Like many others here I'm sympathetic to the argument Randy's making, and I don't want him to feel he cannot explore it, by seemingly "piling on." So l'll begin by saying that I'm glad he's taken the time to bring this topic up and to pursue it with care. And I also hope he feels that he's been treated respectfully in this thread. I, for one, am very sensitive to criticism and feel vulnerable when I am not quite getting my own point of view articulated properly, let alone when I'm trying to articulate someone else's view--trying to speak for/with a disempowered person. So definitely I sympathize with his position, his goals.
But I, too, disagree and for the reasons that many others have made: I am an American whose views are "left leaning" in the US, but in Europe (not just on Barbelith!) my views are pretty centrist. Like other non-US contributors, here, Petey Shaftoe (Flyboy, right?), I, too, would actually like to be challenged more from further left. As I said in the Headshop a few days ago, I'm really quite conservative in some particularly intractable ways, i.e. although "I want a world in which people can explore the fullest complexity of whatever it means to be a 'human being,' wherever they live," which makes me liberal/left leaning (especially as I believe governments should help create societies capable of nurturing complex and healthy humans). On the other hand: "my own exploration of 'human being'-ness both 1) occurs on the backs of other people and 2) is invested in that exploitative status quo at least to the degree that it helps me explore my own dreams." I.e., that old Tolstoy line about the rich man riding on the poor man's back and feeling terrible about it, willing to do anything EXCEPT get off the other man's back!
By which I mean that, at the very least, to the degree that we have an advanced state of literacy in a world that is largely illiterate and denied access to literacy skills, to the degree that we are, in fact, computer literate, and many of us own computers or live in a society wealthy enough to provide cheap computer access, we are a largely conservative bunch on Barbelith, in that we are all invested in the status quo, and it's therefore hard for us to deeply challenge the system that gives us all those perks.
I believe even Zimbabwe should be viewed in this context: you can't understand the anger of African farmers against white farmers without understanding the history of colonialism in Africa. So, yeah, maybe white people are a "minority" in Zimbabwe, but they are a minority that is privileged--and knows itself to be privileged--in the world outside Zimbabwe. That context and that knowledge does make a difference.
And, finally, I'd like to respond to this statement specifically:
We can't achieve that higher standard of discussion unless we're giving equal consideration to all angles of the debate.
No, often precisely the opposite is true: you can't have a higher standard of debate if you continually have to rehash weak arguments or ones that have been discredited. E.g., one of the reasons it's wrong to teach Christian-inflected creationism in science classrooms is that, by the same logic, scientists should have to acknowledge and dispute EVERY creation story ever written, which is the Flying Spaghetti Monster argument. Nothing that is recognizeably "science" could be taught in such an atmosphere.
The same problem arises in areas like Women's Studies classes, especially if its an advanced women's studies course, when there's someone who questions the entire premise of the course. While in theory it can seem like a great idea, the effect is often to ensure that the complexity of Women's Studies as discipline can never be explored because the class becomes devoted to reacting to the problem student and defending the course's existence, rather than exploring the content and methods. |
