-By Lee Culpepper
Ramming multiculturalism, diversity, and intolerant-tolerance down the throats of captive students keeps many public schools quite busy. But unwelcome menaces like critical thinking and factual history jeopardize this multicultural indoctrination of students; consequently, many politically correct educators have fought shamelessly and successfully to abolish these perceived “threats” from their classrooms. While PC terms often sound nontoxic and even advantageous, they have actually served to strangle the ability to think.
The disturbing news from Jena, Louisiana, elucidates my point. Racial mayhem has struck this small town. There we have two racial sub-cultures that clearly expose the foolishness of the PC agenda engulfing America. Multicultural zealots insist that all cultures are equal. In fact, they encourage individuals to mindlessly celebrate the culture in which they were born – especially if an individual’s culture runs diametrically opposite to America’s productive melting-pot society. Even more troublesome, to support assimilating into America’s mainstream traditions equates to an abominable sin in multiculturalism’s pagan religion.
On the other hand, the two cultures clashing in Jena help to expose political correctness for the sham that it is. If these two sub-cultures (one white, one black) of American society are equal to every other culture, then what’s the problem? Obviously, these two cultures are counterproductive for the people who live them – that’s the problem! Many other worldly cultures are counterproductive, too. Muslims who see all non-Muslims as infidels — worthy of slaughter — is a relevant example.
Ignorance appears to be an obvious factor in Jena’s disaster. Perhaps if these students were taught factual history and critical thinking skills versus politically correct garbage, they might be farther along in their social development. Maybe advocating every culture except mainstream American culture has also contributed to their stunted intellectual growth.
The nooses hung by the white kids in Jena represented a revolting symbol of the antebellum South. However, do you think these imbeciles along with average American students have any clue that far more whites than blacks were hanged in the antebellum South’s ugly brand of mob justice and violence? No, this fact does not mitigate the actions of the morons who hung the nooses; it simply suggests the shameful failure of public education to teach our students factual history along with thinking skills that work together to steer individuals away from such disgraceful actions. Only individuals arrogant of their own ignorance take pride in such “traditions.”
As far as the six black kids who mauled the white boy, one must question where they learned such violence. Recognizing that violence plagues a sub-culture of black America is an unpopular topic of discussion. But under the circumstances in Jena, deflecting attention away from these six boys’ brutal actions is downright disgraceful – especially considering that their victim simply had the wrong skin color.
To quote Huck Finn, the entire situation in Jena “was enough to make a body ashamed of the whole human race.” Unfortunately, most students today never study Mark Twain’s bitter and scolding messages regarding our society. Making students uncomfortable by dealing with truth violates the PC doctrine of self-esteem.
Making excuses for bad behavior helps no one. Thursday night on the O’Reilly Factor, Jesse Jackson blamed all sorts of reasons other than an absence of personal responsibility and self-discipline for the struggles of many black Americans today. He avoided the 70% illegitimacy rate of black children as if it were his yearly proctology examination. How “white-controlled television lenses” or the availability of “semi-automatic weapons” can contribute to this cultural calamity caused by each individual’s personal decisions still escapes my understanding.
What does make sense, however, regarding this crisis in a part of the black community is the political correctness that Jackson advocates. Multiculturalism supports counterproductive cultures like the glamorized ghetto culture. The individuals mired in such detrimental cultures are prodded and coaxed not to change. Furthermore, multiculturalism does not tolerate not tolerating similar self-defeating cultures. Even other blacks like Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell are rebuked for criticizing destructive behavior.
When it comes to multicultural brainwashing, one thing is certain. If we cave in to the pressures of political correctness, every American will stand guilty of hanging his own noose.
____________________
Lee Culpepper is a Marine turned high school English teacher. Currently, he is writing his first book, Alone and Unafraid: One Marine’s Counterattack Inside the Walls of Public Education. Lee is also a contributing columnist for The North Carolina Conservative, The HinzSight Report, and The Publius’ Forum. An increasing number of publications, including The Conservative Voice and MichNews.com, have run his recent articles, as well.
Lee can be reached at drcoolpepper@yahoo.com.
Visit Lee’s blog at http://wlculpepper.townhall.com/