There is danger in our world of political correctness. It raised its head only slightly last week in the Dallas County Commissioner’s meeting when one of the elected worthies to the Commissioner’s Court noted an abjectly failing bureaucratic program of the county that was “consuming paper-work like a black hole.” Of course, anyone who has watched an episode of Star Trek would know what Kirk and Picard know, that a black hole is an astronomical phenomenon of a dark star so dense that its gravity does not even let light escape. But, apparently another of the commissioners found the term to be ethnically offensive. He’s also miffed that Angel Food Cake is white and Devil’s Food Cake is black, or at least dark brown.
The Man Takes Offense
Top it off with the Judge of the Commissioner’s Court (that’s the chairman of the county commission in non-Texan), who supports his brother and chastises the choice of language of the unrepentant space-man. It would be laughable if not so pathetically ignorant. Yet, in our quest to on the one hand always be inoffensive, while on the other support a demographic which is always offended, we emasculate our language and perpetuate our stupidity.
But, there is a much darker side to this issue. One that speaks not of racism or prejudice but of disaster on a global scale. This isn’t about petty offense but rather about our power of observation and willingness to actually express in words what we see occurring. Consider this piece:
Would That It Were Not So
It certainly courts condemnation. It says what is blatant and yet has a redolence of racism. It isn’t racist in the slightest. It is merely a willingness to say this is what is going on. It is true. It is depressing and tragic. Possibly the courage to stand and say it might be indicative of a willingness to recognize a problem and not ignore it. But where the solutions might lie totally escapes me. Meanwhile an entire continent festers without hope anywhere on the horizon.
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