Political over-correctness.

Writers, editors, and other ink-stained wretches have undergone a re-education in the past decade or so. They have had to learn the language of inclusiveness. They must try to remove all unconscious bias from what they publish. The use of special terms will, over time, create a mindset that can be either positive or negative. Mostly, this is a very subtle thing.

For people who grew up in the 1950s, it was rare to come across a female doctor, lawyer, or engineer. So, people from that age group usually refer to members of those professions as "he" or "him." Their language unconsciously excludes women.

The same thing happens with race. The contributions of Native Peoples, blacks, and Asians to Canada's development have been ignored routinely in the past. Usually, this is not because historians are racist pigs, but because they have mostly not given their race bias a second thought. Most of them have come from a European tradition and it simply never occurred to them to try to view history from a different racial or cultural perspective.

This is now changing. The bylines in newspapers will tell you that not every reporter is from a white, Anglo-Saxon background. Watch a television newscast and you'll see faces from Africa and Asia.

This is very positive--the way in which a group is referred to or portrayed determines how it is perceived by others.

But, sometimes, one wonders if all this political correctness hasn't gone a little too far. Journalists. authors, playwrights, and others are now reluctant to depict certain groups in a negative way. By all means, let's get rid of all negative stereotyping. But, that doesn't mean we have to ignore reality, which is what the deep-down politically correct seem to want to do.

In January 1996, Toronto's Young People's Theatre put on a play called Bed times and Bullies. The theatre cast a black actor in a bullying bad-guy role. This displeased the Toronto Board of Education which sent a letter to all its schools advising them not to send groups to watch the play.

Anytime someone mounts a production of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice protests about anti-Semitism are heard--Shylock the moneylender is a Jew. Never mind that Shylock's speech ("If you prick me do I not bleed?") is one of the most powerful pleas against antiSemitism in literature.

Perhaps the ultimate oversensitivity comes from England. One councillor in London refused to let school kids in her ward attend a performance of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet because it was blatantly heterosexual.

The guardians of political correctness seem to think we need to be protected from ourselves. Apparently, audiences are all so stupid that they can't figure out that not all blacks are bullies; that not all Jews are moneylenders.

What too much political correctness does is drive people like Donna into the racists' open arms. A grandmother, Donna, now goes to Heritage Front meetings because, she says, "It's getting to the point where you can't even celebrate Christmas without someone getting offended."