Resurrecting Archie Bunker...or the End of Political Correctness

I love an old-school sitcom. Don't judge me.

I grew up in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Just to give you what that meant culturally, one of the names I was called often in school was Urkel (remember Family Matters?) . In that age, even the most avid television watcher had to endure (or appreciate) older series in the lineup to fill time. The new shows may show on Friday night, but what would a local station show on Saturdays after cartoons?

The answer in my part of Florida was All in the Family.

I highly recommend the show to anyone who hasn't seen it - now more than ever. If you're unfamiliar: here's your quick synopsis: Archie Bunker, an everyman living in Queens, New York, navigating life with his sheltered housewife, his daughter and hippie son-in-law and minority neighbors. The main feature of the show became Archie, who in the end of the 1970s, mourned how things "used to be" and having to navigate not just new diversities and populations entering the general conversation but also challenges to the very language he used. Archie, portrayed by the late Carroll O'Connor, regularly called his student activist son-in-law Michael (Rob Reiner's character) a "Commie pinko liberal."

And that was Archie being affectionate.

His nemesis at one point was his African-American neighbor. His name was George Jefferson.

Yes, the contention between Archie and George (played by the late Sherman Helmsley) created some of the greatest example of art imitating life. I didn't have to travel to Astoria to understand their neighborhood was changing and that Archie's reactions were what many of the majority culture in New York City felt. You mean I have to say African-American? But why?

Archie and his struggle through the shift in culture was not only accessible, but it was also real. Archie and his family (in thirty minutes, no less) discussed with some depth why words were important and old ways weren't necessarily the right ones. In several reunion specials and think-pieces, it was the same conversation happening all over the country.

Around the same time that All in the Family (and its spinoff The Jeffersons) filled the rerun time on my television a new term showed up in the nightly news.

The term political correctness came around in the early 1990s and the concept was immediately controversial. I did find a great article that explained what was going on academically behind the scenes and how it relates to the 2016 US election. Here's what I remember: at the end of the Bush (the First) administration and the rise of Bill Clinton, the concept of using terms and phrases that were acceptable to affected people came about. This is the emergence of the hyphen in print: not just an "immigrant," a "(nationality)-American." Not "disabled," "differently-abled." It's the first time many people heard the term "queer" to replace "gay" positively. (When Archie used it, it wasn't affectionate.) I also remember that people immediately bristled at the concept. The outrage, as the article from the Guardian details, was related to leftist oppression and thought policing.

As a child I drew a conclusion: what was the big deal about using a term that those who you are describing based on how they asked to be described? As a child of immigrants, I was already figuring out what it was to be a born American patriot and a child of West Indians. (Don't @ me, we do call ourselves that.) I found myself at the intersection of this conversation. Was I really "African-American"? Did that fit? My parents were raised calling themselves "Black," so that still felt okay. The debate on this struggle over language back then brought up how to identify people on forms. I have only seen one form that had a hyphenated identity that made me smile. In applying to colleges, I found a school (was it Georgetown? or UPenn?) that used twenty-some ethnic identities rather than the standard five. One of them was "Afro-Caribbean."

Yeah, mon.

I still didn't get it. Honestly, I still don't. As the term "political correctness" comes back into the conversation like an unwanted fungus, I offer that the term should be buried. It doesn't describe the intention of the conversation I remember from my childhood.

Here are two alternatives:

Call A Thing a Thing

One of my favorite authors is Iyanla Vanzant. She's Oprah's friend, right? Her education and empathy is balanced greatly with her no-nonsense attitude. If all therapists promised to be as creative and in-your-face as she is on her show, Iyanla Fix My Life, we might have less mental illness in this country.

I'm not a therapist, what do I know? She sounds right.

One of her phrases is to call a thing a thing. When Iyanla says it, she often means that using vague terms to describe abuse, trauma, or anger does not heal it. If someone hurt you, she would say call a thing a thing. Don't call it "a problem" or "what happened to me back then." If you were hurt, call a thing a thing!

I think Ms. Vanzant would support me borrowing her phrase for the current political discourse. After thirty years of making PC and its imagined culture anathema to good political debate, we can just say we're calling a thing a thing. Discussing police violence is not an off-shoot of being PC - it's calling a thing a thing. Gender and sexual identity makes certain eyes roll and knees shake; why don't we just say we're calling someone who they are? People are here. They exist. Situations arise, usually with intention. Call a thing what it is. A thing.

Being Community-Minded

When listening to certain sources and opinions, it sounds like a government censor is forcing people to be mealy-mouthed about race, gender, sexuality, oppression, and violence. Thankfully, the way Americans discuss this topic is protected by the highest law. One thing the Constitution and adjacent Bill of Rights does not do is protect from consequences of this speech. You can discuss how much you like fire, just not loudly in a movie theatre, as the classic example goes. Yet some people believe there are political forces at play that force people to say terms that chafe. I'm using these hyphenated terms with air-quotes so I don't get silenced by liberals.

It's untrue and well-documented to be a way to sensationalize being anti-PC. What's dangerous is how much being anti-PC is popular. My water-cooler conversations feature well-intentioned people discussing populations outside of our own through strained faces and tight lips trying to parse terms. The object is to not offend or run afoul of a policy.

How liberating would it be to just call it being community-minded?

Most of the problems we get in the conversation is when we intentionally try to hurt each other or make people that aren't us the other. If we're just talking and you recognize the language you're using isn't right, you can be community-minded in your response. Being community-minded is being sensitive to discussing immigration with people who could be directly affected by the conversation, not PC. Using correct pronouns is not liberal PC gymnastics, it's being community-minded. After all, intention may not stop people from getting hurt, but it can shift us from yelling at each other to having a real discussion. Either term - calling a thing a thing or being community-minded - has to be better than the choking silence that also rules the space. How many times do we avoid saying anything because we don't want to offend? Or worse, why do we prefer silence over confronting what could be uncomfortable?

This should be where you look up the quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about the silence of white moderates.

America is far from the reality of All in the Family, yet we haven't learned the lessons that the show had to offer. Archie might not be around a Black Lives Matter rally or campaigning for reparations, but he showed immense growth against the laugh track and between commercials. Would he be able to navigate today's politics? What would his conversations be like at his bar today? He may have lived in an age before the hyphens took hold, but he might be able to get to them. An Archie or a George could call a thing a thing, like Iyanla says. They both can think through being community-minded. As we look at our past, we can do better than yearn to return to them. We can learn from them.

And those were the days.