From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Rowley on Bigotry
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 13:18:16 GMT


In article <17931@autodesk.COM> owen@autodesk.com (D. Owen
Rowley), whose name is especially fecund from the point of
view of anagrams, nee Rowdy Owl being a good one,
cross-posts *and* responds to Cl*yt*n, a double recipe for
getting me to ignore his efforts.  Nofty-nofty.

Indeed had Friar Dyer in article
<1992Nov17.065041.20372@spdcc.com> not made a notable
response to the same, I would not have noticed the cited
piece, and would have been constrained to get the
fair-haired magician suffer on in not quite silence.  Alas,
having skulked through bales of bytes, here we are.
Rejoice, Ye Low Wonder, rejoice briefly.

>>I am one Queer who doesn't believe that government can
>>force people to change their minds about socially acceptable
>>bigotry.

Not wanting to put words in your mouth (well, wanting to but
foreswearing the strife), one assumes you didn't mean to imply
that some bigotry or other would be socially acceptable.

Absent truly draconian methods, I don't think government can
force anyone to think anything, let alone change what people
think.  But after all, that's not a function of government,
as I see it.  A government can foster a lot of things, and
it can prevent a lot of things.  In my opinion, quite apart
from competing ideals about what government is or should be,
I think our government has come up short, especially on the
fostering end of things to do about bigotry.  And in the
past dozen or so years (no great surprise), it isn't doing
much of a preventing job either, malign neglect being the
Reagan/Bush long suit.

>>I look back on the civil rights struggle of racial
>>minoritys and find that for all the government regulation
>>regarding non-discrimination there is still plenty to go
>>around.

Steve has addressed this well, I think:

>Of course there is still bigotry and institutionalized
>racism.  At the same time, the Civil Rights Acts never
>pretended that it would get wiped out by fiat, nor was that
>their aim.  Specifying race or sexual orientation in an
>anti-discrimination law doesn't wipe out bigotry, not is
>that its primary purpose; it provides for redress when such
>bigotry is exercised to the detriment of the aggrieved.

Owen isn't the only person, left, right, or center, who
faults the government for not doing what it can't or
shouldn't do.  Of course, the fault is not the government's
but the people's, that is, ours, for not creating and
maintaining a government that fosters civil rights and
protects civil liberties.  Those who fault the government, a
fair fraction of the time, are merely fleeing from the
responsibilities of their own faults.

If the remedy for bigotry is education (Owen says it is,
"absolutely"), the government (that is, we ourselves) could
at least not get in the way of fostering the education.  The
government, aka the people, could do something about
literacy, about the infrastructure of education, about the
free interchange of ideas, about fostering useful debate to
show that bigotry is a weak idea and liberty is a strong
one.

The government/people could cease dismantling the forms of
redress represented by the progressive strides of the
half-generation up to the early 70s, which have stopped
working not because they were bad ideas -- on the contrary,
what happened subsequently is a powerful indicator of what
good ideas they were -- but because powerful forces that
support and maintain racism, sexism, and homophobia in our
country have succeeded, by long and determined application
over another half-generation, in weakening, nullifying, or
reversing those progressive steps.  This regression they
seek to cover up, especially nowadays, with pious propaganda
to the effect "it's not working" (small wonder, given their
efforts to torpedo it), counting on Owen and others to say:

>>I look back on the civil rights struggle of racial
>>minoritys and find that for all the government regulation
>>regarding non-discrimination there is still plenty to go
>>around.

A yahoo remark if ever there was one, I think.  A cover-up,
one I think Steve nicely unmasked.

<> It is so ironic how someone can preach fundamental and moral
<> love for God and of God, but go around and despise those who
<> are not "morally" correct. -- (someone)
<> It is not ironic at all.  A person who can believe in some
<> particular form of God is capable of believing anything.  If
<> such a person likes homosexuals, then they will assert that
<> homosexuality is moral.  If such a person finds homosexuality
<> distasteful, then they will assert that homosexuality is immoral.
<> Such people think with their intestines.  What they intuit they
<> assert to be true.  If they happen to intuit nice things, they
<> are still dangerous; a bad night's sleep and they could just as
<> well intuit ethnic cleansing.  Zero-integrity thought is no less
<> dangerous for being momentarily without an explicit threat.
<> -- Greg Weeks (weeks@hpscit.sc.hp.com)
-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
[Room 3130 <> 1210 West Dayton Street / Madison WI 53706 <> Phone 608/262-5888]
[---------> Discrimination, Bigotry, and Hate are not Family Values <---------]