Gleinser: Keep politics out of school
One area in which political correctness has taken too strong of a hold is in schools. I’m not referring to affirmative action, as that would merit an entirely different column.
We’ve seen the traditional instances of political correctness time and time again. For example, last year the administrators of a California high school sent five students home because they refused to remove their American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. The shirts were deemed inappropriate to wear on a very important holiday for Mexican-Americans.
The fact that students were punished for patriotism is sad by itself. However, the school’s defense of the decision was even worse. If the school was actually in Mexico, it might be an issue. In the United States of America, however, wearing an American flag T-shirt should never be frowned upon.
When you look deeper, you see how far political correctness has seeped into the foundations of our education system. Many schools are discontinuing GT (gifted and talented) courses and placing all students in the same classes out of the fear that having some students in advanced courses would make students who are not in those courses feel inferior.
Stephen Duncombe, editor of White Riot: Punk Rock And The Politics Of Race
Is a collection of essays, zines, first-hand accounts, and interviews mostly written at the time and in the field, so to speak. Why did you choose this format?Stephen Duncombe: We didn’t want to do a strictly scholarly anthology about punk and race, because we didn’t think that would capture the true voice of punk rock. We really wanted readers to have a sense of immediacy, and, as a historian, I like people to read primary documents. We wanted people to read what punks had actually written. There’s a handful of academic essays included, but 90 percent is zines, essays written at the time, liner notes, and interviews. They’re the words of white, black, and Latino punks. It was very important for us to let people speak with their own voices.
AVC: It tells a story about the history of punk music that hasn’t really been told before. What’s that story?
SD: We start with the premise that you can’t understand punk unless you understand its relationships with race. We took the title from The Clash’s song “White Riot,” in which they are witnessing a riot in 1976 in Notting Hill where a bunch of black youth are fighting back against the police. They ask themselves, “What the hell is going on with white youth?” and “Why aren’t we doing the same thing?
Sally Alice Thompson from Albuquerque, New Mexico, wants "to stop war and stop fascism and we have to do something about it because we're sliding into eternal war and fascism. We can't just be those frogs that allow themselves to slow boil until
But I'm not sure it set itself completely against the New Left. In America, most punk was decidedly apolitical. In Europe, though, Joe Strummer was wearing Red Faction T-shirts, so he was still defining with the 1970s version of the New Left.
