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Marilyn Friedman and Jan Narveson Political Correctness: For and Against. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 1995. Pp. viii + 153.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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References
1 Kimball, Roger Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Higher Education (New York: Harper and Row 1990), 2Google Scholar
2 See Messer-Davidow, Ellen ‘Manufacturing the Attack on Higher Education,’ Social Text 36 (1993) 40–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richer, Stephen and Weir, Lorna eds., Beyond Political Correctness: Toward the Inclusive University (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and especially Wilson, John K. The Myth of Political Correctness (Durham and London: Duke University Press 1995)Google Scholar.
3 Curiously, philosophers have not had much to say about PC. The few exceptions are: Beckwith, Francis J. ‘The Epistemology of Political Correctness,’ Public Affairs Quarterly 8 (1994) 331–40Google Scholar; Foster, Lawrence and Herzog, Patricia eds., Defending Diversity: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives on Pluralism and Multiculturalism (Boston: The University of Massachusetts Press 1994)Google Scholar; Searle, John ‘The Storm Over the University,’ reprinted in Berman, Paul ed., Debating PC (New York: Dell 1992)Google Scholar; and Yates, Steven ‘Multiculturalism and Epistemology,’ Public Affairs Quarterly 6 (1992) 435–56Google Scholar. See also Choi, Jung Min and Murphy, John W. The Politics and Philosophy of Political Correctness (Westport, CT: Praeger 1992).Google Scholar
4 D'Souza, Dinesh Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (New York: The Free Press 1991)Google Scholar
5 Political libertarianism, which emphasizes the importance of individual rights and holds that the least government is the best government, is to be distinguished from moral libertarianism, which adds to this the idea that morality is exhausted by negative rights to noninterference. The distinction has relevance in the present context in the following way. The political libertarian might agree that racism and sexism are immoral; his complaint has to do with attempts to enlist the state to fight these wrongs. The moral libertarian, however, is dubious about the moral wrongness of racism and sexism. Hence the challenge of providing acceptable remedies for racism and sexism will be acknowledged by the former but not by the latter, unless racism and sexism are directly the result of governmental interference with citizens’ negative rights. It will become clear below that Narveson is a moral libertarian.
6 See, e.g., Emberley, Peter C. and Newell, Waller eds., Bankrupt Education: The Decline of Liberal Education in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994), 62.Google Scholar
7 For elements of both defenses see Bennett, William To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education (Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities 1984)Google Scholar; Bloom, Allan The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster 1987)Google Scholar; Donald Kagan, ‘Western Values are Central,’ New York Times (4 May 1991), A23.
8 As we shall see below, Narveson's argument here is repeated in response to charges of discrimination in hiring. He claims that, in all but a limited range of cases, it would be irrational for employers to overlook qualified candidates on the basis of their sex or race. He appears to conclude from this that sexual and racial discrimination in hiring is so infrequent to be of little concern.
9 See Nochlin, Linda ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ in Women, Art, and Power (New York: Harper & Row 1988)Google Scholar.
10 See Lloyd, Genevieve The Man of Reason (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 1984)Google Scholar.
11 To be fair, Narveson does not reserve this sort of charge for women or blacks. With respect to the philosophy curriculum he writes: ‘I … attribute the predominance of Greeks, Germans, and British in anthologies of philosophical classics to the fact that they, on any reasonable showing, are the greatest philosophers up to until very recently. No self-respecting Canadian philosopher would put any Canadians on such a list; scarcely any American would go beyond suggesting Peirce for marginal inclusion’ (134).
12 We do well to distinguish two ways in which this belief might bear on questions of bias in the canon. Prevailing beliefs about women's capacities might be very efficient in dissuading women from attempting to paint and write. In this case, we would expect that there are few (historical) works by women available to be included. Alternatively, those same beliefs might have entered into the selection of material for the canon. Here it is possible that many great works by women were not recognized as great because they were produced by women. I suspect that the small number of women among the ‘greats’ is a function of both of these phenomena. But it is important to note that only the latter is a clear case of bias in the canon. The former, while certainly problematic, cannot be corrected simply by including mediocre women's painting from the sixteenth century on the art history canon and pretending that it is great. Explicitly addressing the question of why there have been so few great women artists is another matter.
13 Friedman directs our attention to Boxhill, Bernard Blacks and Social Justice (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld 1984)Google Scholar. See also Pojman, Louis ‘The Moral Status of Affirmative Action,’ Public Affairs Quarterly 6 (1992) 181–206.Google Scholar
14 Irvine, A.D. ‘Jack and Jill and Employment Equity,’ Dialogue 35 (1996) 255–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Arguably, such consequentialist considerations underlie the decision of the Philosophy Department at the University of Toronto to institute a hiring policy, ‘the most prominent feature of which was the self-imposed commitment to fill two-thirds of … tenure stream appointments during [the 1990s] with women’ (Sumner, L.W. ‘Why the Numbers Count,’ Dialogue 35 (1996) 375–85, at 379)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Holding that such policies represent a ‘recipe for disaster’ (94), Narveson makes some rather inflammatory, unsubstantiated remarks about the alleged bad effects of affirmative action (94-5). For example, he claims that ‘elementary arithmetic’ shows that programs such as Toronto's will result in two-tier academic departments. When we hire more women than men over a given period, all of the men, but few of the women will be ‘superstar[s] by the standards of the field’ (95). For a hint of how to reply, see Hurka, Thomas Principles: Short Essays on Ethics (Toronto: Harcourt, Brace & Company 1994), 159.Google Scholar
16 At one point Narveson conflates this view with another far less plausible assumption — namely, that all human beings are equally able and competent for any endeavor (83). But I know of no advocate of affirmative action who advances this claim.
17 Narveson appears to be oblivious to the ways in which his frequent references to black athletes reiterate well-entrenched racist stereotypes. A minute percentage of black men have become very wealthy through playing professional sports. But this is no indication of the diminution of racism. Michael Jordan wields no real power in society, and were his face not so well-known, he would be subject to the same sorts of harassment that other black men — professional and nonprofessional alike — suffer. The idea that black men are somehow genetically disposed to be good at sport feeds a particular racist view, clearly manifested by one NBC commentator at the 1996 Summer Olympics who likened the movements of a Ghanian male sprinter to those of a ‘caged animal.’
18 Narveson thinks the current situation for women in academia, far from requiring correction in women's favor, is actually already tilted in that direction. It is true that fewer women than men enter the hard sciences and philosophy, but ‘those women who do earn Ph.D.'s in the statistically more masculine subjects have the red carpet laid for them’ (93). And ‘(w]omen without completed doctorates, no publications, and a field of concentration quite alien to what was wanted are routinely hired over male applicants with completed degrees, half a dozen publications, and a career in graduate school devoted to precisely the field advertised for’ (95, emphasis added). The passing over of highly qualified males for unqualified females is ‘virtually typical’ (146); a female candidate is ‘essentially assured of entry into a desirable profession if she is even minimally competent’ (95, emphasis added). Narveson's only cited evidence for this ‘routine, typical’ state of affairs is the mention of one experience at an unnamed university (84).
19 See also Narveson, Jan Moral Matters (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press 1993)Google Scholar.
20 Narveson's example concerns the Brooklyn Dodgers’ decision to hire Jackie Robinson. He claims that the Dodgers’ management made a purely economic decision in hiring Robinson which nonetheless had a major influence on ‘breaking existing color barriers’ (81) — for example, with respect to gaining blacks access to hotels. However, as Friedman reminds us, it was ‘antidiscrimination law, which by imposing penalties for proven race discrimination in public accommodations, made it economically irrational for hotel owners to turn away black customers’ (119).
21 See, e.g., Hentoff, Nat Free Speech for Me — But Not for Thee (New York: Harper Collins 1992)Google Scholar.
22 See Stanley Fish, ‘There's No Such Thing as Free Speech and It's a Good Thing, Too,’ reprinted in Berman, Debating PC.
23 See, e.g., Matsuda, Mari J. Lawrence, Charles R. III, Delgado, Richard and Crenshaw, Kimberlè Williams Words That Wound (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1993)Google Scholar. For responses see Gates, Henry Louis Jr., Griffin, Anthony P. Lively, Donald E. Post, Robert C. Rubenstein, William and Strossen, Nadine (with an introduction by Ira Glasser), Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties (New York: New York University Press 1994)Google Scholar.
24 In a particularly misleading paragraph, he implies that defenders of speech codes equate ‘what may well be true propositions’ — for example, that blacks are less intelligent than whites, as measured by standard IQ tests — with ‘verbal abuse’ (98).
25 See Hentoff, Free Speech for Me; Strossen, Nadine Defending Pornography (New York: Scribners 1995)Google Scholar.
26 Austin, J.L. How To Do Things With Words (London: Oxford University Press 1962), 12Google Scholar. Langton, Rae ‘Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1993) 293–330Google Scholar represents the most successful attempt, drawing on speech act theory, to render plausible the idea that speech of certain kinds can subordinate. For an argument to the effect that speech can silence, see Hornsby, Jennifer ‘Speech Acts and Pornography,’ in Dwyer, Susan ed., The Problem of Pornography (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company 1995)Google Scholar.
27 MacKinnon, Catharine A. Only Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1993), 31Google Scholar. For illuminating discussion on the connection between gender and authority see also Code, Lorraine Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations (New York: Routledge 1995)Google Scholar.
28 See Schwartz, Alan ‘Hate Activity and the Jewish Community,’ in Lederer, Laura J. and Delgado, Richard eds., The Price We Pay: The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography (New York: Hill & Wang 1995)Google Scholar.
29 MacKinnon, Catharine A. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1987), 164.Google Scholar
30 The claim that a person's sex influences how she sees the social world is to be distinguished from the more contentious one that a person's sex determines her consciousness. For more on the relevance of this distinction see Yates, ‘Multiculturalism and Epistemology.’
31 Thanks to an anonymous referee for comments, and, especially, to Paul Pietroski for helpful discussion and comments on earlier drafts.