Our idiot leaders, local government edition
Marlon Anderson was working as a security guard at a Madison, Wisconsin, high school. An unruly student called him a nigger. He responded by telling the student not to call him a nigger. The result of this hallway exchange: Anderson was fired. It sounds surreal. But the Madison school district has a “zero tolerance” policy for any use of racially charged epithets by employees. As the school’s principal explained, “Regardless of context or circumstance, racial slurs are not acceptable in our schools.” We know political correctness has reached absurd heights when a black security guard is fired for telling a rude teenager not to use racial epithets.
Anderson was reinstated. “Circumstances matter,” his defenders asserted (and rightly so).Unfortunately, the virtue of prudence is so degraded that we can’t trust the people running our institutions to make reasonable determinations. They hide behind “principle” and hew to “policy” rather than acting like responsible leaders.