In the early 90’s I was working at the South Florida branch of a large telecommunications company. One day, the HR people were seen walking around looking at everyone’s offices and cubes and taking notes.
When they reached the cube of a good friend of mine, they pointed to a flag he had pinned to the wall of his workspace and told him he had to remove it. Because, somebody had complained about it. We learned later that a single person was “offended” by the flag and that was enough to have it removed.
The objectionable item? It was a small replica of the flag Jacques Cousteau flew on his ship the Calypso.
This event happened right when the term “politically correct” first started becoming popular. Now, fast-forward 25 years.
I wrote a few days ago about how someone at the Topeka Goodyear plant had told people that wearing clothes that said “Black Lives Matter” or “LGBTQ Pride” is acceptable but wearing “Blue Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter” is not.
These are two examples of “Political Correctness” gone amok.
People have the mistaken belief that the Constitution protects them from being offended. It does not. Here’s what it says in the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. That single paragraph guarantees my right to say what I want outweighs your desire to not be offended.
But, let’s take this a step further. According to the U.S. EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) here’s how they define workplace harassment:
“To be unlawful, the conduct must create a work environment that would be intimidating, hostile, or offensive to reasonable people.”
The key word isn’t “offensive”, it’s “reasonable”. Would any reasonable person have an issue with the flag from the Calypso? Would any reasonable person be offended by someone wearing an “All Lives Matter” shirt? No, they would not.
Unfortunately, companies like Goodyear are not being reasonable. In their desire to be “woke”, they pander to the Left and trample on the rights of reasonable people.
Finally, let’s consider the word “offensive”. It’s a “homograph”. A homograph is a word that can be pronounced the same way but have different meanings depending on the context. For example, you can say “I find that offensive” or “I’m going to go on the offensive”. The first statement means “repugnant to the moral sense” while the latter means “an attack”.
So, by banning the phrase “All Lives Matter”, Goodyear is demonstrating that it believes the term “All Lives Matter” will be either morally repugnant to their employees or that that they are words being used to attack their employees. No reasonable person would agree with either interpretation.
Liberals are increasingly using the word “offensive” to disrupt the free exchange of ideas. Anything that goes against their cause is deemed to be “offensive” which effectively suppresses those ideas from being heard.
Nearly everyone who will read this has heard the old rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me.” Many of us all learned the rhyme shortly after we learned to talk. It was used to teach us not to sweat the small stuff and not to let people push our buttons.
Perhaps some people believe that the rhyme is outdated and they’re not able to draw a parallel to today. If that’s the case, let me help you. It means you should stop pretending to be offended by anything that might make you question your beliefs. And, it means that if you’re that easily offended, you need to grow a pair and suck it up.
Extra Credit Fact for reading this far: According to the entry for Political Correctness on Britannica.com, “The term first appeared in Marxist-Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. At that time it was used to describe adherence to the policies and principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (that is, the party line).”
