Originally Posted By: dboh
Quote:
It was a slur, yes, but its emotional impact then wasn't the same as its emotional impact today.


I don't think so at all. If anything, the target of the remark would have been more reticent to express an objection back then.


I'm not in a position to say; I'm not the target of that particular slur. I do know that it has been expressed to me that it is more painful now than it was fifty or even twenty years ago.

Originally Posted By: ryck
In the end, I think we can agree that it, or other forms of bigotry, will never end until we get children talking about it in the absence of bigoted adults.


I recently was part of a rather lengthy discussion on the topic of racism and bigotry on another forum.

Part of the issue isn't simply individual bigotry. There are still openly racist, bigoted people who are pleased to thump their chests and spout off about the supremacy of the white race, sure, but they're actually fairly uncommon.

The more insidious problem is the forms of racial privilege that are utterly invisible, even to people who are not themselves overtly racist. It's very difficult for someone who's white to even see all the various advantages he has in American society; when we grow up living in an environment of privilege, that privilege becomes as invisible to us as air.

And because it's so invisible, even people who aren't racist and who don't harbor bigotries still make assumptions about what it's like to be a member of another race without taking into account the fact that we have those advantages. Just by benefitting from advantages that we neither earned nor asked for--advantages which, half the time, we don't even SEE--we can inadvertently promote a vey subtle sort of institutionalized racism, without being overtly racist ourselves at all.

And because those subtle forces are so institutionalized, simply removing bigoted adults from the equation won't likely make them go away.

There's an awesome essay called Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack that talks about those invisible advantages that white skin confers. It was written by Peggy McIntosh, a woman's studies professor who kept beating her head against the fact that men hold an advantaged position in American society but often refuse to acknowledge, or even see, their own privileged state. She turned that observation on herself and asked the question "Do I have privileges that I don't see, as well?"

The result is really worth reading, I think. I can't recommend the essay enough.

Originally Posted By: ryck
One can only wonder how many new Jane Elliotts are not allowed to blossom when school boards are themselves so bigoted.


Indeed. By catering to moral panic and enforcing an unrealistic standard that tries to treat schoolteachers as identical, chase, sexless entities with no lives outside the classroom, we deny kids the ability to learn some very important lessons, including the notion that who a person sleeps with or in what position really has no bearing on that person's worth, dignity, or ability to do a job.

And that robs everyone of something valuable, I think.


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