This isn’t going to be a pretty blog. It will be judged by people who read it. All I ask is that you read the whole thing. One of the first scripts I ever wrote was called “Your Word Against Mine”, and it is long…damn long. When you’re reading it you will think, “this is one of the most offensive things I’ve ever read”, but, and this is a big but, the last two pages change all of it, and it becomes thought-provoking instead of offensive, or at least that’s what I tell myself when I cry myself to sleep at night. Hopefully this blog will also have some thought provoking.
Why there will never be equality
Because people don’t want there to be. I’m not talking about racists, or misogynists, or homophobes, I’m talking about the people that are in the class they perceive to be bigoted against. That’s not say that certain “isms” don’t exist, as they do, but some of that is self perpetuated.
When Obama was elected President I was actually surprised. I was surprised that the country had come as far as they have to be able to elect a non-white to the highest position in the land. It was viewed as a landmark election, electing an African American as President. But even then, in the afterglow of the election there were rumblings about when a “total” African American would be elected, that being one that had no none black blood in his genealogy.
There are stories I read (frequently) about varying standards on tests or needed accreditation for something or another. One I read recently was if you were of a non-Caucasian persuasion you needed to achieve a score of 22 (or something, I don’t remember the specifics) in order to get into a gifted program. If you were white you needed to get a 25. Gifted is gifted, by applying a race-based sliding scale you are both discriminating against one group and insulting another. One saying you need to do better to be considered gifted, the other saying gifted for “your group” is less. What does this say about the powers that be and their thought process? Another example, and this is one of my favorites, is the test to become a fireman. I think any sane person could see that firemen, excuse me firepeople, serve an important role when they are called upon to do their jobs. However the test, much of which is based on physical ability, is different for men and for women. I think the idea of wanting females in any workplace is laudable, but that will be of little solace to the person that a female firefighter cannot carry out of a burning building.
Clubs, colleges, parades and pride
I think the header is pretty self-explanatory, but how many clubs are there that are for women? For gay people? For different ethnicities? Try starting one of those for white men and see how far you get. Same thing goes for colleges (military colleges was a great law case during my life time), and parades and pride days kind of go without saying. Recently someone was lambasted for saying something positive about straight marriage (not saying anything at all, positive or negative, about gay marriage) saying that they were a homophobe.
I try to look at people as people. Don’t care about your color, your sex, your orientation, anything like that. It isn’t a second thought in an interview, picking people for a team, or deciding who to hang out with. Honestly there are douche-bags in every group, and I just try to limit them.
A political blog? Really?
No. Of course not. Much has been made this season of The Amazing Race regarding potentially having the “first all female team win the race.” Why does this matter? Apparently it mattered enough to stack the deck with an inordinate number of all female teams. In the past on Survivor much has been made of race. The first black woman to win. The first black man to win. Forming an all “minority alliance.” Does this sound like people want to be treated equally? If a guy said he wanted an all guy team to win, it would be labeled as misogynistic. Wanting an all female team to win? Apparently that’s fine. One of my friends wanted Obama to win the last election. When I asked why he said, “It’s time.” Not “I like his policies”, not “I think he’s the best direction for this country”, no just “It’s time.” I say until people are just people, all people, there will never be anything close to equality, which leads me to the last hard part.
The truth
People aren’t equal. Men and women aren’t equal. Different races aren’t equal either. None of these make one better than another, but may make one of them better for a given job or task. Ask yourself, if you are a captain for a pick-up game of basketball and you don’t know who the players are, all other things being equal, do you pick a black guy or a white guy. Now switch the question to be about hockey. Do these things make you racist? If you’re in college and you’re going to cheat off of someone on an econ exam, who are you going to sit next to? I know a guy who aced all of his econ exams by sitting next to the same Asian guy. If you had to pick someone to be the fastest to walk across a balance beam, would you pick a man or a woman? Nine times out of ten the answers to the above questions (assuming you want to win) are obvious. What does this mean? It means that different groups of people have different skill sets. Generally certain groups are going to be better at certain things than other groups.
Lastly
Men are not equal to other men. Women are not equal to other women, etc, etc. I know that I could stand toe to toe with most men regarding raw intelligence. Brute force, I’m going to struggle a bit. Balance I’m completely fucked. People have labels attached to them because they attach labels to themselves. It’s used both as a source of pride, and as a crutch. Until all of us, as a collective, decide to just be judged (as lady justice is described) blindly, without any preconceived notions we will never be equal...and I think many people are completely fine with that.
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