New attitudes on Multi Racial Students in the NYT and in Bitch Magazine

What a fascinating dialog. I would have to admit my sympathies are more in line with the Bitch Media response, however it is refreshing to read about a student lead organization for Multiracial, Biracial and Interracial solidarity in the New York Times piece.

The most apparent dissonance in 21st Century civil rights dynamics is, to me, the obvious irony of American exceptionalism; i.e., that found in section of President Obama’s State of the Union address where he discussed the social mobility that afforded he, Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner the opportunities to come to their positions of political authority.

That these three individuals had the fortune to collide with the educational, economical and cultural forces that propelled them to their present positions does not speak to the status of social mobility or to the possibility of achieving the American Dream as these currently exist in the First Nation Founded upon an Idea. Nor do the activities and feelings a group of mixed collegiates publicized in the New York Times – nor do my own social and cultural achievements as a young, mixed, lower middle class man – speak to current societal conditions.

What facts and exemplars are appropriate? How about that misunderstood exhibit on Women in Prison from 2008? As close to this exhibit as I was, my wager is few patrons understood what Rickie Solinger was up to when she designed that exhibit; few people likely even comprehended what planet she was on when she talked about motherhood as a class privilege and about the disparity between cocaine and crack possession prison sentences, and about what these have to say about race, feminism, and social and economic equality in our country. (Parenthetically–the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 evidences some progress in reducing the radical disparity in economically prejudiced prison sentencing.)

Finally, the crescendo of my pessimism reaches its highest point in the ironical true recognition of diverse equality through an ideology of universal human dignity. My complaint is that diverse equality will not come through talking about how we all appreciate other people because they are human and God’s creatures, but about truly seeing the humanity in all through action.

There’s nothing wrong with the ideology in itself, because its purpose is to be expressed in practice, but how often do we truly practice what is preached?

The images of diversity that come to my mind are those with which I struggle personally, for the harbinger of a more equal society is the individual challenge of confronting one’s prejudices honestly. No one can say they have never wrongly judged another being and no one can say that, in even the smallest regard, they have never refused another the title “equal human being.”

What does it mean to believe in the dignity of all human beings? What does it mean to be pro-life? or a humanist? When do we remove the designation “human” from a being? When we stare into those horrible eyes and smile of Jared Loughner’s mugshot, into Charles Manson’s black chasm eyes, and or at the frenzied Julie Powers Schenecker being dragged off after murdering her two children, do we declare them unfit to live? Do we deny them life and euthanize them as we do dogs? (As last Tuesday the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced; it will use pentobarbital to execute death row inmates, an anesthetic commonly used by veterinarians to euthanize pets.)

The last paragraph drew too much from me to be able to write about other sorts of struggles about whom we call human, and some or all will see my point too far out in left field anyway. In sum, I would best call my argument a form of slippery slope: if we condone killing the people I mentioned, then where do we draw the line in our nomination or restriction of human and civil rights? A murderer of the second degree is human but a more heinous perpetrator isn’t? If we think that a poor man’s crack problem warrants a punishment exponentially more severe than a rich man’s cocaine problem, is there any indication at all of an underlying socio-economic inequality. What relates these issue to the point of the original post is this: indeed, I am not one who merely believes that framing the question of diversity in antiquated terms fails to capture the present complexity of the issue’s reality. I know this! Further, it’s hard for me to see how anyone else can not know this! Whether or not we have a mixed president or a black president doesn’t say a thing about diversity, diverse equality, civil rights, or human rights.

Alas the last sentence of the original post tempers me: indeed we must live with diversity in attitudes towards diversity, and I do recognize my own struggles with my own prejudices and failures to comprehend the other’s perspective. But here’s to the right of sharing what may be incendiary or provocative points of view!