Today there two big news stories.
Firstly, the US Supreme Court has upheld a fundamental right to marriage for all citizens, including those that wish to marry others of the same gender.
Secondly there have been a spate of attacks claimed by IS, in Syria, in Kuwait, Tunisia and France. In Yemen. A ring of blood around the Mediterranean.
While the West (right wing social conservatives not withstanding) drifts to ever more liberal stances, the East sinks further into fundamentalism.
There are minorities on both sides, but the polarisation is clear. IS watching openly gay people in the US celebrate a victory will be yet more convinced they are right, and their enemies are evil.
Devout waverers who disapprove of the more extreme IS violence may well look at the decadence of the Western alternative and decide IS to be the lesser of two evils.
All around the world, ordinary people will be aware that while the Arab world drowns in blood, the west immerses itself in a philosophical argument about the nature of marriage.
Outside our bubble this looks like self indulgence.
The horrors visited on the Middle East, in part having grown out of Western interventions, are old news even before they are yesterday's news.
I have no strong feelings on this supreme court judgement, other than its irrelevance to real life.
If the biggest problem you have is the state's refusal to issue a certificate recognising your relationship, you don't have a problem.
On the other hand, if your biggest problem is the state does issue certificates recognising relationships you don't like, you really don't have a problem.
We collectively do have a problem in engaging with a region which we cannot begin to comprehend. Russia is authoritarian and increasingly homophobic.
It appears they understand the Middle East a bit better than we do.
Friday 26 June 2015
Wednesday 3 June 2015
Can the oppressed become the oppressor?
There has been much talk lately about racism, and what it is.
There are two views of racism, that it is the manifestation of prejudice held within the heart of an individual, or that it is a societal thing, embedded in our institutions. Examples of the first is an individual who shouts offensive comments at a minority person from a car window. The judgement passed on London's Metropolitan police by the infamous McPherson report give ample demonstration of the second.
It is possible to believe think that both forms exist.
There is, though, the opinion that people from an oppressed minority cannot be racist. In fact, the word minority there is redundant. Who could argue that Black South Africans although a majority, were not oppressed?
So, it is argued, that the oppressed cannot be racist.
Women cannot be sexist.
People argue this from both sides. I think any reasonable person would agree that it is white racism that poses the biggest problem for societies across the world, that macro, institutional racism is white
Does that really mean a black person cannot be racist?
I believe that the human race is one big family. And that those who try to divide on lines of race are racist. Tribalism is a basic human instinct. It can be channelled for good, in which case we call it loyalty, or bad, and be called prejudice.
To claim that a person cannot be subject to these basic instincts is to deny an aspect of our common humanity. It is, itself, racism.
In some ways oppression arises from oppression. It is not just that oppressed can become oppressor, so much as oppression begets oppression. As violence begets violence. Hutus and Tutsis oppress each other in a repeating cycle of revenge.
Perhaps anyone who thinks the oppressed can never become the oppressor should study the fate of Palestine.
This is not to say there is no such thing as institutional racism. But I do say institutions, and society, do not exist in and of themselves. They are in some way a collective formed from the individuals past and present. A society will not continue to be institutionally racist unless at least some members of the more powerful group are individually racist.
Furthermore, I believe the idea that society is institutionally organised to favour all white people over all people who are not white is to misunderstand how power is organised in our society. For sure white males predominant in the power structure. This does not mean the power structure exists to the benefit of all white males. Or to white people only. Winston Churchill could be defined as an ethnic minority. As could Ian Duncan Smith. Both were leaders of the British Conservative Party.
By many measures, in the UK, poor white males are the group with the worst life chances.
The power structures of the UK are not based around race any more than they are around gender, or around some combination of both. That would be to the advantage of far too large a group.
We are ruled by a much smaller elite. A new aristocracy.
There are white males who think they are on the 'inside'. They fool themselves. They are divided from potential comrades with whom their interests are shared. There are many people who vote against their own economic self interest.
The same goes when privately educated feminists implore poor women to support the agenda of elite females. Doctors and lawyers will benefit far more from free childcare than any cleaner.
This talk of society being a power structure built in favour of all whites, against blacks also divides the oppressed is racist because it divides along lines of race.
The people who promote this thinking are just like white males, they fall into two groups. The elite, and the bitches of the elite.
There are two views of racism, that it is the manifestation of prejudice held within the heart of an individual, or that it is a societal thing, embedded in our institutions. Examples of the first is an individual who shouts offensive comments at a minority person from a car window. The judgement passed on London's Metropolitan police by the infamous McPherson report give ample demonstration of the second.
It is possible to believe think that both forms exist.
There is, though, the opinion that people from an oppressed minority cannot be racist. In fact, the word minority there is redundant. Who could argue that Black South Africans although a majority, were not oppressed?
So, it is argued, that the oppressed cannot be racist.
Women cannot be sexist.
People argue this from both sides. I think any reasonable person would agree that it is white racism that poses the biggest problem for societies across the world, that macro, institutional racism is white
Does that really mean a black person cannot be racist?
I believe that the human race is one big family. And that those who try to divide on lines of race are racist. Tribalism is a basic human instinct. It can be channelled for good, in which case we call it loyalty, or bad, and be called prejudice.
To claim that a person cannot be subject to these basic instincts is to deny an aspect of our common humanity. It is, itself, racism.
In some ways oppression arises from oppression. It is not just that oppressed can become oppressor, so much as oppression begets oppression. As violence begets violence. Hutus and Tutsis oppress each other in a repeating cycle of revenge.
Perhaps anyone who thinks the oppressed can never become the oppressor should study the fate of Palestine.
This is not to say there is no such thing as institutional racism. But I do say institutions, and society, do not exist in and of themselves. They are in some way a collective formed from the individuals past and present. A society will not continue to be institutionally racist unless at least some members of the more powerful group are individually racist.
Furthermore, I believe the idea that society is institutionally organised to favour all white people over all people who are not white is to misunderstand how power is organised in our society. For sure white males predominant in the power structure. This does not mean the power structure exists to the benefit of all white males. Or to white people only. Winston Churchill could be defined as an ethnic minority. As could Ian Duncan Smith. Both were leaders of the British Conservative Party.
By many measures, in the UK, poor white males are the group with the worst life chances.
The power structures of the UK are not based around race any more than they are around gender, or around some combination of both. That would be to the advantage of far too large a group.
We are ruled by a much smaller elite. A new aristocracy.
There are white males who think they are on the 'inside'. They fool themselves. They are divided from potential comrades with whom their interests are shared. There are many people who vote against their own economic self interest.
The same goes when privately educated feminists implore poor women to support the agenda of elite females. Doctors and lawyers will benefit far more from free childcare than any cleaner.
This talk of society being a power structure built in favour of all whites, against blacks also divides the oppressed is racist because it divides along lines of race.
The people who promote this thinking are just like white males, they fall into two groups. The elite, and the bitches of the elite.
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