Someone wore black face to a D.C. Halloween party in 2018. We know this because two intrepid Washington Post reporters chronicled it in no fewer than 3,000 words. The costume, intended to mock Megyn Kelly, caused a stir at a soirée hosted by Post cartoonist Tom Toles. Onlookers were aghast. “Is she really wearing that?” the party’s attendees asked, as when an underclassman wears a long dress to prom.
The culprit, a “Resistance” liberal whose regular accoutrements we can safely assume include a pussy hat, wore the costume as a stupid gag. Megyn Kelly had recently made obtuse comments about blackface — comments less morally objectionable than cringeworthy, like using a butter knife to cut Dover sole. For the unwitting subject of the Post story, the Megyn Kelly costume was intended to signal belonging to the class of Beltway professionals present at the party, in case they missed her #NastyWoman bumper sticker.
Oh, honey. Nice try, but the joke’s on you. You didn’t do the costume right, and now you’re fired. What were you thinking?
Anti-racism, we are told, is not merely about pushing policy reforms but also about combating everyday, casual discrimination. In order to be one of the good guys, you must denounce every transgression, however minor. And ideally publicly, so that the transgressor can be properly punished.
As old-fashioned notions of civility and politeness have receded, urban professionals have concocted a new system of social norms to distinguish the brutes from the brights. The “woke” share not a coherent set of principles but common rules of etiquette, awareness of which qualifies one as a member of the in-group. “Yikes,” the refrain uttered in reaction to transgressions of political correctness, is not a condemnation but a commiseration — an expression of pity for those who just don’t get it.
As the ethical philosopher Henry Sidgwick put it, “The final authority on matters of Etiquette is the custom of polite society; which feels itself under no obligation of reducing its rules to rational principles.” Etiquette pays no heed to one’s intentions or beliefs, but only to one’s ability to abide by the rules. Keeping your elbows off the table has no moral value, but merely serves to demonstrate your awareness of the expectations of your peers.
Politically correct etiquette sets boundaries around social class, constantly diminishing the supply of respectable people by casting out delinquents. For urban professionals, the precarity of living on the precipice of cancellation is the price of erecting barriers to entry around their institutions and social spheres. It is no coincidence that the new standards of etiquette have taken hold most forcefully in the media industry, where wages and job security have steadily declined over the past two decades.
The notion that “the personal is political” has undergirded social-justice movements since the 1970s. Radical feminists used the phrase to underscore the supposed impact of the political status quo on people’s private affairs. The yoke would be cast off not at the ballot box but in the kitchen (or, more accurately, by departing from the kitchen). Now, the political is strictly personal.
Public questions matter insofar as they affect Harvard undergraduates and Washington Post reporters: Gender equality is measured by the number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500, racial justice by the propriety of costumes donned at Georgetown cocktail parties.
It is in this bizarro world that an unknown woman can be fired for a costume by the same people campaigning for Joe Biden, whose 1994 crime bill has led to the incarceration of millions of racial minorities. It is in this world that the ritual denunciation of colleagues and friends passes as high virtue.