Klarinet Archive - Posting 000109.txt from 1999/02
From: DHmorgan@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] Women and orchestras
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 15:40:54 -0500
In a message dated 2/3/99 10:46:30 AM Pacific Standard Time, Ken.Wolman@-----.com
writes:
<< In case there's someone I haven't offended, here's more. The difference
is that people who label themselves as Oppressed make a career out of
it. This is not unique to "minorities." I was born into a people who
STILL turn any critical remark in the political arena into a charge of
anti-Semitism. I recently joined a religion that regards the yammerings
of a second-rate playwright like Terrence MacNally as an attack on the
Catholic faith. I have heard attacks on MacNally turned into the
dreaded charge of "homophobia" or gay-bashing. I have heard black
speakers say that they CANNOT be racist against whites because racism is
a purely white condition: so they get a free, label-less pass to hate
me, but I can't return the favor by proposing a White Studies program
that hires David Duke as the counterpart to Leonard Jeffries. I have
heard women-only radio shows in New York in the late Seventies that
blatantly insulted men, hung up on them, and spoke not even with
condescension but outright hatred: a radio show on that same station
(WBAI-FM) would not even have put a men-only radio show on the air
unless it was some sort of New Age Consciousness-Raising "Oh I'm So
Guilty" act of male contrition.
In other words, in case I haven't been nearly insulting enough: it is
politically incorrect for the Vienna Philharmonic to bar women, but it
is quite correct for the Women's Philharmonic to bar men.
No apologies. People have called me worse things in my life than racist
or sexist. All shoes fit if you think they do, but check your own feet
first. >>
There's no need for you to feel bad because people call you a racist. [For
simplicity's sake, I'll deal only here with race] Perhaps your hurt feelings
are what's causing you to be so defensive. The whole society is 'racist' but
the word is misleading. We live in a society, indeed, a world of 'white
priviledge'. Yes, the bias is against blacks and other groups, but the really
important--and often overlooked--element of the equation is that whites
receive privledges they do not deserve and advantages they haven't earned.
They are accorded this special place in society by other whites and even by
the stigmatized groups who have intenalized a lack of self worth. Whites
don't notice this because it is a lot like riding a bike and having the wind
at your back--you think your just a really fast cyclist! Very few whites turn
around and say, "Wait a minute--it's not that I'm such a great cyclist--I have
the wind at my back. And those other people all have it blowing in their
face! No wonder I'm going faster!" But that's what is required in order for
whites to understand discrimination and not find themselves living in a world
of deslusions and rationalizations.
It takes a lot of mental energy to keep believing that people who belong to
groups that are continually stigmatized, brutalized, and marginalized are
somehow doing something to deserve it.
I always think of Ptolemy--an incredibly complex system of ideas that arises
because a very simple, elegant reality is unthinkable.
Truly,
Don
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org
