[Peace] query: de-gendering, de-racing, de-religioning our political discourse

[Debra Schrishuhn]

Excellent food for thought, Robert. We all--all of us--need to reexamine our underlying assumptions continually. 

But I cannot resist asking(and maybe I am showing my age here), didn't John Lennon write a song about this?

Smiling with victory at Standing Rock, contemplating the battles to come,
Debra

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 5, 2016, at 3:09 AM, Robert Naiman via Peace <peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
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> I'm sure that other folks here have studied and thought about this question more than me. I'm very interested in your insights. I awoke from a dream with the eureka sparklers dancing. What if…?
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> What if it's the case that the collective we is carrying around a collection of unconscious assumptions about who has and who will have political power that are associated with identity markers. What if it's the case that this doesn't matter very much when we have good information. When we have good information, we tell our conscious brains to make a decision on the merits. But what if it's the case that when we don't have good information but feel forced to make a decision, we throw up our hands and shrug our shoulders and toss the ball to our unconscious brains. Here, you figure this out. I'm not sure which choice is better.
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> And what if our unconscious brains are then like: O joy, O rapture. Finally, we are free at last from the oppressive jackboot of the politically correct busybody bureaucratic thought police in our conscious brains who are constantly caulking up our creative juices and cramping our style. Finally, at long last, we get to use our unconscious prejudices to make this judgment.
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> This train of thought started in my mind several years ago when I read an interview with a local dentist in the News-Gazette. By the time of the interview, this guy was very well established in his practice. But, he said, when he was first starting out, he had a bit of a challenge establishing himself, because he was black. And at the time, people didn't believe that a black man could be a dentist. Well, the guy said, I had taken some marketing classes in college. So, I looked at it as a marketing problem. The first thing I did was I put a bunch of ads around with my big smiling black face on them. Like, I'm offering a new service, called "black dentist." And the second thing I did was find out what other dentists in town were charging for various dental services. It's not creative writing. There's a basic set of things that dentists do, fillings, crowns, and everyone charges a fixed price for these things. And then I offered all these services for a cheaper price. So now what I'm saying is: I'm offering a new service called "black dentist." It's not exactly the same as the "white dentist" service that you're used to. But my new "black dentist" service is significantly cheaper. Now I knew from my marketing classes that a certain number of people are early adopters, looking for a deal. Soon I had all the patients I could handle. As soon as I had all the patients I could handle, I started raising my prices to match what the white dentists were charging. Now I don't need to give you a discount. Because now you know me. Now you don't see me as a "black dentist." Now you just see me as a "dentist."
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> What if political actors are like dentists? What if, once you know them, you judge them on the basis of merit, but before you know them, you are susceptible to judging them on the basis of prejudice?
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> I happened to be visiting my parents in Elmhurst in 1984 when there was a debate between the Democratic presidential candidates on WBBM-TV in Chicago.
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> Walter Jacobson asked Jesse Jackson,
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> "Jesse, are you the dark horse candidate?"
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> Jackson responded:
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> "Let's not talk about whether this is a dark horse or a light horse. It's a good horse, and it's a fast horse, and it's a winning horse."
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> Jacobson's face turned bright red. It was a world-historical moment.
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> ===
> 
> Robert Naiman
> Policy Director
> Just Foreign Policy
> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> (202) 448-2898 x1
> 
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