From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Re: I am not a white male. (was: PC)
Date: 9 Nov 92 10:26:14
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
	<1992Nov9.165221.2518@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: sconley@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu's message of Mon, 9 Nov 1992 16:52:21 GMT

In article <1992Nov9.165221.2518@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> sconley@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (S. Conley) writes:
> I am not a white male as far as any of you are concerned.  The details of
> my person are irrelevent to the Net.

Do you mean to say that your ideas have absolutely nothing to do with
the sort of person you are?  I know that this is possible, but it is
certainly unusual.  You believe that if you were a different person in
every respect other than your ideas, your ideas would be identical?  I
wish I could say the same.  I'm aware, though, that my education and
experience very much influence how I see problems and what solutions I
think are the best.

> That's why this is such a great
> forum--you must attack my views and the way I present them, not me and
> whatever groups I may or may not be a member of.

I don't think that Mike was "attacking" you *or* any group you are a
member of.  What he was saying (as I saw it) was that your background
*can* influence what you think of as major problems or good solutions.
A person I really respect on another newsgroup gave a good analysis of
this, which I will paraphrase (hopefully correctly):

  In the Rodney King case, suppose that the races had been reversed, so
  that it was a group of black police beating a white man.  Then,
  suppose that the trial decision was the same.  Would the white
  residents of LA have responded by rioting?  Probably not; they would
  regard it as a slight quirk in a system that otherwise worked well, as
  opposed to another instance of an inability to be treated well within
  that system.

I believe that perspectives and reactions can be *very* different,
depending on your past experiences.

A "white male" is sufficiently "liberated" that the step to "I don't
care what you think" is a reasonable one.  For me, a "white female,"
it's a large but not impossible one.  Everyone once in a while, I *do*
have to contend with what people think of women, though, whether or not
I wish to, or care about the other person's ideas in an abstract sort of
way.  I was lucky enough to be raised by a woman who taught me that when
people told me things like "women can't do math," they were just being
stupid and I should not believe them.  Not everyone is this lucky, and
people *do* get their ideas from their society and what people tell
them.  Children, in particular, but even adults are influenced by the
opinions of the people around them.

For someone who is oppressed by "what other people think," since
thoughts *can* (and often do) translate into actions, it can be an
impossibly large step to "I don't care what you think."  The response to
that is "I don't care if you care what I think, I'm still going to beat
you up for being gay, refuse to hire you because you're the 'wrong'
gender or race, etc."

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy                               muffy@mica.berkeley.edu
~Weavers' fingers flying on the loom/patterns shift too fast to be
 discerned/all these years of thinking/ended up like this/in front
 of all this beauty/understanding nothing~ - Bruce Cockburn
Newsgroups: soc.bi