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- Newsgroups: soc.motss
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!zazen!anderson
- From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
- Subject: Rowley on Bigotry
- Message-ID: <1992Nov18.131816.23926@macc.wisc.edu>
- Sender: news@macc.wisc.edu (USENET News System)
- Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
- References: <17931@autodesk.COM> <1992Nov17.065041.20372@spdcc.com>
- Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 13:18:16 GMT
- Lines: 109
-
-
- In article <17931@autodesk.COM> owen@autodesk.com (D. Owen
- Rowley), whose name is especially fecund from the point of
- view of anagrams, nee Rowdy Owl being a good one,
- cross-posts *and* responds to Cl*yt*n, a double recipe for
- getting me to ignore his efforts. Nofty-nofty.
-
- Indeed had Friar Dyer in article
- <1992Nov17.065041.20372@spdcc.com> not made a notable
- response to the same, I would not have noticed the cited
- piece, and would have been constrained to get the
- fair-haired magician suffer on in not quite silence. Alas,
- having skulked through bales of bytes, here we are.
- Rejoice, Ye Low Wonder, rejoice briefly.
-
- >>I am one Queer who doesn't believe that government can
- >>force people to change their minds about socially acceptable
- >>bigotry.
-
- Not wanting to put words in your mouth (well, wanting to but
- foreswearing the strife), one assumes you didn't mean to imply
- that some bigotry or other would be socially acceptable.
-
- Absent truly draconian methods, I don't think government can
- force anyone to think anything, let alone change what people
- think. But after all, that's not a function of government,
- as I see it. A government can foster a lot of things, and
- it can prevent a lot of things. In my opinion, quite apart
- from competing ideals about what government is or should be,
- I think our government has come up short, especially on the
- fostering end of things to do about bigotry. And in the
- past dozen or so years (no great surprise), it isn't doing
- much of a preventing job either, malign neglect being the
- Reagan/Bush long suit.
-
- >>I look back on the civil rights struggle of racial
- >>minoritys and find that for all the government regulation
- >>regarding non-discrimination there is still plenty to go
- >>around.
-
- Steve has addressed this well, I think:
-
- >Of course there is still bigotry and institutionalized
- >racism. At the same time, the Civil Rights Acts never
- >pretended that it would get wiped out by fiat, nor was that
- >their aim. Specifying race or sexual orientation in an
- >anti-discrimination law doesn't wipe out bigotry, not is
- >that its primary purpose; it provides for redress when such
- >bigotry is exercised to the detriment of the aggrieved.
-
- Owen isn't the only person, left, right, or center, who
- faults the government for not doing what it can't or
- shouldn't do. Of course, the fault is not the government's
- but the people's, that is, ours, for not creating and
- maintaining a government that fosters civil rights and
- protects civil liberties. Those who fault the government, a
- fair fraction of the time, are merely fleeing from the
- responsibilities of their own faults.
-
- If the remedy for bigotry is education (Owen says it is,
- "absolutely"), the government (that is, we ourselves) could
- at least not get in the way of fostering the education. The
- government, aka the people, could do something about
- literacy, about the infrastructure of education, about the
- free interchange of ideas, about fostering useful debate to
- show that bigotry is a weak idea and liberty is a strong
- one.
-
- The government/people could cease dismantling the forms of
- redress represented by the progressive strides of the
- half-generation up to the early 70s, which have stopped
- working not because they were bad ideas -- on the contrary,
- what happened subsequently is a powerful indicator of what
- good ideas they were -- but because powerful forces that
- support and maintain racism, sexism, and homophobia in our
- country have succeeded, by long and determined application
- over another half-generation, in weakening, nullifying, or
- reversing those progressive steps. This regression they
- seek to cover up, especially nowadays, with pious propaganda
- to the effect "it's not working" (small wonder, given their
- efforts to torpedo it), counting on Owen and others to say:
-
- >>I look back on the civil rights struggle of racial
- >>minoritys and find that for all the government regulation
- >>regarding non-discrimination there is still plenty to go
- >>around.
-
- A yahoo remark if ever there was one, I think. A cover-up,
- one I think Steve nicely unmasked.
-
- <> It is so ironic how someone can preach fundamental and moral
- <> love for God and of God, but go around and despise those who
- <> are not "morally" correct. -- (someone)
- <> It is not ironic at all. A person who can believe in some
- <> particular form of God is capable of believing anything. If
- <> such a person likes homosexuals, then they will assert that
- <> homosexuality is moral. If such a person finds homosexuality
- <> distasteful, then they will assert that homosexuality is immoral.
- <> Such people think with their intestines. What they intuit they
- <> assert to be true. If they happen to intuit nice things, they
- <> are still dangerous; a bad night's sleep and they could just as
- <> well intuit ethnic cleansing. Zero-integrity thought is no less
- <> dangerous for being momentarily without an explicit threat.
- <> -- Greg Weeks (weeks@hpscit.sc.hp.com)
- --
- [Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
- [Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
- [Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
- [---------> Discrimination, Bigotry, and Hate are not Family Values <---------]
-