Tag: Civil Rights

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I have been in San Francisco on several occasions when a nearly nude man will be walking around with the barest of fig leafs leaving his genitals clearly visible. My San Francisco friends informed me that this is perfectly legal and happened all of the time. I tried to confirm the legality when I started to write this blog because I know that things are changing in the city but was left with a lot of ambiguous information. From what I could learn, it isn’t exactly legal and it isn’t exactly illegal.

My San Francisco friends supported these men’s rights to walk around nearly nude. They thought that they should be free to do what they want. I was uncomfortable with both the naked man and their response. At the time I was unable to enunciate my disagreement. After thinking about for some time, years in fact, I think I have figured out what I want to say.

I knew if I had small children I wouldn’t want them to see it. Not because the child would be traumatized either. I am sure that most children wouldn’t even remember it happening the next day. On the other hand, it might require some awkward explanation on why the man is walking around the streets of a city naked. Like is it all right for me to walk around naked?

Well, it isn’t all right to walk around naked in most places. It might not even be all right in San Francisco. It seems more like San Franciscan cops have given up on enforcing the law as opposed to it actually being legal which is a nuanced position for parents to make. Yes it is a rule Johnny but it is too difficult to enforce so people don’t get in trouble for doing it. Does that make sense to you? Of course, it doesn’t.

And yes this is small potatoes. In a city like San Fransisco there are bigger problems for the cops to deal with. It is a nuisance more than a crime. It is one of the hundreds of small annoyances that people in a city encounter. It requires self policing from individuals and that is what isn’t happening.

There is an extremely small number of San Franciscans who want to walk around with their dicks hanging out. I hardly ever see it. The mass of San Franciscans I have seen almost always have their clothes on. I am talking 99.99 %. It is irritating that this infinitesimally small number of people feel the need to indulge their exhibitionist tendencies for the rest of us to see. It isn’t very neighborly.

There are plenty of places — nude beaches, nudist camps, your own home — you can walk around nude. And then there are also plenty of places where you don’t. You wouldn’t walk into a school nude. Or a restaurant. Or a museum. Or a church. So, even the most free thinking of individuals set limits to when people should walk around naked. The argument then is where to draw the line.

Living in big cities means you are around thousands of people with different ideas of how to behave. We should try to get along as best we can. This means I agree to not being able to do everything I want to do. So, for example, I don’t play music loudly. Now, I may want to play my music loudly but I won’t because I know that I might bother my neighbors. I want to get along with my neighbors so I don’t listen to music loudly.

These men need to face the fact that some people might not want to see their junk and keep that in mind when they go on one of their strolls. Being a good neighbor isn’t that hard, and I’m willing to give up these really minor freedoms to live in a big city. Because I really enjoy living in a big city and, to continue to enjoy this experience, I want to be a good neighbor. I wish everyone would.

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Heather MacDonald writes that Donald Trump took “the most important step it can to restore meritocracy. to American society” by eliminating disparate-impact. When exactly was there a meritocracy in the United States? Certainly no time before 1964 when discrimination against people of color and women was legal. Not directly after the passage of Civil Rights laws in 1964 when White resistance to the new laws was so fierce it required the implementation of Affirmative Action in order to ensure that Whites complied with the new law. Since MacDonald finds any tool that aids people of color a boost is an affront to meritocracy, it certainly isn’t the recent past So MacDonald needs to identify the golden age of meritocracy in USA because from the evidence I can see, there never has been a meritocracy.

MacDonald glosses over 200 years of American History. She assumes that the 1964 Civil Rights ended discrimination and nothing more needed to be done. For her racial prejudice is obvious, racists are obnoxious assholes in a Ku Klux Klan robe screaming the N word. It certainly couldn’t be nice middle class whites who hire employees or admit students to Ivy League colleges. They wouldn’t be caught dead in a Ku Klux Klan robe, so how could they be prejudiced.

The advantage of the public bigots is that they are easy to identify. The problem is the more prevalent form of racism that Blacks encounter is from polite and powerful White who, just the same, might be disinclined to hire someone different from them. They don’t say we are picking a White over a Black. They know the game. They say that the White guy is just more qualified for the job than the Black guy. For this reason, discrimination is difficult to prove. This is the barrier that Blacks face. MacDonald doesn’t appear to be bothered much by this more subtle form of racism or even acknowledge that it might exist.

Disparate-impact was one of the tools that the government used to show discrimination. If an employer has never hired Blacks, year after year, in a community where the population is 25% Black, then the government can see that there might be a problem with discrimination in hiring. Without disparate impact, how does MacDonald propose to identify non-compliant businesses and schools?

She doesn’t. She views discrimination as a phantom problem that doesn’t occur any more so there is no reason to investigate. People are only looking for the best – Black, White, Man, Woman. Race and Gender don’t matter only quality. Well, maybe, but how do we know this is happening unless we evaluate?

Finally, for the record, there will never be a meritocracy as long as rich families hand over their businesses to their children. It is never going to happen as long as some people have connections and others don’t. It never is going to happen as long as people with money can buy their children’s ways into universities. It never is going to happen when White middle class people can avoid “bad” school districts. It never is going to happen as long as poor Black children are given a second rate educations while White middle class children are given a first rate one.

How does MacDonald feel about those problems? Until she addresses them, I don’t believe that she gives a damn about meritocracy.

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I struggle with White Privilege and White Guilt because a lot of White people think there is no reason for it. The Civil Rights movement won the battle. It is illegal to discriminate against anyone — Black, Brown or White. Now, can you kindly stop talking about it.

Why stop talking about? Do we stop talking about other historical events? Say the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War (battles only) and any other historical event. We don’t. Why is it so important for people to stop talking about Racism?

I was reminded of the reason the other day when a friend posted the following picture to Facebook.

The picture of Black teenager surrounded by a crowd of angry White women reveals everything. White people don’t want to think of Grandma as some racist thug. They want to think of her baking apple pies and reading bedtime stories. Don’t you dare take that memory away from me. The truth here is very difficult for white people because our ancestors are the villains. And that means acknowledging that Grandma might have been a racist thug.

The founders of the country, by and large, shared this prejudice. Anyone studying this country’s history needs to study this. An ideology of racial superiority was created that enabled white people to enslave Blacks and deprive them of their rights. This too is important to study. Millions of White people for hundreds of year either actively stopped Black people from being treated as their equals or did absolutely nothing to change this situation. This means, particularly for any white whose family arrived before 1965, that unless their family were known civil rights activists, their family is in some culpable in this racist enterprise. To understand our history, this too has to be examined.

I know for certain that my ancestors, all who arrived before 1870, are suspect. I know of no civil rights activists in my family’s past. I have no record of them being KKK members or belong to any racists organization so they are in that large group of Whites who did absolutely nothing to help Blacks win their rights. Their silence allowed racism to flourish. Why were they silent while Blacks were lynched and deprived of rights? This is a question worth pursuing. This means looking at racism and how it affected White people’s behavior.

It is painful. I get why people don’t want to look at it. It doesn’t fit into our nice tidy story of hardy European immigrants braving the Atlantic and hostile natives to settle our country. But, unfortunately, that story, in no way, will help you understand American History.