First of all, I want to say that I’m not a subscriber to what seems to be the prevailing method in past Wespeaks of substituting pseudo-intellectual diss-outs for real arguments. All mudslinging aside, the only thing I’ll wish upon you (and myself for that matter) is clarity, and I hope this doesn’t come off as a condescending for your edification, higher than thou, bullsh*%* like I’ve been seeing a lot of. For someone who considers themself a free-thinker, you have to realize that’s not a good way to earn respect for your ideas. That said, I want to congratulate you for thinking seriously about issues and questioning both liberal and conservative views and resisting the knee-jerk reaction which seems to prevail. It does no good for people to think like sheep, even if they are good guy sheep, and the reason that we are at college is to think seriously about stuff and question it, etcetera. In my younger years I’ve struggled with the arguments you made in last weeks Wespeak about having a corresponding Straight History Month/White History Month. I don’t know if this will change your mind, but I will give you a brief overview of my reasons for abandoning these views: if there are two things history have taught us about it these kinds of things, these are they.
One: change doesn’t happen overnight. Two: change doesn’t happen by ignoring the problem (I think that your ideal of zero distinction on the basis of sex/age/race is institutionalized in France, to mostly disastrous results). A third observation is that racism/homophobia are still issues, both on campus and in the world. This is not an abstract philosophical argument, as you know, it pertains to friends of ours. I do not know you, but I’m guessing that you are into philosophy. One principle of philosophy is that all arguments are supposed to be valid “a priori;” in other words, without reference to empirical observations in the physical world. A caveat of such a discipline of “pure thought” is that you cannot ground your claims empirically. However, arguing philosophically about something about which we have mountains of experience is silly. We know already (from years of history) that ignoring racial distinctions as you suggest hasn’t done as much to change conceptions in the real world as direct confrontation and raising awareness of these issues has changed.
Furthermore, this is not just an intellectual issue. Battling for civil rights, as it happens in the real world is a dirty and imprecise thing. You can’t just intellectually convince people not to be racists. Frankly, it takes some soul. The point of Black History Month and Gay History Month are to make people think about the fact that rich white dudes are not responsible for all of cultural and scientific history in the United States. Everybody knows that they are responsible for a lot of it, because we read about it all the time. The United States was colonized by white Englishmen, and we have plenty of opportunities to recognize them. Besides the other ten months of the year, we have Columbus Day, Lincoln’s birthday, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, etc. Naming these other months straight month or white people month wouldn’t really be racist, it would just be what my parents call “preaching to the choir.” Everybody already knows that rich white men did a lot of science in the last two hundred years in America. It’s just boring to keep pointing out. Straight up. Nor are these months designed as an insult to straight white men. I too am a straight white male and I too feel the unwanted burden of my white male ancestors’ moral shortcomings. It’s no more fair for us white males to have inherited the legacy of oppressor than it is for others to inherit their legacy of the oppressed. But Black/Queer History Month isn’t about us. It’s about recognizing those that are rarely recognized, and encouraging and inspiring their contemporaries. Also your argument that we should not recognize differences on the basis of sexuality or race is not well thought out. Nobody wants a uniform, monocultural society. There are racial and sexual differences, as well as millions of other individual differences. The point is that these differences are nothing to be ashamed of (unless you are a murderer or a rapist, but that’s why we don’t have National Rapist Month). If you feel like their pride has to equal your shame, that’s your problem. I would really recommend living (or at least thinking about living) in a place where you are a minority, especially one of the historically oppressed variety, before speaking for these people.
If all these arguments are lost on you, perhaps casting this in terms of a philosophical argument will be my last resort. Aristotle wrote about “the virtuous mean” in his Nichomachean ethics. “It is not rashness, which is an excess,” he wrote “but cowardice, which is a deficiency, that is more opposed to courage.” If the social mean is still deficient after all these years, perhaps a little rashness is justified.
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