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A thought... and an unusual one.
As many here probably know, I'm the last libertarian to speak enthusiastically about the virtues of removing discrimination law. I don't in fact support these laws, but I find myself doing so in the uncomfortable spirit of inescapable logical principle verging on a dreary technicality. Still, I typically have a mammothly difficult time believing that discrimination laws are a great enemy of human liberation. No passion within me finds the inability to racists and bigots to exclude those they hate as much a primary to human liberation as the ability of the different and unpopular to live each day's normal business without a constant fear of rejection and exclusion from common civil society. And- I will be blunt- my own experience as a transgender woman makes the common skepticism of libertarians towards the seriousness of the problem seem naive at best, a privilege of ignorance in many, and a dark callousness in the worst.
Nevertheless, an interesting thought just occured to me on the concept that at least gives me an unusual pause.
Under laws against discrimination, official discrimination is, obviously, illegal. Every business is assumed to be nondiscriminatory, tho' this is not always in fact the case. But every business claims to be so whether this is the case or not.
In particular fact, established and politically connected businesses make a loud point about how nondiscriminatory they are, putting up big signs like ""EO employer" which, logically, are insultingly superfluous in this climate, and which actually mean an interested and often hypocritical toadying to some government office which glories in being a force against the evil of discrimination, but is in fact primary a bureaucracy of simpering bureaucrats interested in power.
This is the picture that shows itself where anti-discrimination has the practical official sanction, implemented for good faith or politics, of the state.
But contrast similar signs that occur in another context where discrimation is, quite often, legal, and even when illegal only nominally so, since the typical state apparatus is too riddled with bigotry or apathetic to care.
I refer to the 'gay-lesbian-bisexual safe zone' signs I can remember seeing here and there on the West Coast and in colleges back East. In contrast to the EO/AA office signs of corporate buildings, which reek of political pandering (with apologies for using this term such to actual panderers... who often provide a useful service as knowledge entrepeneurs), these signs at least suggest and often really stand for a genuine, positive moral purpose and stance. And so generally in culture. With something like racism, where everyone pretends to abhor racism and yet many people are unrepentant or suave code-word bigots behind their backs, when it comes to heterosexism the bigots are out in the open, flaming proud of it and even a bit more dignified about it... while- and this is much more important- those that actually stand for tolerance, diversity, and self-expression really mean something when they speak out against heterocentrism. As an aesthete with no moral compass, I can't help but notice that this produces both a more vibrant, vivid, and *real* picture than does the unreal swamp of fake tolerance one finds the a legally covered-up, underground economy of racism.
One perverse effect of antidiscrimination laws is that by blanking out the evidence of all discrimination by making it a prohibitive social expense, it effectively *socializes* the costs of being racist. This is true because genuine anti-racists cannot really identify themselves.
One thing which truly speaks to me here is this: my father was a racist, altho' he carefully avoided using that term in all but the most qualified senses, but in any case as a child I recieved constant, obsessive tales of the deparavity of the 'black underclass', the ubiquity of 'politically correct' dogmatism, and a constant injuction that the anti-racist proclamations which I heard daily, for instance, in public schools, were the product of a bunch of liberals in denial of reality who were just pushing propoganda for political ends.
I never bought the concept of racism (which I thought plainly irrational under premises I later found articulated in Ayn Rand), *but* I also didn't really challenge the general picture of the world my father taught me- for instance, that real achievements had always been done by Western white males and that all the people mentioning anyone else were really just twisting history for the sake of politics. Or the typical 'blame the poor' versions of social theory and history. Or: well, I'm frankly ashamed to remember the ugliness. Etc, etc, etc.
The problem was, the kind of creatures I remember from yearly mandatory Martin Luther King Day lectures and later college administrators really *were* a bunch of intellectual crooks who would gladly twist history for the sake of politics. In fact, it took me years to find a book (specifically: one called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" which really did present a rational case for the kind of liberal picture of the world which was being crammed down my throat in schools. It was only then that it dawned on me that much of the stuff I'd heard preached insincerely in schooling was both *important* and *true*, that many people *did* mean it sincerely, and that what my father (and others like Charles Murray) had been claiming on every level of fact and principle were in fact vicious lies.
It felt like an immense personal liberation, along with a true disgust at some of the things I'd been taught to accept, and for the first time I was able to really appreciate the kind of authors I'd been pushed to read in college. As a transgender woman, I found Langston Hughes and the early W.E.B. DuBois to speak personally to me, both personally and to the human situation. And I started realizaing that, for instance- no, books such as Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" were not worthless third-raters pushed into classrooms for politically charged academic balance. Or rather- bar that- such books *really* were pushed into classrooms for politically charged academic balance. They just were *serious, valuable human literature* abused in such a way, much the way conservatives abuse the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare by making them creatures of political nationalism and therefore useless as literature, or the way classical music is made into socially harmless 'culture'* no one would actually dream of really enjoying, learning from, or learning to craft something with.
* Which is very stupid. Case in point: if you've never actually read the lyrics to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony... go read them. Then go play it is church. Hint: find a proper church, like a cathedral. Cathedral, in actual Latin, means 'seat', so make sure a religious officiary is properly on the seat. Please bring donations.
I note the result is the same on both counts: liberals convince a lot of people to hate non-Euro, non-malestream literature. Conservatives convince a lot of people to find classical European literature to be immeaurably dull.
In my case, the loud government campaigns against racism actually helped a monster like my father appear reasonable- simply because I never got the sense the teachers and textbooks really believed what they said or cared whether their facts were straight- my father, in his own perverse way as a hateful dogmatic bigot, did. The result is that my personal "bullshit filter" ended up catching the exact wrong materiel, filtering poison from pure air... precisely because the message I should have felt as liberating truth, and which belongs as a *basic* teaching of a liberated mind in the Republic of Letters (a citizenship which to this woman of the cloth is more real than America's)- was presented as inauthentic propaganda smarmy hypocrisy.
Perhaps 'tis a good idea not to try to push the state to be anti-sexist or anti-racist precisely because it's dangerous to have the truth spoken out of the mouth of lies. There is a kind of Gresham's Law in operation here: state nondiscrimination *drives out* heartfelt nondiscrimination; state celebration of diversity *drives out* real celebration of diversity. When I was in college, "diversity" was an administrative buzzword to which I rolled my eyes, used as a moral bludgeon to silence critics in order to implement whatever politically convenient policy was deemed expedient (the Black president of the university I went to was simultaneously a fairly loud PC advocate and a shocking Uncle Tom, who tried to dissaude a friend of mine from investigating an actual case of instituional racism which involved a corruption of the student elections because it would be bad for business and look bad to the (overwhelmingly white) alumni). Here in San Francisco, however, where diversity isn't just a political slogan but the way people *live*, clear at the glance of a street sign or the architecture, and built into the basic courtesy of human relations, believing in "diversity" has real spiritual meaning. The person next to you has a real presumption of moral seriousness when using the word. After all, she decided to *live* here.
Perhaps a similar thing is possible with regard to antidiscrimination law. Imagine: during the 1960s, offical discrimination laws had been struck down and government instutions had been permitted to discriminate, but private discrimination was still legal. Now, it's the 1990s, and liberal college professors and employers put up prominent signs announcing their opposition to racism and even a commitment to 'affirmative action' to push everslow history along and overcome past injustices. Except this timeline, there's once difference: *they mean it*. Standing up for an anti-racist cause doesn't make liberals look dubious or silly and fishing for applause (even if they in fact passionately mean it) but is a genuine political act of nobility. Hopefully, it's a common act, and one that becomes common enough that eventually the people who find themselves decling such speech-acts sooner or later notice that they are in a pretty ugly minority and wisely start to shut up. Except in this alternate universe, they don't shut up begrudgingly because they are legally forced to, convinced secretly (as racists I've known generally are) that pretty much everyone (of their race, of course) secretly shares the same opinions about 'those people' being less intelligent, violent, shiftless, lazy, or generally inferior (or whatever). No, they shut up because they realize that everyone else *doesn't* feel the same way, because there was a war of words about this and- thank God and Goddess!- they *lost* (please play the mocking taunt of Nelson from "The Simpsons"), and they go slink away in defeat, knowing underneath all their rationalizations that their opponents, standing forth honestly, look beautiful, while they look like a bunch of big, ignorant, and terrified bruisers in comparison to those with a claim to represent humanity (perhaps true cosmopolitanism relates to antidiscrimation law like the waters of Youth relate to a cheap (but not inexpensive) makeup job)
Now, *that's* a form of libertarian thought experiment that I can participate in, and perhaps a personal sign of how there can be a *hopeful* way to channel both an aesthete's politics and her anger- of how judging freedom by its look and feel, instead of airly and colourless formalisms, can result in both a good logic of liberty, and- a rare and difficult thing for me- hope.
And a self-expression for which- well- I actually feel better after writing this.
Lady Aster.
As many here probably know, I'm the last libertarian to speak enthusiastically about the virtues of removing discrimination law. I don't in fact support these laws, but I find myself doing so in the uncomfortable spirit of inescapable logical principle verging on a dreary technicality. Still, I typically have a mammothly difficult time believing that discrimination laws are a great enemy of human liberation. No passion within me finds the inability to racists and bigots to exclude those they hate as much a primary to human liberation as the ability of the different and unpopular to live each day's normal business without a constant fear of rejection and exclusion from common civil society. And- I will be blunt- my own experience as a transgender woman makes the common skepticism of libertarians towards the seriousness of the problem seem naive at best, a privilege of ignorance in many, and a dark callousness in the worst.
Nevertheless, an interesting thought just occured to me on the concept that at least gives me an unusual pause.
Under laws against discrimination, official discrimination is, obviously, illegal. Every business is assumed to be nondiscriminatory, tho' this is not always in fact the case. But every business claims to be so whether this is the case or not.
In particular fact, established and politically connected businesses make a loud point about how nondiscriminatory they are, putting up big signs like ""EO employer" which, logically, are insultingly superfluous in this climate, and which actually mean an interested and often hypocritical toadying to some government office which glories in being a force against the evil of discrimination, but is in fact primary a bureaucracy of simpering bureaucrats interested in power.
This is the picture that shows itself where anti-discrimination has the practical official sanction, implemented for good faith or politics, of the state.
But contrast similar signs that occur in another context where discrimation is, quite often, legal, and even when illegal only nominally so, since the typical state apparatus is too riddled with bigotry or apathetic to care.
I refer to the 'gay-lesbian-bisexual safe zone' signs I can remember seeing here and there on the West Coast and in colleges back East. In contrast to the EO/AA office signs of corporate buildings, which reek of political pandering (with apologies for using this term such to actual panderers... who often provide a useful service as knowledge entrepeneurs), these signs at least suggest and often really stand for a genuine, positive moral purpose and stance. And so generally in culture. With something like racism, where everyone pretends to abhor racism and yet many people are unrepentant or suave code-word bigots behind their backs, when it comes to heterosexism the bigots are out in the open, flaming proud of it and even a bit more dignified about it... while- and this is much more important- those that actually stand for tolerance, diversity, and self-expression really mean something when they speak out against heterocentrism. As an aesthete with no moral compass, I can't help but notice that this produces both a more vibrant, vivid, and *real* picture than does the unreal swamp of fake tolerance one finds the a legally covered-up, underground economy of racism.
One perverse effect of antidiscrimination laws is that by blanking out the evidence of all discrimination by making it a prohibitive social expense, it effectively *socializes* the costs of being racist. This is true because genuine anti-racists cannot really identify themselves.
One thing which truly speaks to me here is this: my father was a racist, altho' he carefully avoided using that term in all but the most qualified senses, but in any case as a child I recieved constant, obsessive tales of the deparavity of the 'black underclass', the ubiquity of 'politically correct' dogmatism, and a constant injuction that the anti-racist proclamations which I heard daily, for instance, in public schools, were the product of a bunch of liberals in denial of reality who were just pushing propoganda for political ends.
I never bought the concept of racism (which I thought plainly irrational under premises I later found articulated in Ayn Rand), *but* I also didn't really challenge the general picture of the world my father taught me- for instance, that real achievements had always been done by Western white males and that all the people mentioning anyone else were really just twisting history for the sake of politics. Or the typical 'blame the poor' versions of social theory and history. Or: well, I'm frankly ashamed to remember the ugliness. Etc, etc, etc.
The problem was, the kind of creatures I remember from yearly mandatory Martin Luther King Day lectures and later college administrators really *were* a bunch of intellectual crooks who would gladly twist history for the sake of politics. In fact, it took me years to find a book (specifically: one called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" which really did present a rational case for the kind of liberal picture of the world which was being crammed down my throat in schools. It was only then that it dawned on me that much of the stuff I'd heard preached insincerely in schooling was both *important* and *true*, that many people *did* mean it sincerely, and that what my father (and others like Charles Murray) had been claiming on every level of fact and principle were in fact vicious lies.
It felt like an immense personal liberation, along with a true disgust at some of the things I'd been taught to accept, and for the first time I was able to really appreciate the kind of authors I'd been pushed to read in college. As a transgender woman, I found Langston Hughes and the early W.E.B. DuBois to speak personally to me, both personally and to the human situation. And I started realizaing that, for instance- no, books such as Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" were not worthless third-raters pushed into classrooms for politically charged academic balance. Or rather- bar that- such books *really* were pushed into classrooms for politically charged academic balance. They just were *serious, valuable human literature* abused in such a way, much the way conservatives abuse the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare by making them creatures of political nationalism and therefore useless as literature, or the way classical music is made into socially harmless 'culture'* no one would actually dream of really enjoying, learning from, or learning to craft something with.
* Which is very stupid. Case in point: if you've never actually read the lyrics to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony... go read them. Then go play it is church. Hint: find a proper church, like a cathedral. Cathedral, in actual Latin, means 'seat', so make sure a religious officiary is properly on the seat. Please bring donations.
I note the result is the same on both counts: liberals convince a lot of people to hate non-Euro, non-malestream literature. Conservatives convince a lot of people to find classical European literature to be immeaurably dull.
In my case, the loud government campaigns against racism actually helped a monster like my father appear reasonable- simply because I never got the sense the teachers and textbooks really believed what they said or cared whether their facts were straight- my father, in his own perverse way as a hateful dogmatic bigot, did. The result is that my personal "bullshit filter" ended up catching the exact wrong materiel, filtering poison from pure air... precisely because the message I should have felt as liberating truth, and which belongs as a *basic* teaching of a liberated mind in the Republic of Letters (a citizenship which to this woman of the cloth is more real than America's)- was presented as inauthentic propaganda smarmy hypocrisy.
Perhaps 'tis a good idea not to try to push the state to be anti-sexist or anti-racist precisely because it's dangerous to have the truth spoken out of the mouth of lies. There is a kind of Gresham's Law in operation here: state nondiscrimination *drives out* heartfelt nondiscrimination; state celebration of diversity *drives out* real celebration of diversity. When I was in college, "diversity" was an administrative buzzword to which I rolled my eyes, used as a moral bludgeon to silence critics in order to implement whatever politically convenient policy was deemed expedient (the Black president of the university I went to was simultaneously a fairly loud PC advocate and a shocking Uncle Tom, who tried to dissaude a friend of mine from investigating an actual case of instituional racism which involved a corruption of the student elections because it would be bad for business and look bad to the (overwhelmingly white) alumni). Here in San Francisco, however, where diversity isn't just a political slogan but the way people *live*, clear at the glance of a street sign or the architecture, and built into the basic courtesy of human relations, believing in "diversity" has real spiritual meaning. The person next to you has a real presumption of moral seriousness when using the word. After all, she decided to *live* here.
Perhaps a similar thing is possible with regard to antidiscrimination law. Imagine: during the 1960s, offical discrimination laws had been struck down and government instutions had been permitted to discriminate, but private discrimination was still legal. Now, it's the 1990s, and liberal college professors and employers put up prominent signs announcing their opposition to racism and even a commitment to 'affirmative action' to push everslow history along and overcome past injustices. Except this timeline, there's once difference: *they mean it*. Standing up for an anti-racist cause doesn't make liberals look dubious or silly and fishing for applause (even if they in fact passionately mean it) but is a genuine political act of nobility. Hopefully, it's a common act, and one that becomes common enough that eventually the people who find themselves decling such speech-acts sooner or later notice that they are in a pretty ugly minority and wisely start to shut up. Except in this alternate universe, they don't shut up begrudgingly because they are legally forced to, convinced secretly (as racists I've known generally are) that pretty much everyone (of their race, of course) secretly shares the same opinions about 'those people' being less intelligent, violent, shiftless, lazy, or generally inferior (or whatever). No, they shut up because they realize that everyone else *doesn't* feel the same way, because there was a war of words about this and- thank God and Goddess!- they *lost* (please play the mocking taunt of Nelson from "The Simpsons"), and they go slink away in defeat, knowing underneath all their rationalizations that their opponents, standing forth honestly, look beautiful, while they look like a bunch of big, ignorant, and terrified bruisers in comparison to those with a claim to represent humanity (perhaps true cosmopolitanism relates to antidiscrimation law like the waters of Youth relate to a cheap (but not inexpensive) makeup job)
Now, *that's* a form of libertarian thought experiment that I can participate in, and perhaps a personal sign of how there can be a *hopeful* way to channel both an aesthete's politics and her anger- of how judging freedom by its look and feel, instead of airly and colourless formalisms, can result in both a good logic of liberty, and- a rare and difficult thing for me- hope.
And a self-expression for which- well- I actually feel better after writing this.
Lady Aster.
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