Now I'm one who usually takes things with a grain of salt. We've definitely gotten too serious about ourselves these days, and need to laugh off much of what ends up offending us. Political correctness has gotten out of control.
But that doesn't alleviate unwise decisions.
Recently a group of Republican leaders attended a party hosted in South Carolina by the National Federation of Republican Women that involved everyone dressing in Confederate period clothing. So South Carolina Senate President Glenn McConnell was dressed as a Confederate soldier, and some pictures were snapped of him with African-Americans dressed as slaves.
I don't know any of these people personally. My guess is that the majority of them--if not all of them--are not advocating slavery or approving slavery. It was a costume party.
But it just wasn't very smart in my opinion.
McConnell responded in an interview “ … If somebody is trying to be politically correct and use a tunnel vision on it and hook in the slavery issue, they’re on a slippery slope toward narrow-mindedness and they should extend the charity of understanding. Receive it in the spirit that it is presented.” He went on to say it was an event of "historical accuracy."
But historical accuracy doesn't make it smart. Just because people are too easily offended today doesn't mean we should stop caring about whether or not we offend them. Political correctness is not always wrong.
Some history should not be taken lightly. Taught, discussed, talked about openly, yes. Used as a theme for a costume party, maybe not. American slavery is, in my opinion, one of those things. Wouldn't it be dumb to have a historically accurate costume party of Auschwitz in 1944?
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