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Despite disapproval from certain quarters, I've been somewhat keeping up with that which is called RaceFail '09. (JFGI.)
I've not written about in my journal yet, and I'm not sure I'll ever write a comprehensive post about my thoughts on it, if only because I should be spending that time keeping up with uni work. If it gets on top of me, it will crush me.
Anyway, the thing is this: at the end of the 18th century, radical movements for social and political change changed from being the hobbyhorse of a few wealthy intellectuals (yes, I'm guilty of gross reductionism, shh) to the product of widespread working-class involvement, thought, activism, argument. The lower orders, as they were known, began speaking up, demanding representation, demanding rights.
This was a problem, and was met with repression, where the previous advocates of universal suffrage and suchlike had been tolerated calmly. The old advocates were eccentric aristocrats. The new radicals were workers. Lower-class, absent all the privileges held by the wealthy and titled.
The lower orders talking about politics, reading "The Rights of Man" and trying to claim they deserved respect and all that stuff? Arrogant presumption.
I think there's still something like that today, with some people's reactions to minorities advocating for themselves; while people might think they believe that disabled people should be accommodated equally with he abled, that homosexuals deserve the same rights in their loves as heterosexuals, that people who aren't white should be placed on an equal footing with people who are (including recognising that centuries of oppression have left their mark, and merely removing active barriers is not enough to put them, as a population, on that equal footing, because someone born in poverty to illiterate, alcoholic parents is not in a position of equality to someone born in better circumstances, and while it is not a firm rule for individuals of any race where they will fall on the socio-economic spectrum, on balance of population majorities, some groups are currently at a disadvantage that needs to be remedied)...
Pause here because that sentence got away from me a little, and I have a lot of reading to do and haven't time to edit it properly.
Yes. While they think they believe all that stuff, and probably sincerely do, some people seem to find it something of an affront when members of that minority group express their own opinions, voice their own experiences, insist on the respect which in theory most of us agree they deserve but only some of us notice they don't get. The idea being that "we" know whats best for "them"; it's probably an intellectual (as grouping) bias, in that intellectuals tend towards believing that We're Right.
And it can feel like a terrible shock, I guess, when you think you're being ever so kind and wonderful, and discover that actually, no, the person doesn't want your help, exactly, they want independent equality.
The thing is that that attitude is condescending. Like a wealthy landowner condescending to talk to his gardener; it's understood that it is an act of kindness and charity for the master merely to acknowledge that the servant is human, with experiences beyond his role as The Gardener. For the gardener to initiate the conversation would be presumption.
The unprivileged demanding equal status with the privilege is presumption almost by definition; it is denying that the unprivileged person should just "know their place", demanding that their place be moved, presuming equality to be their right.
I don't have a point to this, really; I just noticed the parallel between a number of people involved in RaceFail and the behaviour of people 220 years ago.
There is nothing new under the sun.Current Mood:  tired Current Location: Reid Library Current Music: Pete Anthony - Introducing Charlotte
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