Post 35 -- Social Justice Has Achieved Its Own Negation

With Hillary Clinton running for the Democratic nomination for the 2016 Presidential Election, I went ahead and picked up Christopher Hitchens's No One Left To Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton. The original purpose of this was to discover any actions of Mrs. Clinton which may be pertinent to her running for President--and bringing Mr. Clinton back into the White House in the process. The term triangulation refers to the promise of one action and following up with a second action which purposely fails to achieve the original promise.

Then I come across Arthur Miller's piece in the New York Times from October 15, 1998. In his Op-Ed, Miller compares the Salem witch trails of mythological witch hunting of Satan-tempted towns folk with the impeachment process of Mr. Clinton. Miller writes, and perhaps my second favourite part of this article:

"It was a volcanic explosion of repressed steam that gave people license to speak openly in court of what formerly would have been shamefully caged in their hearts -- for example, the woman who testified that her neighbor flew in through her window one balmy night and lay upon her and had his way. Suddenly this was godly testimony, and the work of heaven was to kill the neighbor."

On its own it illustrates the insanity of the process of doling out God's justice on credulous people--as if individual mortals had the power to adjudicate the lives in totality of the people who were believed to have contact with a never seen, only spoken of, dual-phallused demon. Miller, however, uses this quip to undercut--a spectacular stroke which took more turf than ball--the "fiercely exact" Starr report. What's missed, and perhaps this speaks to his age, was the difference between the doomsday mythology and circumstantial accusations and that of non-circumstantial DNA evidence.

As not to be out-done by over soaking the already soggy cloth of the Salem witch hunts metaphor, Miller brings up a quote by Toni Morrison. He writes as follows:

"Then there is the color element. Mr. Clinton, according to Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, is our first black President, the first to come from the broken home, the alcoholic mother, the under-the-bridge shadows of our ranking systems. He is also the most relaxed and unaffected with black people, whose company and culture he clearly enjoys."

I hunted down the original quote. Ms. Morrison published the piece in The New Yorker October 5, 1998. She wrote:

"Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."

I am unsure how you can mince this up to claim Ms. Morrison was not attempting to claim Mr. Clinton as black. Even when writing with a passive voice, "murmurs" from the next table style, it was laid out clear. This is our first black President. Let us quickly compare what was said by Ms. Morrison to that of Mr. Miller. Rather than a "single-parent home" (Morrison), we have an "alcoholic mother" and "broken home" (Miller); "McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving" (Morrison) becomes the malicious shadowy "under-the-bridge" motif. What Ms. Morrison describes as tropes, leaving it open for whatever post-modernist lens you wish to apply, Mr. Miller instead makes stereotypical character claims. This leaves Hitchens to conclude, "political correctness has achieved its own negation."

The era of political correctness has since grown to becomes the mutli-headed hydra of "social justice", the Orwellian term which speaks of grand improvements but has utterly failed after being co-opted by narcissists. Do we have the Arthur Miller moment in social justice to claim it has negated itself? Of course we have.

Social justice is an amorphous idea which aims to bring greater equality. This does not necessarily mean the tide which raises all boats. While some might believe that to be the case, we must recognize that, for example, the pursuit of economic equality will come at a cost to some. Economist and American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks believes social justice is ultimately about income redistribution. This has some validity, but is tangential to this conversation. The social justice ideology, however, is vastly different in practice than in theory. After all, who can be against something as noble as social justice? We all want justice for ourselves and our communities. In practice we see a different result.

Bahar Mustafa, Diversity Office at Goldsmiths University in the United Kingdom, describes herself as an "ethnic minority woman". Following this statement, she defiantly proclaims she cannot be sexist or racist against white men as women of colour cannot benefit from being racist or sexist against white men. Here we have a social justice push to bring up the voices and lived experiences of all people--unless you are a white man, then you do not need that platform. No, no; it's not because you do not have valid lived experiences with the immense social pressure to succeed (which drives men to vastly higher rates of suicide), but because you are white and are male. Any understanding of racism or sexism would make Ms. Mustafa's statement vapid and longing for oxygen; to judge a person's place in society or experiences solely on the basis of their gender or race is by definition sexist and racist.

The United Kingdom is not done representing the downward spiral of logic: This is what a feminist looks like t-shirt debacle is one of the top contenders in a rich field of competition for both irony and hypocrisy. The simple of aim of throwing a piece of cloth of your body was to show that anyone could be a feminist, akin to throwing a cross around your neck to show you're a Christian (of unknown denomination). This self-righteous rag of the faith was sold--or, perhaps, 'tithed'--to interested parties for £45 ($71.98 USD; now on sale internationally for about  $20 USD). The textile company Compagnie Mauricienne de Textile in collaboration with Elle magazine put on the stunt.

Surely a shirt with a strong political message in regards to the fight for equality would be produced in equitable conditions? Sorely mistaken, dear reader. The small island nation and former French colony of Mauritius is the home of the production facility owned by Compagnie Mauricienne de Textile. The women working in the facility earned the equivalent of 62p (or $0.99) an hour. The idea of bringing up the oppressed with economic equality does not extend to the natural beauty of Mauritius, it seems.

The abyss is not done staring back: "race relations". The Young Turks, a YouTube avant garde news channel, brought the discussion to a new place when 'reporting' on a New York private school. Fieldston Lower School, beginning at grade three, separates children into "racial affinity groups" during classes so the children can discuss their experiences with their race--eight year old children will talk frankly about their experiences? It would seem to me that focusing on the race as being the defining factor of one's lived experiences only magnifies the impact of race, a great loss to the richness of individuality. This in of it self would be an auto-negation of social justice, as the universal principles of equality transcend race. Nonetheless, the ravenous darkness creeps forward.

Both guests support the idea of segregating children. Becca Frucht and Ana Kasparian give a glowing example of Wilkinson's Law, whereby forcing dogmatic belief in these young children in regards to race is the best approach to beating out other dogmatic views from taking hold; "I think it's definitely important to reach children when their ideology is still malleable." The demagoguery of the far left is self consuming: advocate for progressive equality, but do so by targeting children with messages of societal constructed differences between races and genders and loudly claim a managerial role because the parents are racists. In case the horse was not high enough, the recommendation is made to include parents into this (re-) education program.

The drive for equality peaked prior to the ubiquity of the internet. Communication has brought in more voices and more spaces for those voices, but has resulted in a lower quality product. Rights are universal and are not contingent upon one's race, gender, wealth, or nationality. Forcing the conversation to be about race or gender elevates the role those play in how others view larger, complex issues. In the process, the emphasis on a dermatological subdivision or whether or not you have a Y chromosome justifies the elimination of the non-preferred group. Ms. Mustafa, The Young Turks, and over priced t-shirts are only a few examples of the current trend: social justice has achieved its own negation.