Political Correctness And Make Believe

May 21, 2012 by Sam Rolley

Sean King, a white second-grader, dressed up as Martin Luther King Jr. and got in trouble.

The United States has come a long way since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

One must wonder what King, whose dream was for his four children to live in a Nation where they would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” would think of today’s political correctness-obsessed society. Our society has become so overly sensitive in matters of race that even the most innocent things are deemed offensive.

Take, for instance, the efforts of school officials at Meridian Ranch Elementary School in Peyton, Colo., to make an innocent second-grader believe he had done something wrong for preparing a presentation about King all by himself. The incident happened on the school’s wax museum day, according to local KRDO NewsChannel 13. Second-grade students were assigned historical figures to dress up as and report on, and Sean King, a white student, was assigned the famous civil rights leader.

In preparation for his project, Sean decided he would need a few things if he would be portraying King. He went about putting together his costume, complete with the white shirt, black suit and black tie combination that King was often pictured wearing, a fake moustache; and black face paint to make himself look more like King.

On the day of the presentation, Sean’s parents went to the school along with the parents of other youngsters who were dressed as various other historical figures.

“Right before it was time to come in (to the classroom), the principal came up and stated he (Sean) was to take the face mask off. There was a person in the faculty that had an issue with it,” Michelle King-Roca, the child’s mother, told KRDO.

A spokesman for the school told the news source that the principal’s decision was made because staff members, and possibly some students, were offended by Sean’s costume. His parents opted to leave the school with Sean rather than ruin the presentation for which he had prepared so diligently.

“As a parent I think it’s pretty sad that you’ve got a principal and a faculty member that are acting the way they are when they should be setting an example for children,” Anthony Roca said.

A local chapter of the National Association for the Achievement of Colored People chimed in and offered support for the school’s decision to confuse the child and make him feel as if he had done something terribly wrong.

“By having blackface as part of his presentation, it ended up harkening back to a really tragic time in the life of this country, a time when blackface was used by entertainers primarily to demean African-Americans,” Rosemary Harris Lytle told KRDO.

Of course the student, being in the second grade and not working for the NAACP, likely has no knowledge of the use of blackface by white actors to portray blacks in cinema of the past (and more recently, on an episode of the sitcom “30 Rock”) or why it could be offensive.

This story is just one of an ever-compounding number of examples of a problem that has replaced bigoted racism in America: sensitive racism.

In “The Historical Roots of ‘Political Correctness’”, Raymond V. Raehn writes: “Political Correctness is not at all about ‘being nice,’ unless one thinks gulags are nice places. Political Correctness is Marxism, with all that implies: loss of freedom of expression, thought control, inversion of the traditional social order and, ultimately, a totalitarian state.”

Problem is, if “judging by the content of their character” is frowned upon, and judging by the color r their skin is unsavory, then, uh, what’s left? Oh! I get it! That’s why there are now no winners and no losers, right?