Free speech and public discourse are hindered by sensitivity madness
By Christian Cotroneo
Americans take their free speech with a grain of gunpowder. Recently, Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker was fined, suspended and forced to undergo a psychological examination as a result of unsavoury comments he made about minorities. Apparently, bigotry is now a psychological condition. That would mean that many of our parents and their parents are technically insane.
Canada is no less vigilant in monitoring, regulating and frequently sterilizing the public discourse. Some speech is even buried as though it had a nuclear half-life.
In the early ’90s, J. Philippe Rushton, a University of Western Ontario professor, compiled a mass of research on race theory. He contended that there was a link between IQ levels and race. When his theories entered the public discourse, Rushton was promptly demonized. His ideas on race were deemed so unpalatable by certain academic and media circles as to be dangerous.
David Suzuki, Canada’s scientist-in-residence, engaged Rushton in a series of televised debates. Suzuki, articulate and righteously indignant, appeared to win the day. And Rushton, along with his ideas, was quickly put out to pasture. Afterward, opposition to his ideas was so pronounced he had to deliver lectures via television monitors.
Since then, Rushton has been labeled a bigot and has received near-universal condemnation. In a recent posting on the Internet, the professor finally asked, “Where’s the intellectual discussion?”
What Rushton failed to understand was that there are some things even a “free” society is not comfortable discussing. Racial theory is one of them. Aside from the brief debate with Suzuki (which was hyped like a pay-per-view event), Rushton’s ideas have not been allowed to be proven true or false. Instead, they linger in the limbo of muted ideas. No one knows where they will pop up next. That’s why Rushton continues to haunt our cultural periphery and it’s certainly why his ideas remain a public nuisance.
Prof. Steven Rosenthal, an American sociologist, said that Rushton’s latest book is “essentially peddling racist hatred.” Donning the frock of a Franciscan monk, he proclaimed that no publisher should be permitted to disseminate such ideas. Rosenthal would do well to remember that burning books has a disturbing tendency to martyr ideas.
Rushton isn’t the only one forced to put political correctness before freedom of speech. Professional athletes seem especially prey to verbal indiscretions. Take, for example, the case of Ottawa Senator player Vaclav Prospal. During a game against the Montreal Canadiens, the fiery forward reportedly called one of his opponents “a fucking frog.” Patrice Brisebois, a French Canadian, cried moral outrage and reported the incident to National Hockey League authorities.
Prospal was promptly banished to “sensitivity school” to learn the finer points of hockey etiquette. Evidently, the finer point of a hockey stick may be thrust into eyeballs, necks and stomachs, but the ‘gentleman hockey player’ never loses his head. Prospal’s next visit to Montreal prompted a minor riot in the seats. Fans, who had clearly not attended sensitivity school themselves, hurled abuse and cheered when Prospal was manhandled on the ice.
If whitewashing public speech makes for a better looking society then sensitivity trainers may soon oust lawyers as the most popular profession in the West. The television-tidy solution can be applied to just about anyone, but it doesn’t actually get to the root of the problem. Most of us would be hard-pressed to ship their Uncle Frank off to sensitivity school after he fires off one of his notorious Jewish jokes at Thanksgiving dinner. Uncle Frank’s saving grace is that no one waves a microphone in his face. While safely buried in silent suburbia, he only embarrasses family members. It’s only when his son, Jake, becomes a professional athlete or a politician that trouble rears its ugly foot — and looks for a mouth in which to plant it. That’s when Jake looks for a sensitivity trainer to take it out.
As fear of strangers and immigrants runs amok in Canadian society, sensitivity training could be a timely vocation. If, however, bigotry, like many other human foibles, is not so easily removed from the popular mindset, then sensitivity training becomes a rather shallow exercise in public relations. Can we believe that Prospal is “cured”? Or has he only been publicly chastised? Will he never again mumble the newly minted ‘f-word’? After the psychology sessions, will Rocker come out of the bullpen a Renaissance man?
Or just . . . quiet?
As a public relations tactic, sensitivity school sends signals to the public and the offender. The public is placated by the knowledge that the transgressor has been ‘corrected’ while the offender is essentially told to keep his mouth shut when he leaves the house. Ultimately, the public gag order may have unexpected consequences. Schools for scandal must have textbooks. When everyone has learned “Everything You Ever Need to Say in Public” by rote, how much honesty can we expect from tomorrow’s public figures? We can look forward not to a brave new world where honest debate is openly engaged and everyone is encouraged to join the discussion — expect instead a public puppet show too often rendered speechless by cowardly concessions to public sensitivity. All the world may very well be a stage, but at least Shakespeare got to write his own script.