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There's a lot written this week about gay rights, human rights, the oppression of blacks, hispanics, queers, women, feminists, and more. There have been smart people speaking up about it, there have been smart people speaking up about people who speak up, and there are always trolls.
Many people have said good things about the issue that are much more articulate than I, but feel I gotta say my piece, even if I'm speaking to the choir, or even if nobody hears my small voice. It's not a matter of whether or not someone hears me, but whether or not I speak.
A thoughtful person wrote, "I'm not a ________ist I'm a humanist." This is all well and good, but it does not quite strike the target. Sometimes it is important to say more than I like people, and can't we all just get along. Sometimes failing to claim a cause and stand by it, implicitly gives ground to its opponents.
Sometimes it is necessary to do something good to make up for something else bad. Martin Luther King once wrote, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis." This works for racial discrimination, sexual/gender-identity discrimination, and sexual orientation discriminition.
Embrace the power of 'AND.'1
For anyone to honestly claim to believe that America is a fundamentally fair society is must cause some amount of cognitive dissonance. That we aspire to fairness is just, but aspiration is not enough. Good intentions can take you down a familiar road, but only good actions will take you down the right road.
As a white, straight2, male, I feel it absolutely necessary to identify that I am a feminist, in that I believe in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes,
AND
I am a humanist, in that I am concerned with the interests, needs, and welfare of humans,
AND
I am agnostic. I don't know, and I'm ok with that. I'm also okay with people believing otherwise. Faith, whether justified or not, may have a purpose.
AND
I recognize racism within my society. I work to combat it in my communities and in myself,
AND
I am an ally to those treated unfairly whether because of the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual identity, their economic circumstance, their faith, or any of the myriad reasons small people use to denigrate or disparage human beings.
The essence of inhumanity is alienation. Demonizing, and de-humanizing people is how the fearful perpetuate atrocities. Antilocution is anathema. Tutsis are not cockroaches. Gay men are not degenerates. Muslims are not monsters. Women are not bitches. Feminists are not man-haters.
This I believe.
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miss_mimsy
2 for a given definition of straight.
Many people have said good things about the issue that are much more articulate than I, but feel I gotta say my piece, even if I'm speaking to the choir, or even if nobody hears my small voice. It's not a matter of whether or not someone hears me, but whether or not I speak.
A thoughtful person wrote, "I'm not a ________ist I'm a humanist." This is all well and good, but it does not quite strike the target. Sometimes it is important to say more than I like people, and can't we all just get along. Sometimes failing to claim a cause and stand by it, implicitly gives ground to its opponents.
Sometimes it is necessary to do something good to make up for something else bad. Martin Luther King once wrote, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis." This works for racial discrimination, sexual/gender-identity discrimination, and sexual orientation discriminition.
Embrace the power of 'AND.'1
For anyone to honestly claim to believe that America is a fundamentally fair society is must cause some amount of cognitive dissonance. That we aspire to fairness is just, but aspiration is not enough. Good intentions can take you down a familiar road, but only good actions will take you down the right road.
As a white, straight2, male, I feel it absolutely necessary to identify that I am a feminist, in that I believe in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes,
AND
I am a humanist, in that I am concerned with the interests, needs, and welfare of humans,
AND
I am agnostic. I don't know, and I'm ok with that. I'm also okay with people believing otherwise. Faith, whether justified or not, may have a purpose.
AND
I recognize racism within my society. I work to combat it in my communities and in myself,
AND
I am an ally to those treated unfairly whether because of the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual identity, their economic circumstance, their faith, or any of the myriad reasons small people use to denigrate or disparage human beings.
The essence of inhumanity is alienation. Demonizing, and de-humanizing people is how the fearful perpetuate atrocities. Antilocution is anathema. Tutsis are not cockroaches. Gay men are not degenerates. Muslims are not monsters. Women are not bitches. Feminists are not man-haters.
This I believe.
1 thanks
miss_mimsy2 for a given definition of straight.
hopeful
(no subject)
By the way, you have busted html somewhere - the post repeats itself.
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How do you address the fact that certain cultures, due to geographic factors, developed in areas that gave them access to a wider array of food crops and domesticable animals than others, allowing them to accumulate greater surpluses and freeing up their populations to develop technology and engage in warfare? Not to mention develop immunity to diseases caught from their domesticated animals, which they then carried to other peoples with whom they came into contact.
And that a few of those cultures, again due to geographic factors, developed in areas whose terrain led to relatively small states at a certain balance point of contact, competition, and independence, to really drive development of technology and warmaking?
Or the fact that some cultures and individuals, for various reasons of fear, ignorance, or hatred, have biases that they're unwilling, and possibly unable, to surrender, though they might never act on them to harm another's person or property?
(no subject)
Milton Friedman had a good start with his discussion of Equality of Opportunity vs. Equality of Outcome. I'm all for Friedman on the face of it, but Friedman begs the question, since Equality of Opportunity doesn't exist in the US when to reach a certain level of success, white females have to work harder than white males, and when African-Americans have to work harder still.
I have no problem with slightly adjusting things to make things fair, since for 230 years we've significantly adjusted things to make things unfair. I believe in fairness, and that means I don't belive that the right answer is 'tough noogies.'
(no subject)
Secondly, in my thinking about this topic lately, I've been forming the opinion that "accident of birth" (or as you put it, "good fortune of being born") is a dangerous concept, because it treats individuals as somehow springing into the world by accident, as though they drew a lottery ticket in Limbo to determine through which vagina where they'd come into existence.
In fact, we are all the products of an unbroken chain of choices made by our ancestors for the last 500+ generations, of where and how to live, whether and how many offspring to bring into the world, and how to raise them. While not all of those decisions were consciously made, many of them, particularly in American history (at least for those of us whose ancestors came here of their own will), were made SPECIFICALLY to improve the lot (there's that idea of random birth again) of their offspring, if not their own.
And so, to tell the descendants of Irish immigrants who came here at the turn of the 20th century, when they were much dispised (are you listening, Pat Buchanan), specifically to improve the lot of their descendants, that they must pay a price for slavery (as an example), an institution in which they took no part, and was (in its legal sense) ended several generations before they arrived... well, I can see where they would balk at that.
(no subject)
Do I think we owe blacks, native americans, chicanos, etc.? Yes, I do. I, a white person in California, have already enjoyed certain benefits of being white that I see non-whites around me fail to receive. Racism is very present, alive, and well in the United States, but since people aren't being lynched regularly or forced to drink from special fountains, we tend to learn about it as something "that happened in the past," or "that is a lot better now," as if we've hit some "good enough" state and are resting on our laurels. It's a dangerous frame of mind. The descendents of Irish immigrants as you mention in your last paragraph were able to improve the lot of their descendents specifically because they could capitalize on being of a higher social status (especially if they moved West) than several other groups included in the United States. They didn't have that option in Ireland.
We all pay a price for slavery. As long as our country persists in (and finds necessary to) classifying people as "Irish-American" or "African-American" or "Native American," we will continue to do so.
As far as the rest - our country is overdeveloped. The countries we've preyed upon are underdeveloped. It's every bit as much the systematic plundering of other lands as any accident of climate or geography, and that's also been going on for ages.
(no subject)
There's another thing to think about in the idea of not equalizing the playing field: who really benefits from keeping people down? Becuae that's what's happening if you don't do things like affirmative action - you know that the playing field is unequal and yet you persist? I have no words.
But let's look at who realy benefits. Ostensibly people in power benefit from keeping things as they are - they get nearly all the seats on the government, own tons of stuff, don't get so harrassed by the police.
But they still have to live in a world where poverty exists and their cars still get broken into and they still have to see protesters on teevee - there's still crime, and prisons and so on. On an emotional level, it does not benefit them.
But the societal competetive attitudes that if someone else gets something it has to be taken away from you and then you'll *starve* OMG!!! That's just not true. With the current tax structure everyone in the US could easily have enough to eat and places to live. It's how those resources are allocated.
For that matter it's a policy decision that people around the world are starving. There is no reason for it except this same attitude of scarcity. (see food first, for example)
I'm taking yet another economics class and this one makes it even more clear: there is what we assume is going on and then what is actually going on. And never the twain shall meet.
So while it's fine to say "but if they get x, it'll hurt MEEEEEE!" it just ain't true. And ther's no reason it should be. I could go on for days about this (read some George Lakoff - cognitive linguist - to get an idea of the differences in the way people think about this stuff). It's a choice. And I think that choosing to keep people down is a horrific choice. And I refuse.
Once you know, you're complicit. It's on your shoulders too.
(no subject)
Again I ask the question, who owes how much for how long to whom? Do European immigrants who became citizens in the last 10 years owe as much as those whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower? What about people of mixed ancestry - I'm 1/32 Cherokee, what am I owed for the Trail of Tears?
I understand the impulse to compensate those who have, or whose ancestors did, suffer legal oppression, or even just hatred and bigotry. As noble as such a desire might be, implementing a "fair" solution is, I think, impossible, when you begin trying to judge the responsibility of each person's ancestors, or the compensation due for each claim of victimization. Other than the infamous and vaguely described inflation- and -compound-interest-adjusted "forty acres and a mule," I've yet to hear a concrete, much less workable, plan.
As an example, let's step away from monetary compensation for a moment. For the first 130 years of the republic, from the ratification of the Constitution to the passing of the 18th Amendment, women could not vote in national elections. Should only women be allowed to vote for the next 130 years? For the first 76 years, slaves were not allowed to vote, but were counted as 3/5 of a person for purposes of calculating representation in Congress. Should the votes descendants of slaves be weighted according to the number of their ancestors who were slaves?
As to your last paragraph, I'd ask you to define what you mean by "overdeveloped," "underdeveloped," and "preyed upon." The fact is that for 11,000 years, since the beginnings of agriculturally-based "civilization," some cultures or communities or societies, call them what you will, have been more successful than others in terms of feeding their people, increasing their population, developing technology, and, sadly, waging warfare. I don't applaud the human impulses to war and theft (which predate H. sapiens), but neither do I think that it's possible, or even necessarily good, to try compensate those who've been less successful. By that logic, Englishmen of Anglo-Saxon ancestry should compensate the Welsh; Italy would have to compensate much of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East for the Roman Empire; most of Europe would have to compensate the Basques, Laplanders, and so on for the Indo-European migrations of 5,000 years ago. Should we genetically test people for remnants H. neanderthalis genes to compensate? To whom do we make out the check for the extinction of genus Australopithecus?
And not just to focus on "race," what compensation do we offer gays who, in previous generations, under social pressure, felt compelled to marry and have icky heterosexual relations? Are their heterosexual descendants entitled to compensation, even though they might not even have existed but for that oppression?
Now, as a propertied heterosexual male who checks "White" on surveys and forms (being, in addition to the aforementioned quasi-indigenous ancestry, 1/4 European Jew, and the rest various strains of mongrelized mostly-European Kentucky and Okie trash), I'll be the first to admit that I have a vested interest in this issue. But really, an issue that admits so easily of reductio ad absurdum seems to be little more than an empty, perhaps even inflammatory, slogan, don't you think?
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I have no intent of defining anything. To properly answer your essay would involve writing a research paper with all the quotes and statistics you seem to demand, and frankly, I've not the time to do that for a comment in a journal entry. Furthermore, it's doubtful it would make you change your mind in any way, which then seems like a bit of a waste of my time, no?
All I am saying is that the system is rotten, has been rotten, and there's no easy way of fixing it. But we white people do still benefit from it and it seems to be wise to acknowledge that if for nothing else than the actual verbal acknowledgement is a step toward a truly color-blind society. Speaking as a woman, it sure would be nice if white men ever got around to acknowledging that they do make more money and have more social status in general than women, instead of snarling at "feminists" and identifying as Angry White Men. You can't focus on the problem if you can't speak about it. Most white men choose not to. Unfortunately, silence won't make any of the problems go away.
(no subject)
Since you are making assertions about overdevelopment, underdevelopment, and upon-preying, the burden of definition rests on you. That's the way argument works. As I'm sure
I am no Angry White Male. I believe I am, if not a Modest White Male, at least a Peaceful White Male. I freely admit that I have benefitted from my race, sex, socio-economic status, and other things. I occasionally even feel guilty about it, until I consider that a) I also have worked very hard to get where I am in life; b) I personally treat people as kindly as I can, with as little regard to their skin color, ethnic or national background, sex or sexual orientation, wealth, education, religious beliefs, and hygiene as I can manage; and c) life is full of accidents of fortune that depend on none of those things.
I wholeheartedly agree that each of us should treated according to our merits, that we should have equality under the law, and that we should be civil to each other, if not nice. But when someone begins to suggest that there need to be set-asides or compensation or "justice," I will always ask, how much from whom to whom for how long? Until someone presents a convincing answer, I will remain unpersuaded.
Have a nice day! :-)
(no subject)
Regarding paragraph 3 - good for you. The world needs more mild-mannered white guys. However, treating people kindly (and do you do this consistently, or only on whim?) is generally not enough. What are you doing to rectify the problem? (Bear in mind I have no idea who you are.)
Are you aware that paragraph 5 (perhaps better called line 5) reads rather patronizingly? I would not expect that from someone who purports to be a kind, even-handed soul, and so I'm not certain how to read the tone of that bit. It's probably not important anyway.
(no subject)
That said, the stupid, angry, ignorant, and prejudiced dwell among us, and probably always will, and while I don't think that's an ideal situation, I also don't support attempting to forcibly change their beliefs, nor restrain their behavior before they inflict harm on the person or property of others. It seems to me that doing so will only harden those prejudices.
This is why, for example, I think "hate crimes" laws are a bad idea. An assault is an assault, battery is battery, and murder is murder, regardless of who the attacker and who the victim. Murder victims aren't any more dead because their attacker was prejudiced against them. Treating crimes against some people as somehow worse than others sets them aside as a "special" class, which is just going to piss off those who already hate them even more, and perhaps even create some resentment among those who otherwise would be favorably or neutrally inclined.
But, I digress. What do you propose should be done?
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Failing that, who should pay? Well, I suppose we might start with those people still extant who directly profited from slavery, for example. If a corporation is a person, and a person must be responsible for actions he/she takes, or actions taken under the authority of that person, then we perhaps might undertake a strict accounting of Chase, or Bank of America, who bought, sold, lent money for, and insured slaves.
Hell, I don't know. But I do know that what has happened, and is happening today is criminal. When we shrug our shoulders and say, "Sucks to be them," and not do anything about it, we're accessories after the fact.
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1 Admittedly, bad example.
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