论政治正确:权力、阶层和新的校园宗教

On Political Correctness:Power,Class,and the New Campus Religion

在美国大量的有着精英教育传统的私立大学里,尤其以文理学院作为典型代表,政治正确弥漫于其中的各个角落,渗透在其精英教育传统文化的血液中。这些私立精英大学成了宗教学校,信奉政治正确的同时也痴迷于对成功的崇拜。这里的政治正确的本质在于压制不受欢迎的信仰和观点的表达,它强调正统和一致,排斥理性对话以及所谓的异端。它体现了学术资本化和市场化下教师的无产阶级化,同时体现了这一环境下教师与学生权力关系的不对等。它还体现精英教育传统无视美国巨大的阶层分化(或者阶层固化)。美国精英大学是成为中上阶层社会化的机器还是成为自由、坦率和无畏的探究的教育机构?对这一问题的回答,事关美国阶层制度病态的处理。

Political correctness can be seen everywhere in many private selective universities,especially at liberal arts colleges with elite education tradition,and it penetrates in the blood of traditional culture of elite education.These Selective private colleges have become religious schools which believe in political correctness as well as success.The political correctness here means the persistent attempt to suppress the expression of unwelcome beliefs and ideas.The political correctness strengthens the orthodox consensus and rejects rational discourse and so-called heresy.These political correctness phenomena embody the proletarization of teachers under the academic capitalization and marketization,and also reflect the unequal power relationship between teachers and students under this environment.They also reflect the elite education tradition of ignoring America’s vast class divide.Do these selective colleges want to be socialization machines for the upper-middle class,ideological enforcers of progressive dogma?Or do they want to be educational institutions in the only sense that really matters:places of free,frank,and fearless inquiry?The answers to these questions concern dealing with the pathologies of America’s class system.