Archive for June, 2007

This just in from The Onion–and by “this just in,” I mean it ran a little over a month ago but I assumed that many of you haven’t seen it–Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion.

It’s a shame this hadn’t been released at the time of the infamous Fox Lake thread. Point for Brian.

There have been a lot of posts, both here and on other sites, about prejudice and how to overcome the barriers imposed on the minority in question by it. The US, as a people, seems obsessed with quantifying prejudice, measuring it, and just plain studying it in both a historical and modern context. Read any history book, and you will find significant focus on how a group was discriminated against, and what people did to gain those rights.

But in my experience, the question that is ignored is the circumstances of when such rights are seized. For example, in the early 20th Century, Europe’s treatment of the Jews was comparable to those of African Americans in the United States, at least on its face. Both were segregated, limited in regards to what jobs they could hold and representation, etc. If anything, one would suspect Jews would have the upper hand; they tended to be better educated and had better financial resources. But by the mid-20th century…well we know how that turned out. African Americans seized more rights while Jews were subject to the one of the worst genocides in history.

So my question is what separates the two? Were the Jews in Europe one Rosa Parks away from overturning avoiding the Holocaust? Or were African Americans lucky in that they did not succumb to their own genocide? Or are Americans just better and more moral and are not as intimidated by granting minorities their rights as their European counterparts?

As attractive as the third possibility may be for Americans, I don’t think that it is necessarily true. Based on a series of theories that I have read, notably by Niall Ferguson in The World War and Thomas Sowell in Black Rednecks and White Liberals, I believe that “civil rights” events, positive or negative, are only possible in specific circumstances, and that these circumstances can be measured and thus can be used to predict when “the time to strike is” for certain minorities.

Essentially, when there is high economic fluctuation in any direction combined with an increase or decreased in national power, an event is going to occur. African Americans were able to end the Jim Crow era during the 1950s through 1960s when American economic and influential growth were incredibly high. Jews were targeted by Germany and Russia during an economic and political fluctuation in the early to mid 20th Cenutry. It is the economic and national power factor which establishes when such an event is going to occur.

To determine how the effect is going to play out, whether it is political gain or gulag, depends on the minority. The greater minority population, the higher the probability that the minority will gain rights. This point seems obvious. The second factor is the “dirty jobs” aspect. The more basic and necessary the jobs the minority generally provides, the higher the likelihood that they will gain. In effect, the majority, when confronted with a disruption of these services that they do not want to do themselves, the majority will generally tend to cave in to demands by the minority so that they can secure whatever rights they want.

By evaluating historically established prejudicial events (African Americans, Aborighenies in Australia, women’s suffrage, Jews, the Ibos in Nigeria, Vietnamese boat people, the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, etc.) I believe a formula can be established and quantified to measure the conditions to determine when social change or massacres will be feasible or likely. By doing this we can avoid ethnic cleansing through early, peaceful, intervention and promote social growth by utilizing political capital when it will do the most good.

This, via the very impressively redesigned American Scene, made me laugh:

Also from the Dept. of Amusing Probably Only To Me, but I’m currently preoccupied with imagining a sit-com based around Christopher Hitchens. Tentatively called “Everybody Pisses Off Hitch,” it features a wacky female neighbor who, even though she works some great prop comedy and hilarious visual gags, never manages to amuse the star, who sits at the kitchen table drinking Scotch and blinking like a mordant eagle caught in the rain. The show’s signature catch-phrase is, “I find that boring and irritating,” and on a very special holiday episode Hitch gets very drunk and regales the neighborhood kids with the story of the lost weekend he and Kingsley Amis spent in Tijuana.

Not that anybody cares, but speaking of the American Scene, I’ve updated my blogroll in the sidebar to more accurately reflect my current reading material.

I don’t want to overshadow all of the commentary being published today, but I couldn’t let this pass. Robert Putnam has a new study coming out regarding the negative effects of diverse populations that is so negative that it is frightening him.

As I keep saying over and over in here, people are a lot more comfortable with others who are like them and will naturally gravitate towards them. Government’s (or other groups’) attempts to force diversity will end up causing more problems than they are solving.

Tom

Elizabeth Edwards made headlines yesterday by coming out in support of same-sex marriage, a position that places her at odds with hubby and Democratic “top 3″ candidate John Edwards. Unless Michelle Obama has parted ways with her husband on this issue and Google and I just don’t know about it, this makes Elizabeth the only declared gay marriage supporter among the three Democratic frontrunners and their spouses.

What might this mean for her husband’s campaign? Like blacks and Jews, the gay community can carry considerable sway within the Democratic Party, especially when it manages to coalesce around a single candidate. And with so many LGBT voters feeling jaded about their supposed political champions stopping at civil unions, a courageous pro-gay marriage declaration from one-half of the Edwards duo could move a lot of gay and lesbian voters to the Edwards column.

But how likely is it that Mrs. Edwards will actually become Queen Elizabeth of the gays? There is little distinction between the Obama, Clinton, and Edwards campaigns on LGBT issues—they all seem fairly pro-gay but not particularly inspiring as advocates—and of course there is the likelihood that if nominated, the socially moderate Giuliani will pull a decent number of pro-gay but otherwise moderate-to-conservative voters to his side. After all, Rudy’s already managed to charm Brian’s semi-liberal mother even though he now opposes the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and recently came out against a New Hampshire law legalizing civil unions. (Karen, if Brian and I stay together for the long haul, I hope you’re as excited as I am about our “domestic partnership/alternative lifestyle” ceremony—maybe we can even have a certified witch officiate!) At this point, it’s going to be an uphill battle for any single primary candidate to win over a majority of LGBT voters.

She faces some awfully tough competition. Even though the Clintons are about as aggressively uninspiring as the next mainstream Democratic politician when it comes to their collective record on LGBT issues, they have carefully cultivated a solid relationship with influential gay Democrats, and David “Sassfest” Geffen jumping ship is hardly an indication that Hillary’s gay foundation is in danger of collapsing. Hillary has won the long-term admiration of much of the LGBT community with her credentials as a woman of power. But Elizabeth is nipping at her heels; just look at AmIAnnoying.com, where both women enjoy membership in the category “Fag Hags [Women Loved by Gay Men].” For as long as Clinton and Edwards both remain in the race, gay voters looking for an alpha hag might be hopelessly torn.

But how far can a surrogate go? Elizabeth Edwards is not running; her husband is, and policy positions aside, the whole “straight white male” thing doesn’t resonate very well with LGBT voters. Sorry.

And what about Obama? This is perilously anecdotal, but a super-majority of my gay friends and acquaintances—as the former president of PRIDE, UIUC’s largest LGBT student organization, I do know quite a few—appears to have lined up behind Barack. Just like other voters in my generation, they are inspired by his “new era of politics” message, and in their view, Obama’s seemingly innate ability to “get it” amounts to a total eclipse of Hillary and Johnny E. In terms of tangible position-taking on gay issues, he isn’t running ahead of the pack, but his language on gay rights just seems more modern and thus creates an image that he is more “in touch” with younger gay voters than either of his top two competitors. Personally, I find it aggravating that the younger LGBT generation might be valuing style over substance, but I’m a skeptical curmudgeon, and regardless of my views, I’m well aware that this perception has been spreading.

As for this Rainbow Panther (thanks, Augur), I was largely behind Hillary because I’m easily dazzled by the Clintonistas, but I don’t mess around on gay issues; I favor substance over style any day of the week. If, like Hillary and Bill, Elizabeth has the ear of her husband on critical policy decisions—and I think she does—I am certainly tempted to jump ship and declare my support for Edwards, since gay issues rank so high on my political priorities list. I do know that a lot of politically active gays won’t be satisfied by anything less than marriage, so there is a decent chance that Elizabeth’s speech could shake the LGBT voter bloc up a bit. I feel a bit shaken up myself.