One of the marvelous things about our era is that, fifty years after we made discrimination on the basis of race and sex illegal for governments and for institutions, we are more worked up about racism and sexism than ever.
This is something I marvel at all the time, and was brought to my attention in a video about Christianity and Critical Theory featuring mixed-race Neil Shenvi.
Now, I agree with Neil that racism is a moral horror. But as a legal question, it ought to be done with, finished. Because 50 years ago the government declared that racial discrimination is illegal.
(OK, I know. Ever since, the government has been discriminating on race and sex, just like in the old days of Jim Crow. Only now the government and big corporations are discriminating in favor of historically marginalized races and sexes. What a world! But let that pass!)
The point is that first, everyone is a racist. We are human; we prefer our own kind, and we are rather appalled at people not like us. For instance, I read recently that liberals are much more offended by people that vote differently from them than conservatives are. In other words, liberals are more groupish than conservatives; they cannot abide being around people that don't think like them. No surprise really. Liberals think that voting is a moral act; conservatives rather believe it is a civic duty.
Now, I am perfectly happy with religions railing against the moral horror of racism. Very good idea. Let's "nudge" everyone towards a more inclusive moral framework.
But, of course, nobody is content with mere moralizing. We all want to make a difference! If we are women we want to name and shame and shun the immoralists. If we are men we want to teach 'em a lesson: right in the solar plexus.
But I say, look. We are all nasty pieces of work. We all do nasty things, not just to strangers of another race, but to our own kith and kin. It is notorious, for instance, that at holiday gatherings we Americans tend to get into political arguments with each other instead of just celebrating the season.
But the main thing is to keep government out of the discrimination game. Because that, I suggest, is 97.2 percent of the problem. If government can't discriminate and can't, like in the Jim Crow era, force private institutions to discriminate as well, then we are half way home.
And let us note the mechanism that gets around discrimination. If, say, good conforming employers won't employ members of a certain race, because racism, then there is money to be made from hiring those folks!
And here's a thought. Suppose some woman in a think tank commits the moral horror of saying that women are women, thank you very much. Now really, think tank, is it really the best solution to fire her? Is it really a good idea to get a judge to rule that the two-sex view is "is not worthy of respect in a democratic society"? Is it a good idea to let her make herself into a martyr and get the whole thing publicized by Harry Potter's mom, J.K. Rowling? Or would it be better to take her in hand and have everyone else in the think tank explain to her at coffee breaks and at the water cooler how morally reprehensible she is? Normally, that is all it takes to sort a woman in the traditional community of women.
Because I thought that witch hunts and expulsions from the community was the sort of thing that they did in the bad old days of Puritan New England, and the McCarthy era right at the beginning of the Cold War. Why, they even got Arthur Miller all riled up enough about witch hunts to lift his head from bonking Marilyn Monroe and sneering at salesmen to write a play, The Crucible, about the horrors of witch-hunting back in the day in Salem, Massachusetts!
Once upon a time there was a wise old bird that said that there should be a separation between church and state, between the world of morality and the world of force. There was another wise old bird that expanded this notion into the idea of a Greater Separation of Powers, to keep the three sectors of force, of work, and of moral/culture from ganging up on each other, two against one.
You can see why those wise old birds might have had a point. Because people, all people, just cannot resist the temptation of legislating morality, their morality, and forcing their moral beliefs on other people. And the beginning of wisdom might be to make it difficult for people to do that.
On the other hand, let us marvel that, in the descent of man, there have actually been geniuses to suggest to us that our normal way of making morality and conformity to social norms all into one coercive culture is defective and oppressive, even dominatory. It is really astonishing that anyone should ever have proposed to tease apart moral disapprobation and criminal wrongdoing and suggest they we humans should insist that the priests should stick to morality and the jailers should stick to incarceration: in other words to differentiate between the raised eyebrow and the raised execution axe.
But while you and I inhabit the ethereal realms of glorious tolerance and merely shake our wise old heads about the follies of the fools and knaves among the lower orders, the fact is that we live in a fallen world, and there are people out there convinced that the only way forward is to fall on moral lepers like a ton of bricks.
And teach 'em a lesson they will never forget!
This is something I marvel at all the time, and was brought to my attention in a video about Christianity and Critical Theory featuring mixed-race Neil Shenvi.
Now, I agree with Neil that racism is a moral horror. But as a legal question, it ought to be done with, finished. Because 50 years ago the government declared that racial discrimination is illegal.
(OK, I know. Ever since, the government has been discriminating on race and sex, just like in the old days of Jim Crow. Only now the government and big corporations are discriminating in favor of historically marginalized races and sexes. What a world! But let that pass!)
The point is that first, everyone is a racist. We are human; we prefer our own kind, and we are rather appalled at people not like us. For instance, I read recently that liberals are much more offended by people that vote differently from them than conservatives are. In other words, liberals are more groupish than conservatives; they cannot abide being around people that don't think like them. No surprise really. Liberals think that voting is a moral act; conservatives rather believe it is a civic duty.
Now, I am perfectly happy with religions railing against the moral horror of racism. Very good idea. Let's "nudge" everyone towards a more inclusive moral framework.
But, of course, nobody is content with mere moralizing. We all want to make a difference! If we are women we want to name and shame and shun the immoralists. If we are men we want to teach 'em a lesson: right in the solar plexus.
But I say, look. We are all nasty pieces of work. We all do nasty things, not just to strangers of another race, but to our own kith and kin. It is notorious, for instance, that at holiday gatherings we Americans tend to get into political arguments with each other instead of just celebrating the season.
But the main thing is to keep government out of the discrimination game. Because that, I suggest, is 97.2 percent of the problem. If government can't discriminate and can't, like in the Jim Crow era, force private institutions to discriminate as well, then we are half way home.
And let us note the mechanism that gets around discrimination. If, say, good conforming employers won't employ members of a certain race, because racism, then there is money to be made from hiring those folks!
And here's a thought. Suppose some woman in a think tank commits the moral horror of saying that women are women, thank you very much. Now really, think tank, is it really the best solution to fire her? Is it really a good idea to get a judge to rule that the two-sex view is "is not worthy of respect in a democratic society"? Is it a good idea to let her make herself into a martyr and get the whole thing publicized by Harry Potter's mom, J.K. Rowling? Or would it be better to take her in hand and have everyone else in the think tank explain to her at coffee breaks and at the water cooler how morally reprehensible she is? Normally, that is all it takes to sort a woman in the traditional community of women.
Because I thought that witch hunts and expulsions from the community was the sort of thing that they did in the bad old days of Puritan New England, and the McCarthy era right at the beginning of the Cold War. Why, they even got Arthur Miller all riled up enough about witch hunts to lift his head from bonking Marilyn Monroe and sneering at salesmen to write a play, The Crucible, about the horrors of witch-hunting back in the day in Salem, Massachusetts!
Once upon a time there was a wise old bird that said that there should be a separation between church and state, between the world of morality and the world of force. There was another wise old bird that expanded this notion into the idea of a Greater Separation of Powers, to keep the three sectors of force, of work, and of moral/culture from ganging up on each other, two against one.
You can see why those wise old birds might have had a point. Because people, all people, just cannot resist the temptation of legislating morality, their morality, and forcing their moral beliefs on other people. And the beginning of wisdom might be to make it difficult for people to do that.
On the other hand, let us marvel that, in the descent of man, there have actually been geniuses to suggest to us that our normal way of making morality and conformity to social norms all into one coercive culture is defective and oppressive, even dominatory. It is really astonishing that anyone should ever have proposed to tease apart moral disapprobation and criminal wrongdoing and suggest they we humans should insist that the priests should stick to morality and the jailers should stick to incarceration: in other words to differentiate between the raised eyebrow and the raised execution axe.
But while you and I inhabit the ethereal realms of glorious tolerance and merely shake our wise old heads about the follies of the fools and knaves among the lower orders, the fact is that we live in a fallen world, and there are people out there convinced that the only way forward is to fall on moral lepers like a ton of bricks.
And teach 'em a lesson they will never forget!
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