Common sense, defined as a capacity for perception and appreciation of everyday situations, is under attack in our society. Ostensibly uncontroversial, pellucid ideas are suddenly objectionable, and one has to apprehensively look over his shoulder when he says that the sky is blue.
This perplexing trend has at its root the 1990's conception of a culture of ultra-sensitivity. Don't get me wrong, I'll shed a tear or two watching Forrest Gump as soon as the next guy, but our society has taken sensitivity way too far. The result is the loss of the ability to make any meaningful statement or value judgment without subjecting yourself to harangues from a supercilious mob of Sensitivity Patriots.
These people are the ones who support the elimination of grades because they could damage the psyches of those who do poorly, who bellyache about the lack of support for the Filipino-Tunisian-five-foot-four-Americans at the University, and who, if they overheard you say, "Duke has a bad football team," would cringe and explain that the players are just kids and that "bad" is too harsh a term. If we give in to these Sensitivity Patriots, we risk forgoing common sense.
An example of the debate between common sense and politically-correct sensitivity arose last summer when Domino's Pizza refused to deliver to an extremely dangerous area of San Francisco. The area had been "red-zoned," or deemed too dangerous to serve, by a computer system which color-codes streets according to risk. Seems reasonable, right? Wrong.
The area happened to be predominately black, so the grandmother of the boy who was refused delivery sued Domino's for racism. She was quoted in the July 22 edition of Time as saying, "These people feel that all black people are the same. We all kill, we all maim, and therefore we should all suffer."
This knee-jerk reaction just doesn't hold water. Would Domino's deliver to a black man in a safe area? Certainly. Would they refuse service to a white man in a "red-zoned" area? Of course. The issue here is not racism; it is common sense. It is spurious to tell a business that they must pay exorbitant insurance rates and subject its drivers to potential harm to avoid hurting someone's feelings.
It's a shame that innocent people must pay for the criminal behavior of others, but a pizza is not worth a life. Forcing Domino's to deliver contradicts economic logic, moral philosophy and common sense.
Another instance of the attack on common sense involves the figures of males and females that denote men's and women's restrooms in public places. You know, the man has on pants, the woman a skirt. A while back, some misguided soul with way too much time on her hands decided that this was sexist.
Her argument was that not all women wear skirts, so the figures were perpetuating a negative stereotype of women and should be changed. She added that one day she was herself wearing pants and accidentally went into the wrong restroom. Wow. And I thought "Dumb & Dumber" was a Jim Carrey movie. Hopefully this incident revealed to her that men and women are indeed different in certain ways.
This sort of incident is disconcerting in two ways. First, it opens your eyes to how ignorant of rationality and plain old horse sense our culture has become in its quest for sensitivity. Secondly, from a more liberal point of view, these incidents trivialize issues that have real importance-causing the public to dismiss greater issues. That is, if a casual observer thinks "Restroomgate" is indicative of the feminist agenda, he may become disenchanted with the whole movement.
Looked at in a certain way, these two incidents could appear to be positive. If this is all America has to worry about, then we've got it made. Unfortunately, one look at the evening news will convince one that this position is untenable. It's too bad when we waste our time on issues like restroom doors-there are some pressing problems we must address, and in order to do so we must bite the bullet and refuse to forgo common sense in favor of sensitivity and political correctness.
Parker Stanberry is a Trinity sophomore.
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