resentment and imprudent
to overlook the political anger in which it finds its
expression."
But at its extreme, this view turns injustice into
a subjective experience and denies the validity of
objective and shared understandings of equity and
justice to which victim and nonvictim can appeal.
Abolishing such norms makes contentious issues
irresolvable, as each group is trapped within its own
experience and sense of aggrievement. Not only does
this accelerate the balkanization of ethnic groups, it
also creates a protective barrier that hermetically
seals off one group from another.
Because only a victim could really understand
their plight, any criticism or questioning from non-
victims is rejected out-of-hand as an act of disrespect
and (of course) insensitivity. One direct product was
what Bard College President Leon Botstein would call
the "culture of forbidden questions."
The fear of hurt has trumped the search for truth.
This is not to suggest, however, that all of the
concern is misplaced. In particular, the anxiety of
minority students is very real. Any student going to
college in a strange town, facing unknown challenges,
is prey to feelings of self-doubt, loneliness, fear and
confusion. Minority students are no different, except
that they face even greater pressures. Many of them
tend to suffer from feelings of exclusion or
"competitive rejection" when they arrive on campus, and
many of them experience considerable anxiety over the
quality of their academic preparation.
As colleges and universities have escalated
affirmative action programs, their dilemma has been
compounded. While denying that they are practicing
favoritism, elite schools have in fact admitted
minority students with substantially lower test scores
than their white counterparts. For many of those
eagerly courted minority students--who have been
repeatedly assured that they have been admitted
strictly on their merits--the reality of academic life
often comes as a cruel shock. Roughly two-thirds of
black students who enter higher education eventually
drop out before graduating.
Because it is politically impossible for the
institutions of higher learning to acknowledge their
racial sleight of hand--and thus confront the
educational inequities among their students honestly
and openly--many have turned instead to symbolic
politics. It is easier to "celebrate diversity" than to
admit that their school's academic standards have been
bent; it is easier to blame "racism" than to reallocate
scarce resources. Dinesh D'Souza describes the process:
"Eager to prevent minority frustration and anger from
directing itself at the president's or dean's office,
the administration hotly denies the reality of
preferential treatment and affirms minority students in
their conviction that the real enemy is latent bigotry
that everywhere conspires to thwart campus diversity.
As the Harvard political scientist Harvey Mansfield
puts it, 'White students must admit their guilt so that
minority students do not have to admit their
incapacity.'" This is the climate for the sensitivity
revolution.
Mum's the Word
"Sympathy," remarks essayist Pico Iyer, "cannot be
legislated any more than kindness can." Iyer obviously
will never be a college president. Universities and
colleges have rushed to create new bureaucracies to
"protect" and shield victims from further
victimization--whether it be an Indian symbol at
Dartmouth College, a student who sings "We Shall
Overcome" in a "sarcastic" manner at Southern Methodist
University, or expressions of such proscribed attitudes
as "ageism" ("oppression of the young and old by young
adults and the middle aged"), "ableism" ("oppression of
the differently abled by the temporarily abled"), and
"lookism" (the "construction of a standard of
beauty/attractiveness") at Smith College.
The University of Arizona has taken a similarly
expansive view of sensitivity. Its "Diversity of Action
Plan" expresses concern over discrimination against
students on the basis of "age, color, ethnicity,
gender, physical and mental ability, race, religion,
sexual orientation, Vietnam-era veteran status,
socioeconomic background, or individual style." When
John Leo, a columnist for U.S. News & World Report,
tried to find out just what the university meant by
"individual style," he reported that "'diversity
specialist' Connie Gajewski explained that this
category would include nerds and people who dress
differently. 'We didn't want to leave anyone out,' she
said." Indeed.
Not to be outdone in their zeal, University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee officials have handed out a list of
49 "Ways to Experience Diversity," which urges students
to "Hold hands publicly with someone of a different
race or someone of the same sex as you" and to "Go to a
toy store and investigate the availability of racially
diverse dolls."
The University of Connecticut has banned
"inappropriately directed laughter"; Duke University's
president has appointed a watch-dog committee to search
out "disrespectful facial expressions or body language
aimed at black students"; while Smith College's
malediction upon "heterosexism" includes the crime of
"not acknowledging their [gays'] existence."
Even that citadel of tradition William & Mary has
succumbed to the mood of the times. The alma mater of
Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe has issued guidelines
to nonsexist language insisting that terms such as
"kingpin" be changed to "key person."
At Harvard, sensitive professors at a re-education
seminar have joined in a chorus of therapeutic concern
for the sensibilities of their students. One professor
has argued that faculty members should never "introduce
any sort of thing that might hurt a group." He
recognized the implications of his comments for a
professor's freedom to teach, but "the pain that racial
insensitivity can create is more important," he
insists, "than a professor's academic freedom." Or, he
could have added, a student's.
At the University of Michigan, students have faced
discipline for suggesting that women are not as
qualified as men in any given field; one student was
actually brought up on charges of sexual harassment for
suggesting that he could develop "a counseling plan for
helping gays become straight."
Officials at New York University Law School
recently bowed to pressure and cancelled a moot court
hearing on the question of custody rights for lesbians,
after PC cadres complained that "Writing arguments
[against the right of lesbians to win custody] is
hurtful to a group of people and this is hurtful to all
of us."
At times, this new paternalism has gratuitously
extended the status of victimhood to individuals who
feel they are doing quite all right without being
liberated or otherwise protected. At the University of
Minnesota, for example, cheerleaders have been banned
from performing at UM games on the grounds that it
fosters "sexual stereotypes" demeaning to the dancers.
Said one of the cheerleaders: "We feel we're
intelligent enough to know when we're considered
objects." The sensitivity police did not agree in their
conviction that the real enemy is latent bigotry that
everywhere conspires to thwart campus diversity.
In part, this shift from substance to form can be
traced to the civil rights movement's shift in emphasis
from combatting discrimination to fighting "racism."
Although apparently a subtle shift in nomenclature, the
new focus on racism abolished the distinction between
private and public acts and between conduct and
attitudes. It meant, according to Julius Lester, "in
effect, that the opinions, feelings, and prejudices of
private individuals were a legitimate target of
political action. This was dangerous in the extreme,
because such a formulation is merely a new statement of
totalitarianism, the effort to control not only the
behavior of citizens, but the thoughts and feelings of
persons." But the shift in civil rights cannot fully
account for the new politics of "sensitivity" and the
metastasis of offended groups. For that we need to look
to a broader cultural shift.
Ego Uber Alles: Self Over All
On one level, the push for sensitivity is little more
than the age-old fight for human dignity, the demand
that all individuals be treated with respect and
rational sympathy. To be against sensitivity is thus to
risk being against good manners or hostile to an
attitude of "caring." The opposite of sensitivity,
after all, is boorishness. So the arguments in favor of
"sensitivity" have moral weight and they deserve to be
taken seriously. But it is the nature--and the tragedy-
-of victimism to take legitimate concerns and distort
them for self-indulgent ends.
The victimist distortion of "sensitivity" is the
insistence that it is not enough to behave correctly--
one must be attuned to the feelings of others, and
adapt oneself to the kaleidoscopic shades of grievance,
injury and ego that make up the subjective
sensibilities of the "victim." The relationship between
individuals and groups is not mediated by mutual
respect or principles of justice, but must now be
recast solely in therapeutic terms--the avoidance of
injury and offense, the need to sacrifice for the self-
esteem of the other. Superficially, this resembles
Christian charity, but as a series of demands and
mandatory obeisances it is something else altogether.
The essence of naked egotism is imposing one's
likes and dislikes and the subtle prejudices and
whining annoyances of the self on others. Society
exists to put limits on the desire of the ego to make
itself the center of the universe; and maturity could
once be defined as the child's gradual recognition that
his or her emotions, demands and sensitivities are no
longer absolute.
"Sensitivity," however, (and please note the
quotation marks here) transforms the self--especially
the aggrieved self--into the imperial arbiter of
behavior. Everyone now must accommodate themselves to
the sensitivities of the self, whose power is based not
on force or even shared ideology, but on changeable and
perhaps arbitrary and exaggerated "feelings." This is
the historic (if not logical) culmination of the
development of inner-directed man into anxiety-ridden
other-directed man and later into psychological man.
David Riesman had written that inner-directed man had
relied on an internal gyroscope, other-directed man had
taken his lead from emotional radar. But the
mechanistic metaphors are now obsolete. Sensitive man
is neither a gyroscope nor a radar. He is a raw nerve,
frequently inflamed.
Big Nanny Is Watching
Despite its psychological pedigree, "sensitivity" has
proven to be a powerful political weapon. By redefining
ideology in non-ideological terms, it has provided a
pretext for sweeping changes in American universities,
but also in the larger society, by radically changing
the standards of equity and evidence. Here again, Brown
University has set the pace. All minority students have
been assigned to the school's Third World Transition
Program (a rather eccentric name for a program designed
for black students from New Jersey). In a description
of the program, journalist Pete Hamill notes that "It
is race-driven; it assumes that non-whites are indeed
different from other Americans, mere bundles of
pathologies, permanent residents in the society of
victims, and therefore require special help. 'They're
made to feel separate from the first day they arrive,'
and 'they stay separate for the next four years.'"
In this atmosphere the scope of victim-protections
goes far beyond simply punishing undergraduates who
yell "nigger" in the dormitory. Few schools have so
eagerly embraced the metaphysics of victimism and the
therapeutic ethos of stamping out "insensitivity" as
has Brown, which has hired sensitivity "experts" and
consultants to minister to the prejudices of its
unenlightened undergraduates.
One consultant hired by Brown is Donald Kao, who
openly acknowledges that his goal is to convince his
audience that America is a racist society in which
"privileged" whites have established arbitrary norms of
acceptable behavior. Nor is his goal merely to
encourage tolerance. Kao's "standard of gauging one's
behavior" is far more demanding. "If you are feeling
comfortable or normal," he insists, then you are
probably oppressing someone, whether that person is a
woman or a gay or whatever. We probably won't rid our
society of racism until everyone strives to be
abnormal."
Having acculturated minorities to their oppressed
status, Brown insists on preternatural alertness for
signs of racism--which, by definition, is everywhere.
"It is both subtle and overt," a university publication
announces. "Racism is encountered through our language,
actions, non-verbal communications, institutions,
access to privilege and educational processes." No one
at Brown, it declares, is "immune." But, like guilt,
potential victimhood is also an equal opportunity
affair. Individuals are protected against slurs on the
basis of such characteristics as "race, religion,
gender, handicap, economic status, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, national origin, or on the basis of position
or function." (It is unclear whether the ban on
ridicule "on the basis of position or function" applies
to jokes about "dumb jocks" or rich frat boys.)
Significantly, Brown's policy has not been framed
as a ban on improper activity; it is cast in the form
of a right of victims "to live in an environment free
from harassment." The importance of this distinction
lies in the fact that the right to be free of
"harassment" can be enforced even when there is no
intent to harass or demean. Banned activities include,
"inappropriate verbal attention, name calling, using
racial/ethnic epithets, vandalism and pranks." More
explicitly, students are warned: "If the purpose of
your behavior, language, or gesture is to harass, harm,
cause psychological stress or make someone the focus of
your joke, you are engaged in a harassing manner. It
may be intentional or unintentional and still
constitute harassment." [Emphasis added.]
It is not, I think, an exercise in over-scrupulous
legalism to point out the inherent contradictions in
that statement. In one sentence harassment is described
as the purposeful infliction of harm ("If the purpose
of your behavior...is to...cause..."): but the very
next sentence renders it meaningless by declaring that
even "unintentional" acts may constitute harassment as
well.
Brown's administrators have unintentionally but
graphically revealed the slippery nature of such
policies and the near-impossibility of crafting
equitable policies that are grounded on purely
subjective judgments. This becomes even more pointed
when Brown describes the "effects" of harassment in
purely therapeutic terms. In almost every case the
alleged damage is purely subjective--a matter of
"feelings" and impressions--rather than a matter of
actual or demonstrable harm. The listed effects
include: "Loss of self-esteem"; "a vague sense of
danger" (rather than actual danger); "a feeling that
one's personal security and dignity have been
undermined"; "denial of opportunity, privilege or
right"; "feelings of impotence, anger and
disenfranchisement"; "withdrawal"; "fear"; "anxiety";
"depression"; "a sense of embarrassment from being
ridiculed." Almost by definition there is little or no
defense to a charge of such harassment. If the victim
insists that he or she experienced "anxiety" or
"embarrassment" because of something someone said,
proof is beside the point. Lack of intention is no
defense. Sensitivity demands belief.
In the late 1980s, the University of Michigan
adopted a sweeping "speech code" aimed at wiping out
racist, sexist, homophobic, and ethnocentric slurs.
Students were warned that they could be suspended or
expelled for any act "verbal or physical, that
stigmatizes or victimizes an individual on the basis of
race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation,
creed, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status,
handicap, or Vietnam-era veteran status." Because the
policy was so broad--and vague--it raised the obvious
question of how it would be enforced. How would
students know exactly what stigmatized someone on the
basis of, say; "Vietnam-era status" or "ancestry"? Most
important of all, what sort of proof would be needed?
The university's answer was direct: None. (It also
raised questions of how it could be reconciled with the
First Amendment. A federal judge later invalidated the
policy.)
"Experience at the university," a university
publication explained, "has been that people almost
never make false complaints about discrimination."
[Emphasis added.] That specifically included any
alleged incident for which there were no witnesses, the
school said. If it was one student's word against
another's, the accused was presumed guilty. Michigan's
policy did more than simply invert normal standards
that require accusers to shoulder the burden of proof.
It enshrined the doctrine that issues of victimism
could and should be judged on radically new terms--
further breaking down the distinction between fact and
fabrication.
In March 1990 a black student at Emory University
reported that she had been the object of a campaign of
racial harassment. The nineteen-year-old freshman
reported that her room had been ransacked, racial slurs
written on the walls, and said that she had received
death threats. Her allegations received national media
attention after she reportedly curled up in the fetal
position and refused to speak.
Emory's president--the episode clearly on his
mind--penned an article for The New York Times
denouncing "renascent bigotry," and using the incident
as a justification for his schools' sweeping ban on any
"conduct (oral, written, graphic or physical) directed
against any person or group...that has the purpose or
reasonably foreseeable effect of creating an offensive,
demeaning, intimidating, or hostile environment."
But the episode of "renascent bigotry" never
happened.
After investigating the allegations, officials
determined the episode was an elaborate hoax on the
student's part, designed to divert attention from her
alleged cheating on a chemistry test. When asked for
his reaction, however, the head of the Atlanta NAACP
said: "It doesn't matter...whether she did it or not,
because of all the pressure these black students are
under at these predominantly white schools. If this
will highlight it, if it will bring it to the attention
of the public, I have no problem with that."
At Emory, the metaphysics of victimization finally
transcended the mundane world of reality and fact.
But if "sensitivity" demanded belief, it also
demanded the opposite, depending on the racial or
gender identity of the perpetrator. It turns out that
insensitivity is not always insensitivity; and only
someone with a reliable and up-to-date political
scorecard can tell for sure.
Gayatri Spivak, a professor of English and
cultural studies at the University of Pittsburgh,
argued, for example, that it is unreasonable to expect
minorities to practice the sort of tolerance demanded
of white students. "Tolerance is a loaded virtue," he
explained, "because you have to have a base of power to
practice it. You cannot ask a certain people to
'tolerate' a culture that has historically ignored them
at the same time their children are indoctrinated into
it." His position was echoed by a group of professors
at the University of Michigan who declared: "Behavior
which constitutes racist oppression when engaged in by
whites does not have this character when undertaken by
people of color."
Similarly, one of the authors of Stanford's speech
code argued that its ban on offensive language would
not apply to black students. By definition, they were
incapable of "insensitivity." In the same way that the
guilt of whites as universal racists was simply
assumed, the innocence of blacks was axiomatic.
According to Professor Robert Rabin, whites did
not need any protection from abusive language because
they did not have a history of being discriminated
against. Only those who have been victims of oppression
needed to be shielded from offensive words, he said.
Calling a white a "honky" is not the same as calling a
black a "nigger." This was essentially the same
argument advanced by Stanford Law Professor Mari
Matsuda in a 1989 law review article in which she
argued for anti-racist speech bans because freedom of
speech should be understood as an instrument to help
members of powerless groups. The emphasis on group
rather than individual rights is crucial because it
locates constitutional protections not in one's
citizenship, but in one's status on the victim
hierarchy. Under Matsuda's doctrine, critic David Rieff
noted, "a rich woman would presumably be protected by
the First Amendment but a poor white man (unless gay,
or disabled, or otherwise 'disenfranchised') would
not."
As interpreted in the light of victimist politics,
the Stanford policy embodied what Nat Hentoff called a
"new sliding scale of permissible expression" that was
completely dependent on comparative victimhood. Given
their history of oppression, Hentoff wondered,
shouldn't Native Americans get even more protection
than blacks? Was a slur against an Italian-American to
be punished more harshly than being offensive to a
Presbyterian? Given the history of anti-Semitism,
Hentoff wondered whether Jews would "get special
leniency when they insult members of other religions?"
The question was not entirely frivolous.
Once status was determined by the degree of one's
victimhood, every nuance of oppression became crucial--
one's rights now depended on the constantly shifting
scorecard of aggrievement. This is not a trivial
distinction; there is a vast difference between basing
rights upon respect and linking rights to personal
inadequacy.
Restoring Common Sense
This is a distinction that most Americans can
understand. And this brings us to the fourth and final
point in our attack on the politics of victimization:
Common sense. It is always a mistake to underestimate
the reservoirs of good sense that have survived the
various attacks of political, cultural and therapeutic
elites. Simple native good sense has already
experienced a modest comeback of sorts on college
campuses, where the more lugubrious and heavy-handed
aspects of political correctness have foundered on
their own absurdity.
Common sense can certainly go a long way toward
making distinctions between a bungled pass and an act
of rape; between greed and "compulsive shopping
syndrome"; between victims of racial discrimination and
victims of "motorism," or "sizeism"; between the
genuinely handicapped and the "chronically late"; and
between bad luck and acts of social victimization.
In short, Americans need to lighten up.
The politicized culture of victimization often
confuses mere difference with inequity and oppression,
while common sense reminds that difference is, well,
often just being different. Most of us can tell the
difference between making a mistake and being
victimized; between excelling and oppressing someone.
All of us experience unfairness and injustice, but that
does not mean we need to turn them into all-purpose
alibis.
Most important of all, our common sense and the
human tradition it reflects reminds us that we are all
fallible, all beset with human foibles and limitations.
At some level of our being, we all know that something
is required of us, however much we may try to shake it
off. Instinctively and rationally we know our
responsibilities; we know that we are not sick when we
are merely weak; we know that others are not to blame
when we have erred; we know that the world does not
exist to make us happy.
At the end of one of his novels, Saul Bellow has
his character Arthur Sammler, survivor of the
concentration camps and eternal witness to the follies
of his fellow man, sum up the life of a dead friend by
declaring that in the end, "he did meet the terms of
his contract. The terms which, in his innermost heart
each man knows. As I know mine. As all know. For that
is the truth of it--that we all know, God, that we
know, we know, we know."
------------------------
Charles J. Sykes' best-selling book, Profscam:
Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (Regnery
Gateway, 1988), won critical praise from the New York
Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Sykes followed up with a second volume, The Hollow
Men: Politics and Corruption in Higher Education
(Regnery Gateway) in 1990. He has also co-edited The
National Review College Guide (National Review Books,
1991) and is editor of WI: Wisconsin Interest. He is
currently a senior fellow of the Wisconsin Policy
Research Institute.
###
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