We need to make our differences discussable, in order to make them usable

Published in the Asheville Citizen-Times - 7 May 2005

Political correctness—dancing around what we really want to say and ask, not talking about difficult issues for fear of offending someone—is killing us.

Rather than helping navigate treacherous waters of difference, this self-censorship is driving people further apart. Unable to determine correct terminology for individuals or groups of people different from us (since the rules seem to change constantly), many people have simply stopped interacting with those different from them altogether.

Rather than err and describe an African-American person as black when they prefer another term, we engineer ourselves out of situations where we’d need to make that decision. Rather than risk offending a person who is Muslim by raising the question of their religious beliefs and dress, we avoid them. Rather than be rebuked for mentioning someone’s race—even though studies show that skin color is the first thing we notice when meeting someone—we pretend we don’t notice the difference.

The result? More division, misunderstanding, distrust.

This urge toward political correctness attempts to sanitize what is messy: life is messy, particularly with increasing numbers of people who don’t look like me. Each individual has their own set of preferences – how can I possibly know them in order not to offend? I can’t.

I can’t always know the right words to say when talking with someone who has a different ethnic background, a different set of cultural norms, a different way of eating, greeting, or meeting – but I can learn to ask respectful questions to get information I need to interact effectively and in a way that enriches both of us. “Help me understand” is a nonjudgmental way to start that conversation: “help me understand the rituals associated with your religion,” “help me understand your feelings about gay marriage,” “help me understand your dietary needs.” It’s also a two way-street: it is as destructive to intentionally take offense as it is to intentionally give offense.

Perhaps we have difficulty acknowledging difference because we have confused recognizing difference with making a judgment.

One of the first employees I supervised was an African-American woman named Annette. Once she overheard me describing to a Board member who had never met her how he could recognize her in a meeting they were both attending later in the week, a meeting at which Annette would be the only African-American participant. Bemused, she listened to me use every other possible descriptor: “Annette? Well, she’ll be the well-dressed young woman with dark hair who is 5-feet, 6 inches tall. I’ll ask her to wear her name tag.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier,” she said afterwards, “to tell him I’ll be the only African-American there?” Why did I hesitate? I didn’t want to define her by her skin color, I wasn’t sure if she preferred to be described as African-American or black, and I had confused discussing difference with making a judgment.

We learn from a young age not to acknowledge difference. When my older daughter was quite young, she saw a man in a wheelchair at the grocery store one day. “Mama!,” she shouted, “that man has no legs!” My immediate reaction? “Shhhhh!,” I whispered. “It’s not polite to point.”

It wasn’t new information to the man in the wheelchair that he had no legs, anymore than it is news to my African-American friends that their skin is darker than mine. By minimizing the difference, we lose the ability to talk about it, to acknowledge the often unconscious judgments that lie behind that discomfort, and to learn from and make the difference usable in some way.

A friend has quadriplegia as a result of an accident. Many who meet him try to avoid acknowledging the obvious: Howard is unable to move from the chest down. It is a difference that is glaringly obvious, yet people go to great lengths to pretend they don’t notice. It is a dance we have all done around difference. The result? People veer away from Howard, they avoid him altogether rather than risk offending him.

Gordon Alport, author of The Nature of Prejudice, built a model from his research at Harvard called “The Stages of Prejudice.” Acts we know are wrong are included, such as discrimination and violence, but the first stage of prejudice might surprise you: avoidance.

Many people talk about wanting a “colorblind” society in which we don’t notice difference, but that is the wrong goal. Let’s work instead for a society in which our differences are our greatest asset, and in which we acknowledge, celebrate, and learn from those differences.

To attempt to ignore our differences by avoiding them is to render all of our lives, identities, contributions, and backgrounds trivial. We must learn how to talk about our differences, not around them. We must move from political correctness to respectful questioning, from avoidance to engagement.