Olga writes
> I understand about the word "Mexican" - there's nothing wrong
> with that word per se...
> ...I pasted in something from Natasha's recent post: "At first,
> only those with money or connections had them. Today, in downtown
> Los Angeles, there are more Mexicans using cell phones than executives."
>
> What was the implication in that sentence? That once upon a time when cell
> phones were expensive they had a certain cachet as only rich hoity-toity
> CEOs could get their hands on them; but now these formerly exclusive handy
> little gadgets have become so cheap and plentiful that "Mexicans" have them
> (Mexicans in this case standing for a catch-all word meaning what? -- poor
> people? riff-raff? the hoi-polloi? illegal aliens?). [YOUR IMPLICATIONS,
not hers]
Now, I think that there *is* an implication in that sentence that
Mexicans are poorer than business executives, and are poorer
than some other ethnic groups. But Olga---this is a fact! If
I imagine that some small enclave of people of my racial persuasion
were to have to flee to Japan, and for *whatever* reason were poorer
than the Japanese, I would not be offended by such a sentence. The
sentence would only be alluding to a fact (or a widely-assumed fact).
The huge mistake that the left has made is this: people are not
only supposed to not allude to certain facts, but worse, they're
not even supposed to *recognize* certain realities. It's a little
bit like thought-crime. This puts a fiendish burden on everyone,
themselves included! As we discussed before, any normally functioning
human being constantly generalizes; it's part of how one's nervous
system works, and if it didn't, we'd never have evolved to where we are.
If you happened to live in a country where those people who were dressed
a certain way, or had some other distinguishing characteristic, were
more likely to harm you than others, you *could* *not* *help* but
notice. To then pound yourself with criticism over your own
stereotyping reminds me of nothing so much as Orwell's 1984. Out
of sheer ideology---or because the party says so---facts are denied,
thought is controlled.
Which is it you want? For Natasha to not have such thoughts, i.e.,
exercise such mental agility that thought-crime is impossible, or
merely for her never to *say* what she is thinking? And if the
latter, then how do you think that she is going to *feel* about
her evil thoughts? The Christians make it even a sin to lust,
and so they're screwed, because humans will always lust, and it's
the same thing here. (What should have been a sin is to *act*.)
I'm starting to think that you'd be happy with the Chinese self-
criticism sessions that were on-going for a couple of decades.
Every week *everyone* would join a self-criticism group, and
confess their bourgeois tendencies and lack of focus and failure
to more steadfastly incorporate Mao ZheDong thought. Just think:
if we had those here, then each week you could go confess the
way that you yourself had been unconsciously noticing patterns
and stereotyping. Wouldn't that be great?
Your political correctness even reached fever pitch when you
analysed Brian's perfectly innocent observation about Mexicans.
(You even admitted that there were no implications at all,
unlike Natasha's transgression.) What had Brian failed to
do right? I'll tell you! He didn't qualify his sentence
about the Mexicans with newspeak. I mean, he didn't qualify
his sentence with indicators showing solidarity with the
masses. Oops. Wrong country again. I mean, he didn't
qualify his sentence with politically correct panderings
to progressive forces, i.e., he could have said "Latinos",
or he could have thrown in a phrase about exploitation, or
something. But he didn't, and you were on him in a flash.
I am not so mean as to hope that you get your wish, and that we
all, including you, watch what we say and watch what we think.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:15 MDT