FW: [Peace-discuss] Would It Kill Us to Apologize to Iran for the Coup?

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

But John Robert's position turns on the assumption that (a) this would be
the case in a non-racist society and (b) that we have or will have a
non-racist society.  Since neither presumption holds, then none of the
conclusions are the case for this society now or in the foreseeable future
independent of what given groups or sub-set of members of those groups think
or feel.  This is the case if racism was the sole, exclusive, or even
dominant cause of the disparities; however since it is not the sole, the
exclusive, or the dominant cause; Robert's analysis is not only
oversimplified but not very deep either.  Pecking orders probably are a more
fundamental characteristic of all animal species including the human
species; and this factor may even account for racism or the inclination
towards it.  Of course, culture and religion may have served to perpetuate
the justifications for racist and other discriminatory practices, to
legitimize individual self-centeredness and greed, or to rationalize
disparities and ideological theories such as Social Darwinism, Capitalism,
racism and ethnocentricism, among others that serve to foster and nourish
the disparities on an institutional level and validate practices based on
such disparities.

 

Unfortunately, especially in the US, our cultural traditions are such that
most of the population value immediate gratification, materialism,
pragmatism, and short term memory.  All of this results in our forgetting
anything that is not the current focal point of our attention, not being
concerned or recognizing anything that we were not immediately involved in
or effected by, and not taking responsibility for anything done in the
collective name or resulting indirectly from past and present actions that
we have taken or decisions that we have made.  History for us is tangible,
lineal, and direct with well delineated causal lines in which one does not
need to take responsibility for anything that happened prior to our lifetime
or our immediate involvement or for which one cannot materially prove actual
intentionality as well as knowledge and forethought of the consequences and
for which any threat or crisis is an excuse for taking what turn out to be
irresponsible actions in retrospect and which should be at least apologized
for.

 

From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of John W.
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 9:25 AM
To: naiman.uiuc at gmail.com
Cc: peace discuss
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Would It Kill Us to Apologize to Iran for the
Coup?

 

 

On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com> wrote:

I'm definitely not in favor of refusal to recognize privilege. But I
presume that in a non-racist society, if everyone woke up one day and
discovered that by some mysterious process, a chunk of their neighbors
were disproportionately excluded from the economic benefits that the
society had to offer, people would move to address the disparity.


You gotta be shitting me, Robert.  Surely you jest?  You have neighbors
right here on this mailing list who are disproportionately excluded from the
economic benefits that society has to offer, and it has nothing to do with
race, and no one on this list is doing a damned thing about it or is GOING
to do a damned thing about it.  Whenever I talk about poverty, lack of
health insurance, etc., from a personal perspective, I get a blank stare
from the limousine liberals.  "Get a life," they say, or "Be warmed and
filled," to quote the Good Book.  I daresay that most of the readers of this
list care more about people in Pakistan than they do about their neighbors,
at least in terms of doing anything pragmatic to help them.

I'll probably live to regret that comment, but there it is.

 

So, the fact that such disparities persist in our society, and the
fact that we don't move successfully to redress them, to me is
evidence enough of racism; no other story is necessary.


You ain't read enough stories, apparently.  There are many types of
disparities in our society, and many complex causes of such disparities.
Racism is an important one, but it is only one.

 

That doesn't
mean that other stories don't have value, and might not also be
important to achieving the end of redress, but I see no need to posit
them as prerequisites, and some reason not to; since it might be the
case, for example, that some people have a psychological barrier
against recognizing privilege, but not against redress justified on
some other basis.


You lost me there.  Not that it matters.


 

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Marti Wilkinson <martiwilki at gmail.com>
wrote:


> The problem with refusing to recognize privilege is that it creates a set
of
> blinders that perpetuates the status quo. So while I do agree with the
> sentiments you have expressed - I still think that privilege matters.
Racism
> rears its ugly head in various ways such as the attitude that poor and
> marginalized groups remain that way due to a failure to pull themselves up
> by the bootstraps. This 'blame the victim' approach is one that is used to
> great effect by opponents of reparation, equal rights, and affirmative
> action.
>
> Even worse is the way in which groups can be pitted against one another.
In
> 1996 California passed proposition 209 which killed affirmative action in
> public universities. The sad irony is that it was the vote of white women
> that played a tremendous role in passing 209.  More recently proposition 8
> had support amongst minorities and, as long as we refuse to look at
> privilege, situations like this will continue. On an international scale
> this can manifest in the form of being accused of antisemitism if one
> supports human rights endeavors in Palestine, or focusing on the hostage
> situation in Iran instead of the coup instigated by the US.
>
> If priviledge didn't matter then our politicians would be sending their
kids
> overseas to get killed in Iraq. What would happen if our state
> representatives and senators where given a link card, then told to feed
> their families solely on what is available. How many people really
> understand what it is like to have a medical card and not get medical
care?
> At one point in my life I actually did end up on welfare and, while the
> experience sucked on so many levels, I'm grateful that it gave me the
> opportunity to really see what happens when you are below the poverty
line.
>
> On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>
>> Yeah, although you could be for reparations without being for guilt,
>> or even acknowledging privilege. It's a blight on us all that the
>> descendants of slaves have a disproportionately small share of the
>> national economic pie, even if we got off the boat yesterday. I'm for
>> shoveling more money their collective way by any means possible. Call
>> it whatever you want: reparations, affirmative action, full
>> employment, raising the minimum wage, raising the earned income
>> credit, making it easier to form unions, shifting the burden of
>> taxation toward the wealthy, universal health care: I'm for it.
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Marti Wilkinson <martiwilki at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > The problem with the United States is that many individuals refuse to
>> > accept
>> > ownership of human rights violations and crimes if they don't see their
>> > ancestors as guilty parties. For example: How many people do you know
>> > who
>> > object to making reparations to the descendants of slaves and Native
>> > Americans because their ancestor didn't immigrate to the states until
>> > after
>> > 1900?  People often do not understand how privilege benefits them or
see
>> > the
>> > long term damage that is the result of years of prejudice and bigotry.

 

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