At a diplomatic reception in Beijing a few years ago, the former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, dropped a spicy chicken wing into the turn-up of his trousers and continued to make small talk with finger food bobbing closer to his toes than is generally considered decent. A man who displays such a lack of social graces can still go far (for a woman it would be terminal).
But in some jobs such flaws can be a serious handicap. And so it was last month that Summers resigned from Harvard, having alienated much of the faculty. During his short presidency, Summers notched up some notable successes but even more enemies. Clashes with one of the nation’s most prominent black academics, Cornel West, prompted West to defect to Princeton. Meanwhile, Summers supported the United States army’s right to recruit on campus. And, most famously, last year he argued that women were genetically ill-equipped to excel at the highest levels of maths and science.
To some, Summers has become a martyr — a man ”daring” enough to ”challenge the pillars of political correctness”, who caused ”would-be feminists [to get] the vapours”.
In other words, Summers’s problem was not that he blundered, but that he was brave. Quite what is brave about suggesting women are not as clever as men, supporting the US army or hounding out a black academic is not clear.
But the days when courage referred to those who take on the mighty against all odds and face the consequences are, apparently, over. For, when it comes to attacking the weak and backing the strong, ”bravery” has somehow become the mot du jour.
A couple of years ago, a British journalist won a major award for columns supporting the Iraq war on the grounds that to do so was ”brave”.
What, after all, is ”brave” about supporting the policies of both your government and the sole global superpower against a country that posed no threat?
Likewise, when David Goodhart, the editor of Prospect magazine, published his blueprint for racial exclusion two years ago (”To put it bluntly,” he wrote, ”most of us prefer our own kind”), he was praised for being ”bold”.
It is not the validity of these arguments that is at issue here but the characterisation of those who make them as audacious that is problematic.
To align yourself with the powerful and then take aim at the powerless takes not one ounce of valour. True, like Summers, you may run into trouble. But just look who’s covering your back. With the prevailing winds of war, prejudice or the state on your side, the odds are with you. Since the privileges you are defending are inherent in the commentariat — how many women, blacks, working-class people or Muslims get to speak, let alone be heard? — your world view is constantly being reinforced. It may still be the right thing to do — the weak should not be protected from criticism nor the strong denied praise solely on the grounds of their relative material strength. But those who choose Goliath’s corner cannot then claim underdog status once David gets out his slingshot.
Take the Danish cartoons. They were printed in a country that supports the war in Iraq, where, according to the Danish Institute for Human Rights, racially motivated crimes doubled between 2004 and 2005.
Barely had the ink dried on sermons extolling Western civilisation last month than scenes of colonial barbarism involving British troops beating Iraqis filled our screens. Soon after came more images from Abu Ghraib, showing a handcuffed Iraqi with mental-health problems being taunted by US soldiers.
These cartoons did not appear in a vacuum. In publishing them the editor of Jyllands-Posten had illustrated not just an insensitive Islamophobic jibe but a racist mindset that has consequences for Muslims worldwide. He had a right to print them. But to do so in this context was an act of bigotry, not bravery.
Underpinning this peculiar notion of courage is the feeble-minded obsession with political correctness — the ultimate refuge of the baseless argument and the clueless commentator. Over the past month, ”political correctness” has been used in the British press on average 10 times a day — twice as frequently as ”Islamophobia”, three times more than ”homophobia” and four times more than ”sexism”. Its ubiquity is due in no small part to its flexibility. During that period, it has been used to refer to the ill-treatment of rabbits, the teaching of Gaelic, Mozart’s opera La Clemenza di Tito, a flower show in Paris and the naming of the Mazda 3.
But it’s most commonly evoked to suggest that honest conversations are being curtailed by a liberal establishment intent on imposing its ideological beliefs on an unwilling public. Since only about 5% of daily newspapers bought by people in Britain could be described as progressive, there is plenty of room in the national discourse for rightwing people to say whatever they want. And they do. But once this straw man has been invented, you need only knock him down to earn your medal of valour.
It is true that some ways of behaving and speaking that were once mainstream are no longer acceptable. There was a time when such words as ”darkie”, ”paki”, ”puff”, ”spastic” and ”coloured” were common currency. We have abandoned them for the same reason we no longer burn witches at the stake or stick orphaned children in the poor-house. We have moved on. That’s not political correctness but social and political progress. Not imposed by liberal diktat, but established by civic consensus.
Those who are unwilling or unable to move on are welcome to those words and views. They might be crude, crass or contrarian, insensitive, ignorant or in denial. But whatever else they are, they are not brave. — Â