Judy's question yesterday got me thinking. I am not a moral relativist so I do have beliefs that I think are "right". I also hold values that I consider "better" than some I encounter. How this all plays out in my discussions with people is another story...
I live in an immigrant community and actively seek out contact with other cultures, so I am very often exposed to various degrees of prejudice or bigotry of one race or culture towards another. Even when I was in the movement my GF from Denmark expressed an attitude about Germans that I thought was overgeneralized. But I thought to myself, "I guess if you have grown up living close to Germany for the last century you might develop some strong opinions." I remember talking with a Korean chick who was sounding like a Southern redneck about black people. Her family had come to the US and started a dry cleaner shop in a bad part of DC. Her views were overgeneralized for my experience of black people but not her own. Dating a black person exposed me to the racism in the black community towards the shade of color of skin. I never met a white racist that would put black people to the "paper bag test" but this not an uncommon racist view in black culture. Asians hate each other so much that I think the term "Asian" is useless. Could I explain to survivors of Nanking in China that all Japanese are not murderous torturers? Should I? The South Americans I live with despise the Central American immigrants I live with. Central Americans are often poorer when they come here and many of their countries were too war torn to continue a complex culture, they are often just trying to survive. I dig my El Salvadorian neighbors but right now MS13 members are hacking people up with machetes so people who have lived with that terror probably hate them all. What point could I make to my Vietnamese GF whose boat was attacked by Thai pirates 7 times on her way over to Australia about my love for Thai culture? She hated them all and couldn't give a rat's ass about my Kumbaya vibe. Is she overgeneralized about a culture, sure, was it hard earned? Yes. My African neighbors hate American blacks. Since I am so white I am almost transparent, I don't get involved with changing their views. They are oil and water and don't mix. I don't come across gay bashers very often, but I guess I just assume they either don't actually know any gay people so they think of them as cartoons, or that they are gay themselves in a gay-unfriendly culture so they have to repress it. If you hang out with gay people you hear too many queen jokes to get all huffy when a straight person makes one. I grew up in a prosperous time in an era of growing social awareness with a lot of privileges, and this has shaped my perspective that there is good and bad in all cultures and people. In particular I have the privileged white person's liberal view about the good in people from all cultures. I think this is a "better" way to live and feel "right" about it. But I am not confused about how my views got shaped by my experiences just as prejudiced people's did. I worked at experiencing other cultures enough to see them in the positive light I do, but this was the luxury of not fighting them in war. Having fought through the Pacific in WWII my dad will never view Japanese people with the same ease I do. Should he? So I don't know if I hold the value that Judy proposed that it takes "cojones" to speak out against the prejudices I encounter. I will usually say something like "my experience is different since I have friends who are " fill in the blank". But I am really only standing up for my friends not their whole race or culture. I am not changing any views or doing any good either. I am not spreading my Kumbaya hippie values because they were gained though experiences that were too different from the people I am talking with. So I try to understand the history of how they got these values. I learn about the distinction in slave life between the light skinned "house slaves" and the darker skinned "field hands". If black people are sometimes still influenced by this aspect of their history it is really none of my business. I can achieve understanding in this life, but I have had very little luck persuading people out of their prejudices. It is hard enough to keep these weeds out of my own garden because for all my Kumbaya values, I know that I can be just as much of an ass myself in how I overgeneralize people from my own limited experiences. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "dhamiltony2k5" > > <dhamiltony2k5@> wrote: > <snip> > > > Yes Rick, Good People doing bad things, continuing to support > > > such an organization as it has become. > > > > And yet, is it our business to somehow convince > > them that this is what they're doing? > > > > I ask because one poster on this forum > > (Note that again Barry finds himself unable to > utter my name. Perhaps that's because a little > while back he vowed he was never going to read > any of my posts ever again.) > > suggested > > as much yesterday. The implication (possibly unin- > > tended) of the post was that if she encountered a > > friend who had come to believe something that she > > considered untrue or even insulting to certain > > minorities, she'd *have* to say something to set > > the person right and change his or her mind, to > > make (not stated, but definitely implied) some > > kind of stand for "the truth." > > Actually, of course, I was posing a question. Let's > have another look at what I wrote: > > "The question is, what do you *do* (or not-do) > [when you encounter disagreement with what you > value]? Suppose you're chatting with a kid, say, > and she starts coming out with all kinds of > bigoted remarks about black people. Do you just > accept that she doesn't agree with your values? > What if a good friend surprises you with a tirade > against gay people? > > "It's not quite so simple as saying, as 'some > people' here do, Well, that's your opinion. I > have a different opinion. No one opinion is > 'better' than any other." > > > If one feels that, doesn't that imply that they > > feel that they KNOW the truth? > > > > I can't speak for you, Doug, but I DON'T know the > > truth. About *anything*. All I have is opinions, > > which as far as I can tell based on past perform- > > ance (no scientific tests so far...sorry, Off), > > are sometimes accurate, and sometimes not. > > Obviously, Barry's answer to my question is that > you should *not* challenge anybody's opinions, > because *you could be wrong*. > > For Barry, nothing is more terrifying than the > possibility of being wrong. He avoids that danger > by never taking a stand, never committing to a > point of view. > > It's one thing to be able to recognize that your > values don't necessarily represent The Truth. > That's a step toward maturity. > > But there's a further step, which is to have > the cojones to stand up for what you believe > *even though you could be wrong*. >
