Political Correctness
— one last time.
Summer 1991
As to the disorder of political correctness in curriculum, we will have nothing more to say. We have read, and urge you all to read, a piece called “Illiberalisms” in the New Yorker of May 20, 1991. It is a review by Louis Menand of Illiberal Education, by Dinesh D’Souza. This is the book that brought the great political correctness flap out of Academe and into the popular press and its op-ed page.
Louis Menand, whoever he is, and we wish we knew, is exactly what he should be—a card-carrying member of neither warring faction. He discerns and understands the nonsense on both sides of No Man’s Land. His book review has the remarkable effect, therefore, of hitting D’Souza right where he should be hit, and hurt, but without giving aid and comfort to the sillies in whose ludicrous sottises D’Souza has found such easy and entertaining targets.
But what we like best about Menand is his superb grasp of grammar. Here he is on the truly important concern hidden by the political correctness mess:
“Having sensibly decided that we were wrong in believing that a person’s race and sex are the least important things about him or her, we have now apparently concluded that they must be the only important things. Words that ought to be adjectives—black, white, female, male, homosexual, heterosexual—have been made into substantives.”
Now there you can see the truest practice of good grammar, pure and undefiled.
Richard Mitchell
