GLENN
C.
LOURY
613
the full truth of the period from being faced, by failing to limit himself
to the platitudes which, though showing due deference to collective
sensibility, cannot possibly advance the moral discussion, he committed an
unforgivable offense.
Jenninger, it could be said, suffered the wrath of political correctness.
And his case illustrates one problematic aspect of the PC phenomenon:
The effective examination ojJundamental moral questions is often impeded by
the sllpeificial moralism oj expressive conventions.
If
exploring an ethical prob–
lem reqllires expressillg oneself
in
ways that raise doubts about one's basic moral
commitments, then people may opt Jor the mouthing oj right-sounding but empty
words over the risks oj s1lbstantive moral analysis.
The irony is exquisite. For
though the desire to police speakers' morals underlies the taboo, the
sanitized public expression that results precludes the honest examination
of history and current circumstance, from which genuine moral under–
standing might arise. Discussion of racial issues in the United States, it
seems to me, is plagued by a similar problem.
In the mid- to late 1980s, we all knew that solidarity with the
struggle of blacks in South Africa required the United States government
to impose trade sanctions against that nation and American universities
to divest themselves of stock in companies doing business there. Nobel
laureate Desmond Tutu, Rev. Allen Boesak, spokesmen for the African
National Congress, and black American anti-apartheid activists repeatedly
said so. People genuinely committed to justice did not become entangled
in arcane technical arguments about the effects of economic boycotts.
Nor were they unduly concerned about the possible deleterious impact
of sanctions on black South Africans, since the most visible proponent of
that
argument was the racist government. Remarkably, even those South
Africans who had spent a lifetime fighting apartheid, but who opposed
sanctions because they thought the policy would do more harm than
good (Helen Suzman for example), were not taken seriously by
American activists.
Consider the dilemma of a politically liberal university president
during this period. Whether or not he believed in the efficacy of the
I
sanctions policy, he could not credibly claim to be ignorant of it. If he
nevertheless chose to resist student demands for radical change in univer–
sity investment policies, saying: "Divestment is a well-intentioned but
unwise policy for our university; there are better ways for us to pro–
ceed," then he would risk having the students draw the inference that he
was an obstructionist of doing the "progressive" thing. Most college
administrators and trustees dubious about the morality or wisdom of di–
vestment found the prospect of this reaction from students to be un–
palatable.
