Does Sexual Equality Require Preferential Treatment?
Taylor Harris, a black University of Virginia graduate now studying writing at Johns Hopkins, had an excellent article (“Racial pawns in the battle for same-sex marriage”) in the Washington Post recently.
“All too often,” she begins, white liberal classmates at the University of Virginia would ask, “Shouldn’t blacks, more than any other group, support gay rights?” She continues:
I never understood my classmates’ need to align the historical struggles of blacks with those of homosexuals and then push their quadratic equation of oppression on me. Was not one point of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a classic text for college seminars, that blacks deserve an existence free from an assigned role? That they should not be pawns in any social movement? And even if they hadn’t read the book, wasn’t it clear that stereotypical assumptions based on race are regressive?
On that last point, it’s certainly not clear to everyone. What would there be to “diversity,” after all, without the assumption that blacks are one and all “different” enough to provide it to others? For the purposes of “diversity,” in short, blacks are fungible: because they are all “different,” they are all the same. But let’s leave “diversity” aside for now and return to the issue of blacks and gays.
“Hearing that from my white peers was one thing,” Ms. Harris continued,
[b]ut last month, one of our greatest civil rights leaders also sang the same cacophonous tune in an attempt to peg African Americans’ morals and opinions to our socio-historical identities.
“Black people, of all people, should not oppose equality,” Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP, declared at the National Equality March in Washington.
Bond’s comment, however, begs and hence raises the question of the content and meaning of the “equality” that blacks, “of all people, should not oppose.”
During most of the history of the civil rights movement — that is, before the ascent of leaders like Bond — that meaning would have been clear: people who demand to be treated without regard to their race should not oppose the demand of others to be treated without regard to their sex or sexual orientation. That implicit equation of race with sexual orientation may not have been persuasive — especially, as Ms. Harris cogently points out, to black Christians — but at least it would have been consistent, clear, and coherent.
Now, however, it is none of those, because civil rights leaders like Bond no longer believe that blacks should be treated without regard to their race. To the contrary, they believe that blacks should receive preferential treatment because of their race and that those who believe in colorblind equal treatment are either conscious or unconscious racists.
Consider, for example, fair housing, an issue less volatile and religiously charged than gay marriage. Declaring that “discriminatory policies and practices based upon race, color, creed, or national origin” are “unfair, unjust, and inconsistent with the public policy of the United States as manifested in its Constitution and laws,” President Kennedy’s Executive Order 11063 (November 20, 1962) ordered federal agencies “to take all action necessary and appropriate to prevent discrimination because of race, color, creed, or national origin.” That provision was revised in 1980 “to apply to discrimination because of race, color, religion (creed), sex, or national origin.”
Now fast-forward to the present, and the demand of a fair housing group to revise the above language “to apply to discrimination because of “race, color, religion (creed), sex, disability, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
There is no reverse discrimination in equal rights law. The author fails to establish the basis for the central complaint. Affirmative action has been and always will be about equality. Nobody is asking for special rights -we simply want to make racism and bigotry in the workplace illegal.
There is no liberal agenda here beyond treating all citizens equally before the law.
Peace.
DS
PS – Preferential treatment based on hetero status is what we have now – and that’s wrong.
White progressive pols, firmly ensconced in their positions replete with the accoutrements that wealth and privelege bring, absolutely want preferential treatment for everyone one of their loyal subjects at the expense of white Americans.
Every “Title” this or that, bill, SCOTUS ruling, and legislation that progressives envisioned was and is designed to hold together their voting blocks and maintain them as such.
As for Bond and the CBC, they will twist themselves into pretzels on order to make the comparisons between race and sexual orientation and do as they are told.
A side issue – the liberal white assumption is that everyone with brown skin or everyone who is “of color” feels the same way they do on all issues. Blacks do not support gay marriage. Perhaps with the application of enough propaganda, they will in the future. But the anti gay marriage stance has a lot to do with religion. I don’t see african americans being divorced from religion and turning to atheism in large numbers. And there are some groups that seem to be inoculated against liberal propaganda on social issues. It does not appear to work on muslims. I don’t anticipate muslims supporting gay marriage in the future, or abortion either. As the US becomes more “diverse” it will be interesting to see how these issues come out between the white progressive and the “person of color”
Blacks have been forced to turn to Christianity because the same goal for Native Americans was to “christianize and subject them to “civilization”. As though Christianity is a Civilized Religion. I am sorry many Blacks are Christians. As an Atheist and a Militant one, I wish they would quit a hostile religion that pretends to be so loving and caring but really wants money, more children to be born so the church can gain more converts. Christianity doesn’t really care about the poor. It’s the credit they get for “helping” others. It’s sad. Most of the monies go to the preachers or ministers or some of the hierarchy. It’s like all those Christian charity groups that disguise themselves in helping those in need. Only if you become a Chrisitan you get better treatment and that’s alot of bunk.
As for gay sexual lives, they are NOT a sin and NOT immoral. The lies the bible says about judging ye not and loving thy neighbor. Nobody truly practices what they preach. It’s all about the Old Testament scriptures and nothing else matters.
DS: Your tired old parroting of the progressive party line is getting tedious.
PS That white hetero status made this nation the greatest nation on earth until the progressives became the major factor in destroying it. Be thankful that those white hetero males cleared this nation and the world of most evil so that you can sit and type your tripe.
Here in California, it is illegal to use race or gender in awarding state contracts, in admission to state universities, and in hiring for state or local jobs. We passed this law in 1998, the famour “Prop 209″ which has been duplicated in several states. There is no longer “affirmative action” here unless it is required by a federal court order. Now, when a non-white person is admitted to or graduates from one of our state universities you can assume he got there on merit, not race.
This has been the cause of much gnashing of teeth among our local leftists.
Dvid S: you surely can’t be serious –selecting people on the basis of race is…racism–isn’t it?
Along with sexual preferences will come a boom of normalphobia where the normalphobes are encouraged by liberals to more publicly and enthusiastically practice their deviantness and perversions. Not around the normal liberals, of course.
So if the racial selection is for a good cause, say ending racism in hiring, housing, and promotions, it’s OK? So I gather torture in warfare is all right, provided it’s for a good cause, the ending of torture for all time? And I suppose the person doing the racial selection is not a racist any more than the person doing legal torture is not doing torture. There is a certain Alice in wonderland quality about all this. It reminds me of those climate scientists trying to hide their thermometer calibrations.
To the contrary, they believe that blacks should receive preferential treatment because of their race and that those who believe in colorblind equal treatment are either conscious or unconscious racists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/01race.html?scp=1&sq=unemployment%20black&st=cse
That race remains a serious obstacle in the job market for African-Americans, even those with degrees from respected colleges, may seem to some people a jarring contrast to decades of progress by blacks, culminating in President Obama’s election.
But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.
College-educated black men, especially, have struggled relative to their white counterparts in this downturn, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.
Various academic studies have confirmed that black job seekers have a harder time than whites. A study published several years ago in The American Economic Review titled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” found that applicants with black-sounding names received 50 percent fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names.
The biggest impediment to equality in this country has always been the cry that there is no inequality. Accept it, deal with it, move on.
Gods Balls::
fI love it when liberals make inane comments disguised as debate. Accept it, deal with it, move on, is the liberal”s “seig heil”.
The plight of black americans has little to do with the racism of whites and a lot to do with the racism of blacks. Many of us are tired of the old liberal and black refrains of racism. NAMING YOUR CHILDREN jAMAL AND lAKISHA IS A FORM OF SEPERATISM. If one wants to be equal, one needs to act equal. Diversity is not a strength, it is a weakness. One does not meld an armed force by marching in different directions. Why aren’t asians discriminated against? Because they are happy to be and act like other americans. No rap music, or funny looking clothing, no obscene crime rates, no accusations of racism by asians. Many blacks have risen above the ghetto mentality, unfortuately few white liberals have joined them. We have a black president, who , had he been white, couldn’t have been elected with his lack of experience. He was elected by guilt ridden liberal whites, and blacks who don’t care if they seem racist in voting for him by over 90%. How’s he working out for you liberals now? In my opinion he is a great speaker, but a stuid ass in all other ways. He has no Knowledge of history and for those of youwho think he is smart, why no magna cum laude from any of his schools. Why couldn’t he pass the Illinios bar exam? What you have is a wanna be black, black man- by his ow2n admission. We got a pig in a poke, and a wimp to boot.
Geez, idiot @9: You could have had the deceny to put quotation marks over the complete comment because you took it right from the NYT and the (false) study. What a putz.
Since the NYT has no respect for truth, what the paper cites is garbage. The paper took a trumped up study by the Univ. of Chicago-and we are supposed to believe their results. Not in a million years.
And we know this is crap because every HR office in every major company has a diversity quotient (officer) that MUST be met. The fact that there is a difference can be attributed to many things other than RACE.
But you libtards in your cushy jobs who feel guilty have to make everything about race. Hell quit your job and offer it to a black guy if you feel so bad; just don’t tell me I cannot have a job because a black must have it for AA and quota reasons.
If Jaamal and Lakiesha want to be separate then go get hired by a black business.
I guess that just the thinking of the left (all disaffected minorities should be put in one disaffected basket.) Yes, gays have suffered discrimination etc etc no one would doubt that, but I really feel that blacks and gays have a more dissimilar experience than a common one. Racial discrimination is obvious. You can plainly see what color a person is. No matter how the person behaves, he or she is still obviously black. A gay person has to do or say something that will tip another into oppositional behavior. Economically, gays were never in the same boat as blacks. Educationally, gays were never in the same boats as blacks. And blacks (as well as Hispanics and Asians) are far far more conservative than 99% of gay folks despite their history of being discriminated against—which the left can’t get.
it should not surprise anyone that if one group is offered special treatment they will run with it. …and fight any attempt to have it taken away.
when some of these laws were enacted those who pushed for them did not pay any price (personally) so they did it for votes or for guilt or a million other reasons, none of which have any attachment to equity.
it is an upside down world and is unsustainable.
you can only keep Darwin at bay for short times. He will always assert himself sooner or later. The consequences are somewhat predictable.
good luck all
@1
“There is no liberal agenda here beyond treating all citizens equally before the law.”
ROFL
Good one… thanks for the laugh!
Rosenberg has once again written an excellent piece on race and gender equality. Slippery slopes are called slippery because they tend to go downhill. Who would have believed that choosing people on the basis of race wouldn’t be racist. Of course those wanting gender “equality” actually really want gender preference. Can you imagine teachers being chosen on the basis of their homosexual preferences simply to “match” the so-called preferences of their students? As so often is the case, Rosenberg nails the topic by writing clearly, concisely and right on target. Would that our president would begin a post racial dialogue that mirrors the issues Rosenberg has raised here on Pajamas Media.
Funny that we are discussing this now, my buddy and I had a similar discussion just the other day where he got pretty fired up over the fact that if it is a private matter, then it should stay exactly that way, a private matter and not shoved into our faces in our society like it was a right. He had a point. If two consenting adults want to do what they want to do in the privacy of their own bedroom then fine. Why do we have to pay for it (surgeries), listen to it, or have our kids taught it in schools??
Here is the post from my website:
http://truthandcommonsense.com/2009/12/15/putting-my-buddys-two-cents-into-a-controversial-issue-paying-for-trangendered-surgery/
If a person is going to wave their sexual behavior in front of the world like a rainbow flag on a windy day, then yes, making taboo the discussing of homosexual sexual behavior is a demand for preferential treatment.
Accusing those who does not agree that marriage should be redefined to include people of the same sex as phobic is an attempt to suppress discussion and is an expectation of preferential treatment.
Suppressing discussion of whether the young can be influenced by the sexual conduct of adults is an expectation of preferential treatment.
Demanding that the world accept that homosexual sexual behavior is strictly in the DNA and any attempt to discuss the subject is attacked is expecting preferential treatment.
Sexual Equality should not require preferential treatment and should not suppress or forbid discussion about the topic.
It’s not sexual equality, it is sexual superiority because it cannot stand under questioning or discussion so must make taboo the voice of scrutiny or opposition or questioning.
I’m going to wade into this one cautiously. Let’s see how I do. I hate the idea that someone would hire me based on my skin color and not my merit as much as I hate the idea of being denied a job for the same reason. I was a staunch proponent of AA when I was younger, but I soon realized that in the end, it built resentment and failed to address the problems at hand. Many Americans of color lack the needed skills to be successful academically and professionally. The reasons for this are many fold and I care not to delve in to those issues as we could go on about it for hours. I do know that hand outs are not the answer
I wish affirmative action meant helping people help themselves. Malcolm X said if someone was doing a job better than you, look at what he is doing, because chances are, you are not doing the same thing. Like him or love him, Malcolm X had a point. We need to ask why there are achievement gaps and inequities. We need to ask what are Americans who are successful doing differently and then teach any American who does not know how to do these things how to do them. For example, Americans who happen to be Black tend to allow far more television than their “White” American counterparts. The percentage of televisions middle class Black American parents who allow their children to have televisions in their rooms, dwarfs numbers for every other ethnic group. There seems to be a correlation here. As a result, my kids are not allowed to watch more than an hour of television a night and they will never have televisions in their rooms. I also learned that asking probing questions of my children when we read together improves reading comprehension. So when I read with my child, we talk about the reading and it means .
There are some AA programs that I think work. The NFL is comprised of a large number of Black players but few Black coaches. Qualified less well known coaches may be overlooked. So the NFL asks that each team interview at least one qualified black coach. Then the coach is considered in the larger pool of applicants and the best coach is hired for the job. This system has produced two Super Bowl winning coaches.
Out of high school I was accepted to USC, UCLA, and some other schools. I scored a 940 on my SAT. I had good grades, but I worried that I was being offered charity. I refused the acceptance and the scholarship money I was offered and opted to attend a community college for two years instead. I gained skills and confidence and in the end took a scholarship that was merit based for students whose parents have not gone to college. This scholarship was a useful one because it recognized that because I was first generation, statistically, I stood less of a chance of graduating. Coupled with the scholarship money, I received counseling and social support structures that helped me get through college and fill the gaps left by my parents’ lack of knowledge about how to survive college. This is a social action program that worked.
There’s my piece.
I grew up during the late sixties/early seventies, before drugs and excuses destroyed vast sections of the black community. I found the old school blacks to be people of humor, love, intelligence (maybe not college book read, but common sense and a wealth of day to day knowledge), hope and respect.
Sadly, the drive to secure them as voting chattel by the left and the drive to repair past offenses by the right (commonly called nowadays- “white man’s guilt”) allowed the black community, especially inner city, to escape from accountability and responsibility. I watched as neighborhoods once safe to walk in, regardless of your color, became infested with gangs, prostitutes and blight. I watched as kids I went to school with, who intended to be successful in society, slowly be replaced by kids who prided themselves in being uneducated and scorned others who wanted to better themselves. I watched as a matriarchal culture where the mom or the grandmother drug kids to church every Sunday, and with a word or a raised finger could make disrespectful child shut up and say, “Yes, Ma’am” turn into a world where young black men target older black women for robbery and worse. All the time, the left in this country tried to blame everyone but themselves and the right refused to say what was on everybody’s lips in fear of losing even more campaigns.
I’m glad you posted and reminded us that there are people of honor and duty in all cultures. You keep your eye on the horizon and you’ll find your life full of satisfaction and success.
Good luck.