House of Eratosthenes

Dominique is challenging readers of Down With Absolutes with the question that has been plaguing the democrat nomination process all year long…and she’s emphatic it doesn’t have anything to do with the election. I have a lot of trouble seeing that, but okay.

Question Of The Day – Sexism vs. Racism

A lot has been made of -isms this primary season. We’ve been having an ongoing, sometimes heated, debate about it in the Marshall household. Which is more prevalent? Are they equally bad? Is one tolerated more than the other? Is one considered more serious than the other? If so, is that a good thing?

I compared that to shooting yourself in the head through the left temple or the right one.

If I’m pressed to answer, I’d have to embark on a thought process that’s just — well, let’s have at it. Okay, I’m hiring for a position, and I can arbitrarily dismiss women from my pool of candidates, or black people. Sooner or later these will both be mistakes, because I’ll run into a competent person otherwise qualified, and dismiss them because of their sex/color. So, uh, I calculate something like…one out of four black guys is qualified, but one out of five women is qualified. So sexism isn’t as bad because I can dismiss more candidates that way without mistakenly pitching out someone who was otherwise qualified.

On the other hand, if more women are applying than black people, maybe it would take me less time to run across the competent woman against whom I’m going to discriminate. So golly. Maybe I should consider becoming a racist instead.

See what I meant about shooting yourself through the right side or left side of your head? Both are irrational and self-destructive. I really don’t want to re-type the following comment, because it kind of makes your head hurt reading it let alone writing it, but it sums it up solidly…

I would suggest that, if there is no intent to select a presidential candidate based on “which-is-worse,” and there is no intent to ignore one or the other as being less serious — the question is completely useless and meaningless.

Note to future generations, in case your textbooks are cleansing this. It is well known in the here & now, that it has become an effective Republican tactic to let this thing play out and hope for it to be played out in the limelight as much as possible.

Feminist activists trying to portray women as having more acute grievances than black people; black people trying to portray themselves has having a better group complaint than women. It’s all about claim on the democrat side of the ballot. Just like Yorkists and Lancastrians fighting over who has a stronger claim to the throne. Jockeying for a coronation based on pity. Complaining. Weakness. Whining.

We’ve carved our way deeply into the longest presidential election in our country’s history, without any prominent democrat saying one word about how the country would be governed should this-or-that democrat be elected — save for:

1. I’ll “negotiate with our enemies”;
2. “Healthcare for everyone”;
3. Blah blah blah something about the “Bush Administration.”

In other words — thanks to a question that happens to be identical to the one Dominique asked, our democrats have shown the very opposite of leadership.

Republicans haven’t been too much better. They’ve noticed their approval ratings have been dipping, and so they have worked their asses off to act more like democrats…which has brought their approval ratings down even more.

Here’s what kills me, though. What’s wrong with discrimination, no matter what kind, is that before you see all the things that make up the person you see the group identity of that person…which is like one page out of a great big book. But the minute we “recognize it” and “treat it as a serious problem” what do we do? — We see people not as people, but as members of groups.

It’s like we promulgate the disease, in hopes of finding a cure.

The pervasiveness question makes me laugh even louder…and more sadly. Someone says “It’s Still Out There” and we’re all just supposed to — whoa boy. We’d better get rid of it!

That’s silly. Just about everyone who would insist “we have to get rid of it” would agree, in this country, you have the right to do stupid things. Well, that’s the thing. When you look at discrimination, that’s what you’re looking at: People doing stupid things. And if they have a right to it, that means it’s going to be around. Forever. It’s a consequence of free will.

You want people making decisions who aren’t serving in Congress — or you want people making decisions who are? Eh…the people who are outside of Congress have a much higher “approval rating” with me, thankyewverymuch. And yeah, I say that as a straight white guy. What of it. People discriminate against me whenever they want to, so yes, I know what I’m talking about.

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Which Is Worse?Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Which Is Worse?
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008