Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
I think it's a blend of practical strategy with real goals, human psychology that sometimes causes people to become unhinged, and game theory that paints people into corners and leads to bizarre and unfair outcomes.
I was recently at a competition full of contestants and audience members who lean toward the progressive end of the spectrum. I sat through multiple rants about how white privilege and cisgender privilege are oppressive and how the awards must finallly be opened up to women, people of colour, and transgender individuals. There were a handful of awards and 100% of them went to women, people of colour, and transgender individuals. This community is maybe 60% male and cisgender males won 0 awards. The past winners got up too and there were transgender and POC winners going back 15 years. The "catchment" area for this competition is over 80% white, so the reality is that most people going to see this are likely to be white even if there is no bias encouraging or discouraging people of one skin colour or another to attend.
Afterward I was talking with some people about a Pride society in Canada. They said they got in a lot of heat because there were no people of colour on the board. But they also said they struggled to even get people who were willing to do the work required to be on the board (people not on these boards often think of them as prestige positions but they are more like mini unpaid jobs). They would take anybody who wants to join regardless of skin colour. When they told this to the naysayers, the naysayers said, well, people of colour just don't feel safe being in a room full of white people and don't feel like they'd be listened to, so that's why they don't bother. What can you say to this?
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Yeah it's a very complex topic overall. I'm very much familiar with that type of outlook and struggle to fully grasp it myself. As in, I get the push for greater recognition of people's diversity, but there are just so many drawbacks to the strategies being employed.
Take your award example: if all the winners were white men, then I think that creates an implicit bias of white men are winners, others are not. Consistent recognition of different people is important in strengthening ties and weakening the categorization and differences of our identities as people. At least in the current moment where these differences are so salient; nobody would care if no blue-eyed or redheaded people won an award. Of course, provided that all the eventual award-winners actually did something helpful.
But something I said there is something that is often disagreed with by social progressives - they say we shouldn't look to eliminate diversity, we should seek to embrace it. But I just don't see this as possible. I've mentioned this a million times before, but when groups in a category start strengthening their identities, other groups will follow. As in, it's not just black people or women that will feel more pride in their identities - white people and men will too. And it seems to me like that's exactly what social progressives are trying to quell.
I'm always wary of projecting, but I feel like this growing focus on identity is tiring people out, and disenfranchises them from broader movements. I'm sure many of us have anecdotal stories of friends saying they support stronger social programs, but they're unsure about voting for the Liberals again because they're tired of the identity politics. As such, these efforts may actually serve to undermine the vehicles that may help push their message forward into action.
Anyway, to tie this back to John A. McDonald, I think the removal of the statue and other similar gestures will be welcomed by some and antagonize others, and turn reconciliation into a more combative affair. And I do understand why his statue may be problematic. However the "you are wrong it needs to go" strategy may create an equal amount of blow-back as support.
In the US, it seems like on social issues groups exaggerate the others' positions and adopt a touch more extreme reaction, which results in a little more of an extreme reaction from the other side, until eventually you have people that think borders are an outdated concept arguing with people who actually identify as Nazis. An initial, more serious conversation about people's grievances is likely to lead to more positive results overall than making it combative. I think back to Acajack's example of the gay community's push for equality in these words.
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