If you haven't tried the hair, you don't know what you're missing. I
recommend camel for the best results.
>I tried to make clear at the end of the message that I was not writing
>mainly in the moral domain, where matters of guilt and blame or good and
>bad are the primary issues (though I do concern myself with these).
I was not targeting you Jay, but your message triggered a theme I keep
returning to here. Neither was I suggesting a moral issue, rather a
definitive one. I've been smouldering for the last three days since I went
to my son's first grade orientation day. I listened to the principal laying
out corporate values (what's your mission vision and values for _your_
child?) and skills (called Meyer competencies in Australia) for my
pre-school-aged child's future curriculum.
Then she moved on to diversity. The tokenistic language made me sick. "We
have 23 countries represented here, and we're all Australians", she said
with a sickly triumphalism. Each child had obviously been neatly
pigeonholed according to where their family had come from!. There's only
about 120 kids at the school, my daughter goes there, and I know most of
the kids cos I get involved in the school's activities, and if they
represent anything, it's childhood, not, for instance, China.
---snip---
>More than an accounting, there is a need to question our response
>to difference.
Vive la difference. Life is about difference. Humanity is essentially
unique in its instantiations of difference. If we focus on difference, we
have an eternity of increasing case studies of ever fragmenting, ever
finely-defined (constructions) of otherness. If difference were truly
embraced, it would not even be a cause for mention.
---snip---
>every movement toward
>simple equality or the neutralization of difference disguises the
>reinscription of the dominant culture's values and practices. Even with the
>best intentions.
How about a conception of equality that runs: "From each according to their
abilities; to each according to their needs". Unqualified. No further
definition required.
>The problem lies in all cases with the dominant culture itself. Dominant
>cultures are not just cultures; they are always also systems for the
>perpetuation of their dominance.
I tend to think entirely of its systemic nature. I'm not sure how helpful
this is. I'm also not sure how much control the best intentioned person has
in a reproducing system of domination and exploitation.
---snip---
>Dominant cultures must be forced to change, and can be
>forced to change only by relentless criticism, changes in the distribution
>of material resources, and frequently by meeting violence with violence (I
>regret to say).
Sadly, it would seem so. However, intellectual violence should be (Phil and
his "oughts" - so what? I say) directed towards the dominant culture, not
towards defining simple or sophisticated notions of difference in the
people that suffer under them. From my perspective, the university
faculties are the main regurgitators of the cultural elites, mostly
business faculties from my own observations. Unfortunately, that's where I
am situated.
---snip---
>It must be to force the dominant culture to concede and change,
>to shift from being a dominant culture to being one culture among many.
Trouble is, it _is_ just one "culture" among many. It just happens to be
the dominant one. Like people, cultures are more and less well-endowed with
culturally valorised assets. I dare anyone to try and define the dominant
culture. Usually the most simplistic definitions can be found in this area.
Anglo, Mandarin, Brahmin, Patriarchy. An "untouchable" is India's Prime
Minister during a time of its successful nuclear proliferation. Women like
Madeleine Albright and Bronwyn Bishop (Aust) now run large sections of the
military-industrial complex. Other well-defined ethinicities inhabit the
west's, including the US's, most powerful posittions. The dominant culture
continues to escape definition, unlike the so-called "minorities". Most of
the linguistic efforts here have gone into defining the "other" minorities,
members of whom - according to the definitions - inhabit positions of power.
>It
>does not matter that the differences that loom so large in dominant
>perceptions and valuations are often exaggerated and stereotyped.
>Deconstructing those stereotypes can be a tool to help change dominant
>culture, but it is a means, not an end.
Indeed. But I now doubt that it's even a means. It merely gives the
dominant _system_ good direction as to its recruiting agenda so as it
continues to defy definition: "look, we have women, jews, blacks,
hispanics, asians etc etc etc here ... and their values and actions are
just the same as ours".
>Nec Carthago, nec differentia, at Roma delenda est.
Still, every Carthaginian, child, woman, and man was murdered - the razed
city was ploughed with salt. Rome survives intact.
What the hell do we do?
Phil
Wishing there were a simple solution.
Phil Graham
pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html